Ilya Ruderman: I came prepared — I re-read our interview from 10 years ago.
Christian Schwartz: I should have done that too, I forget what I said.
IR: It was a completely different life back then. 10 years ago, we spoke about todayness in type design. We just opened type.today, and we were looking for ways to describe the todayness. But if I ask you to describe it now, would you still define it through the design language or more through the conditions around design?
CS: I feel like 10 years ago, it was easier to think of design in a self-contained way. And now, the world just creeps into everything. These are anxious times. Design now is messy in an interesting way. 10 years ago design was much more polished, much more put together, if we overgeneralize. And that was the reflection of the world that we lived in. And now things are messy, and design is responding to it.
Action Text by Erik van Blokland, released by Commercial Type in 2016. Images: Commercial Type
Action Grotesque by Erik van Blokland, released by Commercial Type in 2026. Images: Commercial Type*{:.caption}
IR: It’s interesting because in 2016, fragmentation seemed like one of the defining features of the contemporary type. The tendencies and the typefaces themselves were becoming more specific. Do you believe that this fragmentation somehow continued over the last decade? Or did it transform into something else?
CS: I don’t know if it’s accelerated, but I think it has continued. But I believe it’s related to the question of the fragmentation of the audience. When the media was more centralised, it knew who the audience was, and now, what you see on Instagram and what someone else sees on Instagram are completely different things. So the algorithms have led to even more fragmentation.
IR: Do you think the type industry is currently in crisis, in transition, or simply adjusting to a new reality?
CS: I think saying it’s in crisis — is an overstatement. But the other two are essentially the same thing — it’s in transition, and it’s adjusting. I think it’s the glass half empty or half full situation. If you want to be pessimistic about it, there’s a lot of reasons to be pessimistic. If you want to be optimistic about it, I think there are reasons to be optimistic, but still nobody knows where this is all going.
Now you’ve got the consolidation of private equity trying to buy up small foundries, which at least in the US is happening in a lot of industries. I think even our veterinarian has been bought up by private equity.
But I think that’s having a smaller effect on the overall atmosphere of the industry than the wide availability of free and de facto free access to large libraries. Google Fonts, combined with a lot of companies moving over to using Google’s suite of tools, where there’s no way to set everything in the font that you’ve licensed for your corporate identity.
So now companies have to decide: do they bifurcate their identity by using one set of typefaces for external communications and another for internal use in Google Docs — or do they commission something that works across both? And then there’s Adobe Fonts, which isn’t free, but is included in the Creative Cloud subscription that most people have to get anyway to use industry-standard tools.
I think that’s squeezing small foundries from both ends. We lose a lot of big corporate licenses that foundries used to depend on for a big portion of revenue. There are still independent graphic designers who are really into type and they’re still going to license the typeface that they absolutely need. But budgets are tighter now, and if you’re doing something that you don’t have a super important typographic idea for, there’s probably something on Adobe Fonts that’s going to be fine.
Yet we’ve got big companies who don’t want to deal with having to standardize around Adobe. They don’t want to have to settle for what’s accessible in Google Fonts. And they don’t want to deal with ongoing subscription-based font licenses. So they’ll spend a big chunk of money to commission something. And there’s a bunch of independent foundries like ours that are benefiting from this right now. I don’t know how long this is going to go on for. But right now, this is the moment we’re in. So we’re doing our best to ride this wave and stay alive until the next thing happens.
IR: But this is not the first time we’ve been in this position. If you remember the days when computers were very limited in the number of installed fonts, and we had to adapt to the way Microsoft handled them — there was little room for typesetting customization in Word or Excel templates either.
CS: Right. We started Commercial Type before web font licensing was even a thing. It’s funny talking to people who started foundries in the last ten years — for them it’s obvious: of course you have a web license, and you have a desktop license.
It’s also interesting that in corporate design right now, there’s this idea — very Erik Spiekermann, actually — that all you need is a typeface and a color, and you’ve got a brand. But recently we’ve been working on projects for heritage brands with a huge amount of old ads and archival materials to go back through. These major companies didn’t rely on just one typeface — that wasn’t the norm until fairly recently. And now it’s simply what you do; it’s just how a brand works.
IR: We’ve spent so much time educating our clients that typography is the voice of their identity. And there was a period when people invested heavily in promoting the idea that a new identity means a new custom font. It might be worth investing some time now in promoting the idea that a company can have different voices — and that this could be expressed through typography.
CS: I totally agree. It might be interesting.
IR: Many people in the industry are saying — and feeling — that some kind of era in type design is coming to an end. How do you feel about that?
CS: If there’s one thing that’s not coming back, it’s magazines. Every time we get a job for a newspaper or a magazine, we’re happy — but we also think: ‘We’ve got to really enjoy this one, because it could be the last one we ever do.’
We just did some work for Vanity Fair — the third time we’ve drawn their logo. Before that, we did their redesign in 2012 with Chris Dixon. Back then, I would go up for meetings, and the magazine had a whole floor of the building. Everybody was dressed up. Walking into Condé Nast headquarters, I always felt underdressed, no matter what I was wearing. Now they’re down in the new World Trade Center, and Vanity Fair shares a floor with other magazines. People dress a lot more casually than they used to. It’s just a very different atmosphere.
I really like what the new editor is doing with the magazine — it feels vital again in a way it hasn’t for a while. But there was the budget for a new logo and a budget to tune up the typefaces they had. They would love a new sans serif, but… maybe someday. The budget reality they’re working with is very different from what it was at Vanity Fair in 2012.
