The Type Foundation
Visual Identity, Naming
The brief: create a name and logo for an event-planning organization.
The Type Foundation emerged as a non-profit dedicated to creating community around typography. It organizes annual conferences (Character Workshop!), each year in a different city, dealing with the written word, whether that be analog or digital, the preservation of typographic art forms and traditions, education and awareness about underrepresented languages and endangered scripts, the cutting edge and future of typography, and everything in between.
The target audience is anyone interested in or involved academically or professionally with typography, type design and relevant software development, writing systems, linguistics, calligraphy, lettering, graphic design, motion, UI and web design, and of course, art.
Students and young people are interested in making connections, learning skills, and securing fellowships or internships; professionals and academics too seek to make connections, learn about the most recent research and developments, and discuss trends. Artisans have workshops through which they can display their skills, teach others, and connect with other artisans.
The sketching process included a competitive analysis of comparable organizations and ideation to figure out how to communicate the distinctiveness of The Type Foundation.
Once the overall concept for the logo was in place, the layers started to peel away, revealing more and more of the visual identity of an iconic organization. As a typographic organization, it was of utmost importance to maintain high visual integrity and typographic excellence.
A variable logo, similar to variable fonts, allows for flexibility and relevance in a landscape where new mediums are developed constantly.
