The Production Type website claims it’s an agency, while your LinkedIn profile indicates it’s a foundry. How do I refer to your company?
It’s both. The foundry relates to the business of distributing typeface licenses, whereas the agency is more project-oriented. This reflects the dual stream of business that many foundries do, actually. On the one hand, we operate as an agency. We provide consultations and advisory work. On the other hand, the e-commerce aspect of the business relates more to what a foundry is and does, which is publishing typefaces and selling licenses for them.
But I also feel a discrepancy in the way we introduce ourselves. Honestly speaking, did we really achieve the size of an agency? We are just under 10 people. So it’s rather a studio. But in the economics of typography, it’s already a fairly considerable size. So, all things considered, an agency is a better description of how we operate.
Aside from the Paris office, you have one in China. Why did you decide to open it?
The China business started in 2019. I was exploring ways to enhance our offering. We had international customers based in the Western world with an Asian presence, who were facing font-related problems. Instead of trying to outsource the work, it would be more consistent to provide Western customers with solutions that are Eastern-oriented. It’s not about us capturing market share in Asia; that was never the plan and still isn’t.
We train our Western designers to understand and advise our customers on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean typefaces. Likewise, we train the Chinese designers to improve their skills when it comes to Latin typefaces.
So we started in 2019 with my partner, Tao Chen. And then, as you know, some big news hit the world in 2020. Until 2023, when China’s borders reopened, the growth had been steady, but not as high as we had hoped.
Chinese pairing for Kessler by Production Type
Kessler by Production Type
How do the two offices interact with each other?
We interact on multiple layers. The first are biannual staff exchanges, where staff designers from Paris move to Shanghai for a few months, followed by designers from the Shanghai office moving to Paris for a similar period. During that time, they undergo workshops and operate under the guidance of a senior designer specialised in their own local expertise, and also receive some training and mentoring.
Another layer is cross-cultural exchanges. So, from time to time, either part of the team or the whole team moves to another place. The last time was the complete foundry staying in Shanghai, delivering talks, engaging in some out-of-office activities, and doing some team building. And the last layer is, of course, the business one, where we exchange services and design work. After six years, we now have five fonts with full support for both Chinese and Latin languages. These are expected to hit the market in 2026.
Chinese pairing for Arc by Production Type
Chinese pairing for Arc by Production Type
Chinese pairing for Enduro by Production Type
Enduro by Production Type
You talk a lot about business in your interviews — why is that?
When I started my career, there were plenty of lectures about inspiration and creativity, and the discourse around more down-to-earth, underlying aspects of what it is to do typeface design did not exist to the same extent. And I’m trying to answer the questions that I myself couldn’t find answers to 10 or 15 years ago.
Additionally, I developed an interest in this because design is also about it. It’s not fully autonomous in the world; it can be a reaction to the outside world, the society, and the economy. Typography is deeply connected with the economy, in fact. It always has been. Examine the relationship between Fournier and other type founders in the 18th century, the shape of the 20th-century metal type business, and its impact on design. Typography is a field of design that is influenced by societal, economic, and business-related factors. I still have the impression that I’m talking about design when I’m discussing the business of design.
Do you sometimes think about the future typeface from a business perspective before starting it?
Not in most cases. Strictly business-oriented decisions are also not what typography is about. If you look at our catalogue, you will see that some typefaces exist because they are artistic statements, proofs of concepts. We sell them not just because we have evaluated the revenue potential of a typeface. Otherwise, the catalogue would be very dry, and, in the end, it would be a bad business decision. Therefore, I believe that Production Type’s catalogue should include typefaces that are not designed to sell by themselves, but rather to complement the overall image of a brand.
We receive a large number of submissions, and I have finally found a way to explain why we would not release certain things. Usually, it boils down to the fact that we are looking for typefaces that are compatible with the existing catalogue, offering something that can fit well within the stream of design that Production Type offers, but that are not identical to what we already provide.
It’s easier to decide what not to draw or what not to release, rather than what to release. Our schedule is already set for the next year and a half, if not two years in advance.
