Medium MinGap

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.

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

Ever since he was a child, Nils has been captivated by graffiti and this early fascination bloomed into a love of letterforms. Pursuing this interest, Nils completed his studies at Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, and his master’s degree in the postgraduate Type and Media course in The Hague. His master’s project, the award-winning typeface Meret, is used in several international magazines, including Fast Company Magazine.

From 2011 to 2013, Nils worked at Bureau ErlerSkibbeToensmann in Hamburg. There he participated in the redesign of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, contributing to its new corporate typeface. Nils focused on the text-face and the additional headline serif-face. In 2013 Nils started his own business, Nils Types, where he focussed on drawing and selling typefaces and where he began working with a variety of clients on custom type projects. His sans serif workhorse Conto became a MyFonts Bestseller and in 2015 Nils drew an exclusive handmade font for the Lufthansa Magazine redesign by Gruner+Jahr.

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.

Born into a family of self-employed photographers, Paul Eslage’s early contact with the creative professions lead him to study Design at the Münster School of Design in 2014. Focussing on communication design, he worked on several magazine, branding and exhibition projects and – before TypeMates was even born – attended Jakob’s type design course at the MSD. That course was the starting point for Paul’s passion for designing letters.

After his degree he joined Nils in his Kiel office as TypeMates’ first intern. Helping out on custom fonts and type graphics, he also started designing the stencil version of the foundry’s font Halvar — going from intern to variable font instance operator within a few months!