From Scandinavia to Switzerland: 6 contemporary, classic and experimental type foundries from Europe

In our continuous celebration of all things type, we felt it was only fitting that we took the time to highlight and appreciate some of our favourite foundries. For starters, we’re turning our attention to our home continent – Europe! From the contemporary and experimental to the classic and functional, the foundries we’ve picked exemplify the exciting diversity of styles and approaches on offer from the contextually-rich continent. TYPE.WELTKERN® is a Swiss foundry, and part of WELTKERN®’s unique shop, publisher and loyalty programme hybrid. For those who publish fonts with them, WELTKERN®’s type foundry pays a much better percentage of licence sales than the average, under the platform’s primary goal of valuing the important creators behind their products and to better distribute the revenue share of everything they produce and publish. At launch, TYPE.WELTKERN® released TWK Everett by Nolan Paparelli and TWK Lausanne by Nizar Kazan, shortly followed by Paparelli’s TWK Ghost. Starting out as a post-university collaborative initiative, AllCaps made the decision to formalise their practice with the release of their first four typefaces; Youth, Modern Gothic, Rhetorik Sans and Rhetorik Serif. Founded by Ondrej Bachor and Jan Novák, and supported by Sascha Bente, Malte Bentzen, Sylvan Lanz and many other collaborators, the foundry works remotely across countries and timezones, though primarily located in Prague and Berlin. For them, “drawing is designing,” an ethos imbued throughout their practice and design process. Their first four releases showcase this ethos, as well as their formal training in both type design and graphic design, which is also demonstrated in their collaborations with clients such as Afterall Journal, Daly & Lyon, ECAL, Lamm & Kirch, Les Urbaines and Nike.