Adelina Shaidullina: Did you plan to launch a label before starting the @contemporarytype account, or did you come up with the idea later?
AS: The idea came up in the process. When I launched my Instagram As some members of our team are living in Russia we have to follow the Russian law. According to the law, every time we post links to Instagram or Facebook we have to mention the fact that these socials belong to Meta, which was recognized as extremist by the Ministry of Justice if the Russian Federation page, I was thinking about doing something based on it, but had no particular plan. I considered making a site with images instead of an Instagram page, but this was rather an abstract idea than a specific plan.
Contemporary Type website. Web design: De Ramos & Serch. Welcome screen: André Burnier
ASh: Why did you decide to start an Instagram gallery in the first place?
AS: Collecting fancy design references in a folder is probably something we all do, isn’t it? At some point, I just thought that my own folder could be useful to someone else. Instagram proved to be a convenient platform to host such a public folder.
ASh: Did you somehow promote your gallery, cross-posting maybe, things like that?
AS: No, all the posts are completely random; there were no planned collaborations whatsoever! And no ads either!
ASh: Is it just you who picks the typefaces for your marketplace, or is there someone who is also involved in the curator activities?
AS: For now, I’m alone, yet I am not sure this will always be the case. I am open to different options in the future. As the project is still not that big, it is easier for me to do it all by myself.
Ilya Ruderman: Is it your plan for Contemporary Type to remain a curated platform where nobody can sell unless they are invited?
AS: It is. I believe that there are enough non-curated marketplaces. It is a challenge to find something there. That’s a downside, but then anyone who does not agree with, say, my approach or yours, can sell there. I say ‘my’ now, but perhaps it will not be just me down the road, which is why I always use the word ‘we’ on the website.
I am trying to make Contemporary Type a place where it is easy to find decent quality fonts. I guess many people would prefer to go to a place where everything has already been handpicked, more or less. Although obviously, surfing the websites of specific foundries is probably the best approach to purchasing fonts. But not everyone has the time, motivation, or enthusiasm for that…
Only Sans by Daria Cohen. Available at Contemporary Type
ASh: How did you choose designers whose typefaces are now available at your marketplace?
AS: I keep an eye on the type scene and more or less have an idea of who does what. I approached great designers who didn’t have their own store, or had one, but it was really small.
ASh: Your store’s FAQ section states that the fonts you feature are ‘mostly made by professional designers’. What did you mean by ‘mostly’?
AS: Does it actually say that? Well… I used somehow abstract wording, as I can imagine that one day we might start inviting students with some great ideas and help them finalise and release their typefaces.
ASh: Did you know the designers whose fonts you sell before you launched the marketplace?
AS: I knew Valerio Monopoli really well, as he also collaborated with Pangram Pangram. We had never designed fonts together, but sometimes texted each other, talked to each other. I knew much less about the others, but I think in the type industry all of us follow each other on social media, being familiar with each other one way or another, so it is quite easy for us to agree on something, to arrange something.
MRL Transit by Valerio Monopoli (aka Morula Type). Available at Contemporary Type
ASh: Were there any designers who refused to sell on your platform?
AS: Several designers said that they had nothing to release yet, some prefer to sell their fonts entirely by themselves, others simply haven’t made up their minds about how they want to distribute their typefaces yet.
AS: Is your curatorial approach to the marketplace somehow different from the one you picked for your Instagram gallery?
AS: This is really
Yet I rather see myself as a designer who’s trying to do something good. And there’s not much I can do alone. That’s why I come up with projects where I highlight the work
InScript conference website
ASh: That is, you are just trying to develop the industry you’re engaged in?
AS: The way you put it sounds really ambitious, but it seems like I am, yes. That’s the idea.
Name Sans by Arrow Type. Available at Contemporary Type
ASh: What was your choice based on while selecting typefaces for your marketplace?
AS: Based on quality! I have a number of fonts I finished five years ago and put on the shelf. It’s probably time to get rid of them, I guess. Because I’ve spent the last five years enhancing my font-making skills and am now trying to release something extremely useful and versatile. And high-quality, clearly.