Qommodore by Hugues Gentile. Available from Production Type and type.today
You mentioned in a couple of interviews that you care about each team member’s personal growth. How exactly do you contribute to it, except for introducing the designers to CJK-typography?
Well, that’s quite something already. Constant training is the key to someone’s professional growth. I believe that type drawing is a somewhat easy skill to acquire: knowing how to handle Bezier curves can be taught in a relatively short time — a year, a year and a half, two years. This skill, however, has an efficiency limit. At some point, you will be able to draw the right shape very fast, but that’s not type designing; this is type drawing.
Caring about a designer’s personal growth is not about teaching them how to use software; it’s about helping them acquire different perspectives: to broaden their consciousness and knowledge around Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic scripts, to enable a person to move and get acquainted with another culture, which does not always happen after the studies. Usually, one has the opportunity to travel for study purposes, but not always for work purposes. So we want to offer that.
We also have an allocated budget for internal training. There’s an allowance when it comes to small purchases like plugins or books, or any reference material that’s required to increase your general knowledge of the field.
We want to build a relationship with the people we are working with: Production Type offers its employees full-time contracts. It is philosophically very different from being a foundry that is, in reality, constituted by a galaxy of 30 freelancers.
Do you advise non-fiction books to your team? You read a lot of them.
That’s a personal trait. I have other ways to let my mind wander, but reading about history or social studies is really important to me. That’s where I get my kicks from. But I am not the company, and the company is not me. We share influences and references in a dedicated Slack channel. I occasionally gift some of the non-fiction books to my coworkers, but that’s about it.
You have a research day on Friday, when designers are allowed to work on personal projects. Why did you decide to do so?
This idea comes from Christian Schwartz of Commercial Type. We used to do it, but this has changed as I noticed that the reality of project schedules crushed it. Now people are paid for five whole days a week, but we actually stop work on Friday at noon. After that, people can stay over and spend time on their own typeface, or simply go and leave for the weekend.
You’ve said that it works best if each person is an expert in their own field. Would you consider, for example, a salesperson who has no knowledge of typography?
Of course not. It’s not that we are not primarily looking for typography specialists, because it is such a niche business. However, we need people who understand and appreciate design, as they will interact with designers daily. And if you don’t have a taste for that, the interaction is very poor on both sides.
The bottom line is that to work in a design-oriented business like ours, you need to have a genuine interest in the field, and it should be evident on your resume. The last time we posted a job offer for non-design work, we received 500 applications. We discarded the applications where the resume showed no special interest in design. Everybody likes movies, art, music, and literature, and they put them in the hobby section of their resume. However, we need people who include it in the professional section of their resume.
Who in the team is coming up with the merch ideas, like the slippers?
Production Type has always done a bit of merch: it exists because it says something about the company culture. It doesn’t exist because it’s a sellable item by itself, although when it’s “just” a T-shirt, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to figure it out. The summer merch really is a collaborative effort. Some ideas come from me, some come from the communications team, and some come from the designers. My role here is to encourage initiatives that arise within the team.
Production Type t-shirt
And how did you come up with the idea of the summer quest, suggesting spotting fonts in the wild?
It is said that summertime is a slow period in terms of marketing, communication, and font release. That’s true for France, where nothing happens around mid-August, but it is not the case in the USA. Each Summer, we seek a long-term communications concept. This year, we built it around signage from French cities, towns, and villages, especially signage that is twofold in nature. One sign is, of course, the name of the city. Another sign is an award label indicating how beautifully decorated the place is. And if you sent us a photo of the signage, you would get stickers.
Both signs relate to typefaces that Production Type published. The city names and town names relate to our typeface Signal, which is also available at type.today.
And the one about the award for the most flourished village is typeset in Wigrum, another one of our typefaces, which also supports Cyrillic. There was, therefore, a typographic reason to suggest such a quest.
And beyond that reason, it’s also because people are going on a summertime Tour de France, and it was a way to draw attention, saying, Hey, all the signs you see during your travels are connected to Production Type.
Villes et Villages Fleuris quest by Production Type