This piece focuses on the Japanese font foundry scene. It is a scene in constant change, a result of bankruptcies by individual companies, mergers, start-ups and constantly shifting licensing models. In what follows, I intend to provide an overview of the most important foundries today.

An invitation from Addmagazine to write an article about Lyon and the FF Real™ typeface (for their upcoming issue 14) led me to revisit the world of typeface revivals and interpretations of older models. One foundry with a respectable track record breathing new life into classic typefaces is CastleType. Besides his own original designs, for the past quarter century Jason Castle has been interpreting designs like F.W. Goudy’s classic Roman capitals Goudy Trajan; Standard, the warmer and friendlier sibling of the Akzidenz-Grotesk® typeface; Zamenhof with its many inline and outline treatments; Shàngó, inspired by the initials from Professor F.H. Ernst Schneidler’s classic design; and many more. Castle recently released Cradley, based on the work of William Caslon.

Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, but the FontFont Type Department does not really take the time to move their dancing feet. They have been toiling away in the summer heat, turning the drawings of the talented FontFont designers into finely crafted fonts, and proudly present FF70, the second FontFont Release this year. FF DIN® announces new thin weights and Greek support for every single; and Jens Kutílek introduces FF Hertz™, a personable, sturdy text typeface with weight duplexing – changing the weight does not make the text reflow. Finally, more than three decades after having acted as a design consultant for Neue Helvetica, Erik Spiekermann tackles the grotesque model himself with FF Real™, available in Text and Headline variants.

David Quay and Freda Sack’s 1989 partnership, The Foundry, became one of the first digital type foundries, meeting the needs of a blossoming desktop publishing market. Now, many successful commissions, self-initiated projects and revivals later, we’re beyond pleased to welcome The Foundry and its library of work to FontShop.

Since it appeared on the market Fontyou has been making waves. This new French foundry takes collaborative typeface design to a new level by offering an online co-creation platform. It allows anyone to submit a typographic concept in different stages of completion – from rough sketches to vectorised glyphs – and then have the Fontyou team assist in turning that into finished digital fonts. Grégori Vincens hinted at his plans for his own foundry when I originally met him three years ago as I was serving as chair of the jury for the Typography category of the Club des Directeurs Artistiques de Paris. Now, three years later, the CEO of Fontyou is already taking the next step: Cloud-based font management and a platform for typographic content.