Cera Collection

From 2009 Jakob Runge has been fired by letters and type systems. After studying communication design at the University of applied sciences in Würzburg (BA) and then at Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel (MA), his master’s project was published as FF Franziska in 2014, and became a successful textface at FontFont.

A new dad, he works in Munich as an independent type and brand designer who specialises in developing typefaces and custom lettering for corporate and editorial design.

Alongside working in the design industry, Jakob is active in typographic education. Along with running numerous workshops at universities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, he has been a lecturer for typography and type design at FH Münster from 2011. For him, type design is more than the foundation of precise and coherent communication: it’s a passion. twitter, website

TypeMates: a straightforward font foundry.

For years, we — Jakob, Lisa and Nils — have been passionate about type and in 2015 we started working together, from our offices in Munich and Hamburg, as a type foundry.

We don’t believe that typefaces are neutral or purely functional systems for reading, rather that they are a visual language with emotional values. Our aim is to be straightforward in the complex field of type design. We do not want to hype or praise type too much, we want to work together with our clients and partners to deliver good results.

Our practice covers everything, from the tiniest nuance in a logo or piece of lettering to the design of extensive type systems. And whether it’s a beautiful idea, a complex client project with intense technical demands, or we’re just following our investigative TypeMate’s nose — we’re passionate about well-made letterforms delivered to the highest technical standard.

Whether it’s Die Zeit online, Fast Company, Red Bull TV or Lufthansa Magazine, typefaces we designed are used by magazines, newspapers and corporations who set the bar for design.

Lisa studied at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, where she specialised in graphic design with a clear focus towards typography. During those studies, she grew fascinated by letterforms and experimented with type and shapes. These studies were paired with an excursion into the fine arts during a semester at the University of Seville. She finished her bachelor’s with a latin typeface, Lobelia, that was nominated for the Muthesius Award.

After working in the graphic design studio Format Design Visual Identities, in Hamburg, she went to England to develop her skills in type design. During the master’s programme at the University of Reading, she was was introduced to the design of foreign script systems. Her master’s project, Kaius, speaks several languages, including Gujarati, Greek, Cyrillic, Latin and phonetic signs. It was honoured by being selected by the jury of the Pangramme International Student Type Design Exhibition. From 2015, Lisa has worked as an independent designer in the fields of type and design.

Antonia’s enthusiasm for type was awakened early on in her studies at HAW Hamburg by Jovica Veljović. With a focus on typography and type design, she’s pursued a fundamental question ever since: when designing and using typefaces, what influences the reading experience? The first result of her research was her book: ‘The letters in my head: What creatives should know about reading processes in order to design joyful reading experiences’. Initially developed as her bachelor’s thesis and published by Hermann Schmidt Verlag in 2017, it’s now considered a standard work.

Continuing her masters studies with Veljović, Antonia delved deeper into legible type design. Along with designing a typeface super family, she carried out an empirical legibility study comparing the reading speed of it and other typefaces in running text. A Master of Arts since 2017, Antonia has been honoured for her outstanding research-based type design work. Antonia’s professional work is characterised by her inquisitiveness and commitment to research, her attention to detail and love for complex design concepts. Alongside her own projects and amongst other clients, she supports Albert-Jan Pool in the further development of the FF DIN family.

Antonia enjoys sharing her knowledge. She teaches type design at Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, gives workshops and lectures, publishes articles and consults on issues of legibility and readability.