Vanity Fair, 2026. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
Vanity Fair, 2022. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
Vanity Fair, 2013. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
IR: Of course, our clients have changed over the decade, which was to be expected. But yes, I miss print. Print clients are struggling. But do you feel that something else is coming to replace magazines and posters? Remember, there was a time when poster designers were the most prominent designers on the planet! I mean, posters are still alive, but their significance has changed.
CS: Although it’s funny — the one thing that’s pretty constant in New York is wheatpasting. Of course, we’re not Switzerland. These posters aren’t always beautiful, and they’re not in those special kiosk structures you’re meant to view them in. They’re on construction sites and closed storefronts, but at least they’re a very visible part of the city’s visual landscape.
Vanity Fair, 2026. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
Vanity Fair, 2022. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
Vanity Fair, 2013. Logo and typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type
IR: I’ve always been a huge fan of your Metro advertising campaign. It’s ironic in a way and it was unexpected.
CS: It’s ironic, but we put a lot of thought into where we placed them and which stations we chose. It was a neighborhood with a high concentration of graphic designers. I see ads all the time that aren’t targeting me, but there must be enough people passing by who they do appeal to.
So we didn’t do this campaign just for the photos — although we did want to get photos out of it — we seriously wanted to advertise in places where graphic designers would actually see these ads.
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Wheatpaste posters promoting Commercial Type’s new website, 2023. Image: Commercial Type
IR: What do you think is the biggest challenge for independent foundries today? Is it competition, pricing pressure, free alternatives, platform dependency?
CS: I think it’s all of the above. But it’s also harder now, in general. If you’re a new foundry, there are a lot of barriers to entry, unless you want to throw in with one of the distributors.
That’s a big decision any new foundry has to make. Do you deal with all those challenges, or do you build a whole site of your own and try to find your audience? Fontdue has made it a lot easier to set up an independent foundry, which is a good thing. But none of the alternatives to MyFonts have quite caught on. And MyFonts itself has so much stuff, and I think the discounting doesn’t appeal to people the way it used to.
Honestly, my connection to the MyFonts audience is so distant at this point that I’m not sure I really know what I’m talking about — especially when it comes to people licensing from MyFonts.
IR: It’s a huge audience. It’s super hard to compete with that.
CS: But I think even MyFonts is now struggling to compete with Adobe Fonts.
And it’s also harder for new foundries with social media being a much less effective way to promote new typefaces. I don’t know what replaces that, because if I go on Instagram now, I have to scroll a long way to see anything I’ve intentionally followed. It’s just a mix of ads. The Commercial Type account has 50,000+ followers, but if we post something, we’re lucky to get 200 likes — the metrics show that fewer than 10% of our followers are seeing our stuff.
IR: We’re facing the same, more or less.
CS: And there are no real design publications to advertise in anymore. You can sponsor events and conferences, but we’re finding that the best response to our promotions comes from the oldest thing we’ve done since the very beginning — emails. So it’s funny to have come full circle.
IR: We still might send specimens by post!
CS: We’re still printing stuff. We had a great time making the Double Acts in Pop book. My only regret in retrospect is that we made it really difficult for independent booksellers to know where to shelve it. Is it a design book? Yes. Is it a music book? Yes, definitely. Which shelf do you put it on? Anyway — we’re not getting back to you, you’re not even a real book publisher.
IR: But it’s an awesome book.
CS: The content is really funny and interesting, and the design is incredible. But maybe we made it a little too much of the book we wanted to see, without thinking enough about getting it into the hands of a wider audience.
Double Acts in Pop: An Incomplete Survey by Commercial Type, 2024. Images: Draw Down Books
IR: Let’s talk a bit more about custom projects. Where does the most interesting work lie for you these days? In the brief and design process, in negotiation and implementation, or in the constraints?
CS: Type designers — or at least type designers at Commercial Type — love constraints. We love having something to push against and finding clever solutions. That’s still what gets us really excited.
But the thing I miss most about working with magazines is that editorial designers, and the writers they work with, tend to be really smart, engaged clients eager to be your dance partners.
IR: That’s something we can’t always say about clients from other industries.
CS: But we just did a project for Costco — the biggest custom project we’ve ever done in terms of the number of fonts produced. They were also such an interesting and engaged client, one of the best teams we’ve ever worked with. Not that I didn’t expect much, but I didn’t expect them to be quite as on top of everything as they were.
IR: From the technological point of view?
CS: The three things you always want from a client are that they understand the brief, that they can have a real conversation with you, and that they give clear, actionable feedback. With this client, we had all three.
Costco has eight different internal design teams, and they had a great manager to help us navigate all of this. These teams had historically been pretty separate, so this project was a way to get everyone on the same page and bring a little more coordination to how they present their visual design to the world.
Of course, we’re designers, and we care about concepts and the cultural side of things — but we’re also in the service business.So the most important part of this project was being able to provide a service with a measurable impact on our clients’ work.
For example, they have small superscripts for the cents: $450, $660, $779. The way they were handling these on the web before was a tortured process of different spans. We were able to replace that with a single OpenType feature. They were really happy. And the person in charge of the templates for the coupon book is a genius — she walked us through some complex GREP stuff I’d never seen before. Being able to talk to her about how the font could actually help her work, and then deliver on that, felt great.
Costco leaflet, May—June 2026. Typefaces by Commercial Type. Image: Commercial Type