ASh: What font-making skills were you working on, exactly?
AS: That’s a good question. All of them, really, ranging from drawing shapes to kerning and technical aspects of exporting fonts, interpolation, and variable technology. I think that my typefaces have been getting better-crafted and more finished lately.
ASh: You once said that at some point in their career, a designer starts getting obsessed with text sans serif type…
AS: And that applies to me, too, yes. That is why two of my four font releases are these certain basic sans typefaces. I keep coming back to this seemingly tired trope of a genre, over-driven one, wanting to figure it out better. It seems like there is still something left unexplored and untapped in this direction.
ASh: Unexplored by you personally or designers in general?
AS: I rather meant myself. But that goes for designers in general, perhaps, as well. People keep releasing interesting sans serif fonts, though it would seem there is nothing else left to come up with!
FL Art Grotesk by Alex Slobzheninov (aka FLight Mode). Available at Contemporary Type
FL Rare by Alex Slobzheninov (aka FLight Mode). Available at Contemporary Type
ASh: Have you checked the quality of those fonts? Did it ever happen to you to say to a designer, ‘this needs to be redone’ or ‘are you sure this is proper contrast here?’
AS: No, but perhaps that is something I will do with future font releases, those by students.
The designers whose work is currently sold on our marketplace are better than I in designing typefaces, so it is not my place to judge the quality of their outlines.
ASh: Every Contemporary Type partner foundry has its own license. How did you manage to arrange that?
AS: Each foundry fully manages its own license and pricing policy. We have minimal involvement in our authors’ business, we are not a party to the transaction. This is one of the key ideas of our platform. And perhaps that’s what makes it different from many other marketplaces. Such an approach gives greater independence to foundries, I believe. They can do as they prefer. They don’t have to agree with any of my policies. They can decide for themselves, for example, whether they are willing to offer free trials or not. Basically, we run decentralised.
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Paraiso by Plain Form in use on cover of Good Tape magazine. Designed by Sami Wittwer. Available at Contemporary Type
IR: But, for example, if one author is really into logo licensing and the other one is not, there is a risk that the store will become a mess. The user will need to thoroughly go through each license text in detail. How do you feel about that?
AS: This is certainly one of the most problematic aspects of this approach. I think we might try to introduce some kind of unification on a voluntary basis. Come up with a common license text that foundries could use if they want to. However, if they’re really keen on keeping their own license, they will use it. This is one option.
Another option is to make summaries of licenses, point by point: what you can do, what you cannot do, helping people more easily navigate all their options.
Yet I believe there are some advantages to the fact that customers can choose not only a typeface they need, but also a license they need. Clearly, most people are not fans of reading, but our authors’ licenses are fairly simple. This was not part of a plan, but, apparently, everyone now tends to simplify things.
Hypertext Mono by Malou Verlomme (aka Double Zero). Available at Contemporary Type
ASh: There is a ‘tone’ font filter on your website. Can you define a ‘casual’ font?
AS: That’s an in-between typeface. Not too weird, not too formal. The filters we have now are rather simple, but we will make this categorisation system more complicated if that’s what the collection requires.
ASh: What a casual font might be used for? Say, can I typeset a book in such a typeface?
AS: That’s actually when I disclaim any responsibility and shift it to the font’s author. I personally think you can. Yet it will not really be a true book typeface, not some serious suit-like font, but more like a T-shirt one.
Eckmania by Malou Verlomme (aka Double Zero). Typeface classified as Casual by Contemporary Type
Michaux by Plain Form in use by Benjamin Dumond and Clarisse Podesta. Typeface classified as Casual by Contemporary Type
ASh: If a formal font is a suit and a casual font is a T-shirt, what a weird one would be then?
AS: This would be some kind of ripped T-shirt you wear at an underground club. Something hardly readable. A typeface for a smaller audience.
