Studios Designing Custom Brand Typefaces

Overview

Article: "Elizabeth Goodspeed on why design studios are making fonts" (23 October 2025).
Main thesis: Brand-focused studios increasingly make custom typefaces, reshaping type design's culture, economics, and accessibility.
Author: Elizabeth Goodspeed — US editor-at-large at Its Nice That, designer, educator, and writer.

20th-century branding treated typography as background, favoring neutral workhorse faces.
Recent decades: expressive lettering appeared but identities still relied on pragmatic faces.
Today: typography is expected to carry tone, authorship, and consistency across platforms.

Control and originality: custom fonts let brands "sound like themselves" and own identity assets.
Functional needs: handle multiple writing systems, product-specific glyphs, and unusual display formats.
Infrastructure role: typography acts as core infrastructure for information-driven organisations (e.g., SaaS, AI).
Economic drivers: rising subscription licensing costs encourage commissioning custom, exclusive type.
Accessibility of tools: cheaper, improved software (e.g., Glyphs) enables in-house prototyping and development.
Creative motivations: studios design fonts to reflect a brand's physical environment, emotion, or ethos.

Koto: custom serif (Faculty Glyphic) as primary branding for an applied AI company.
R&M: Triad typeface designed to echo Bankers Anchor plaza's triangular footprint.
Order (and Order Type Foundry): creates and sells fonts; acts as retailer/distributor for independent designers.
&Walsh: launched Type of Feeling to produce fonts that evoke specific emotional responses.
Other studios dabbling in type: Parker, Outline, Center, Pentagram (Andrea Trabucco-Campos), Gretel, The Working Assembly, Studio HanLi, Land.

Broader participation: more designers from diverse backgrounds entering type design.
New aesthetics and cultural references introduced to the field.
Safer career path: type work integrated into broader studio practice reduces financial risk.
Faster experimentation and direct integration into branding projects.

Speed vs. craft: studio timelines can rush type development, producing deliverables rather than durable tools.
Conceptual shallowness: many studio fonts rely on a single gimmick without structural depth.
Technical shortcomings: poor kerning, limited language support, inadequate production standards.
Redundancy: many custom fonts end up as weaker versions of existing typefaces.
Erosion of professional ecosystem: in-house type reduces revenue for independent type designers, threatening long-term sustainability of full-time type practice.
Mentorship gap: studios often lack the rigorous long-term critique and apprenticeship found in traditional foundries.

Dylan Young (Koto): notes harmful effects of subscription licensing on small businesses; values studio path combined with freelance foundry collaboration.
Jesse Reed (Order): selling fonts extends studio practice naturally and supports distribution for independent designers.
Flavia Zimbardi: few studios grasp the time and cost to make robust type; semi-custom modifications of established fonts can be more durable.
Kris Sowersby (Klim): warns brands treat typography as seasonal rather than infrastructural.
Ryan Bugden (R&M): custom type often becomes the glue binding identity to place or idea.

Subscription licensing models (e.g., Monotype) tie fees to usage metrics and can be costly long-term.
Example comparisons: Monotype enterprise plans versus one-time licenses from independent foundries (one-off commercial license example cited).
Studios can absorb type development costs into branding budgets, sometimes making custom type more economical.

Making a typeface is easy; making a good typeface is hard and time-consuming.
Studio-led type increases access and innovation but risks weakening the professional type ecosystem.
Thoughtful approaches (mentorship, collaboration with experienced type designers, semi-custom work) are preferable to rushed, wholly in-house builds.
Final practical advice: invest time, respect craft, and maintain production standards (e.g., correct Bézier placement).

For studios: incorporate experienced typographic critique into workflows and consider semi-custom approaches.
For clients: weigh long-term value of robust custom type versus short-term novelty.
For the type community: support mentorship, education, and sustainable revenue models to preserve full-time typographic practice.