Brass by Fantasia Type. Typeface classified as Weird by Contemporary Type
Ready by Plain Form. Typeface classified as Weird by Contemporary Type
ASh: Let’s clarify the terms we use. Your store is called Contemporary
AS: The name suggests that the typefaces do have a lifetime. I know that many would disagree with this, yet I believe that a typeface is a reflection of its
IR: What typeface would you put in a museum?
AS: Depending on how rigid our approach is. If we’re being radical in our strive for novelty, we can slowly start sending into retirement even some fonts released 10 or 20 years ago, since type has changed a lot over these years, as has graphic design in general. Font editor software has
If we decide to apply a softer approach, let’s say, it would be everything from previous centuries.
IR: That is, we put Baskerville and Garamond on a shelf and never use them again?
AS: The digitalised originals, which do not bring in anything new, yes. But this is a really subjective judgment. Not even all the authors selling on Contemporary Type would agree with that, I guess. Perhaps I myself will change my mind one day.
Adobe Garamond by Robert Slimbach, 1989
ASh: Ilya, you agree with this, don’t you? We do sometimes send into retirement some of the fonts we sell.
IR: No, I don’t. My official take on that has always been this: there are no bad typefaces, no typefaces that should go on a shelf, since for any typeface, one can find an ideal project. For an expired font, for a font that hasn’t been used by anyone for a hundred years, there is a place where it will be the perfect fit.
From a perspective of a marketplace, it is certainly a little different. The collection needs to be relevant. And, if we realise that the font doesn’t meet our relevance criteria anymore, it has to go…
AS: To the type.yesterday’s storefront!
IR: That’s an old joke of ours, yes. Let’s put a pin in this idea until Yura and I are about 70 years old, and our area of interest will lie somewhere in the past.
RIA Typeface retired from type.today
ASh: You focus on typefaces that are relevant now. Does it mean that you are less interested in looking into the future?
AS: I believe that what is relevant now, in one way or another, implies looking into the future. To me, the notion of ‘contemporary’ is something mixed, not just clearly divided into today and tomorrow, like type.today and type.tomorrow.
ASh: Have you ever thought that one day you would have to tell a designer you work with that their font has expired?
AS: I imagine that this might happen, but still, a font’s shelf life is measured in decades at least, so I haven’t thought about how exactly such a conversation might go yet.
IR: I disagree. I believe that the typefaces that are in tune with the present moment ‘go bad’ really fast.
AS: My understanding of relevance is a bit more
IR: When launching your store, did you have in mind what audience it would target, not just style-wise, but also market-wise?
AS: It is now mostly the European and North American audience, probably also Spanish-speaking regions. When it comes to other parts of the world, where other scripts are used, it is much more difficult, both culturally and business-wise.
IR: Sorry, I hate to be a pedant, but Europe is not just Latin but also Cyrillic, Greek, optionally Hebrew, or Arabic.
AS: Yes, but what scripts to draw is only up to the font’s author. For instance, we already feature typefaces with Cyrillic support.
RR Repose by Philipp Neumeyer with Cyrillic support
RR Opague by Philipp Neumeyer with Cyrillic support
ASh: Over the lifetime of the @contemporarytype account, someone has completed their bachelor’s degree in graphic design. Do you somehow feel your responsibility towards people who get the idea of modern typography based on your account?
AS: I don’t know how closely they follow it. I feel like it’s just one of the sources of images. You scroll your feed and occasionally come across these posts. I don’t know if there’s someone who takes Instagram galleries that seriously. So I don’t know if I should take that responsibility. Probably should.
ASh: Lately, I’ve been thinking that foundries and stores fall into two types: the ones where everything’s clearly arranged, organised and structured, and those where the relationships in the team are rather friendly, family-like. Which category would you associate yourself with?
AS: I realised that it is really difficult to organise something in our
ASh: What are your plans for the future of Contemporary Type?
AS: Since we’ve just launched, it’s too early to talk about anything. First, we need to become this kind of meaningful project where people regularly come for fonts. Coming up with ideas and paths for development is somewhat easier than managing to implement everything. We need to get on our feet, and then we’ll see!
Alex Slobzheninov
contemporarytype.com
@contemporarytype
inscript.tf
@flightmodetype