Proto Grotesk

Based in Paris, Production Type is a digital type design agency founded in 2014 by Jean-Baptiste Levée. Its activities span from the exclusive online distribution of its retail type for design professionals, to the creation of custom typefaces for the industrial, luxury, and media sectors. Production Type’s collection is well known for gathering talented and innovative designers, and strives to release contemporary, unique typefaces for demanding designers. Through numerous awards (D&AD, Type Directors Club, Tokyo TDC…), the agency has also been acclaimed for its projects for Renault, Vanity Fair or Courrèges.

Ilya Ruderman and Yury Ostromentsky (CSTM Fonts)

They are both graphic and type designers. Founders of CSTM Fonts (2014) type foundry and a new font distributor type.today (2016).

Graduated from Moscow State University of Print (Graphic Design Department), where they took Alexander Tarbeev’s classes. Later Ilya Ruderman graduated from Type & Media (Royal Academy of Art), the Hague, the Netherlands. After graduation he was a tutor of Type&Typography course at British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow (2008-2015), was an art-director of information agency RIA Novosti. He is an author of cyrillic versions of such typeface as Lava, Graphik, Neutraface and others, that was made for such studios as Typotheque, Commercial Type, Typonine and House Industries. He is an author of: Permian typeface, Big City Grotesque and several other corporate typefaces.

Before 2013 Yury Ostromentsky worked mostly as an editorial designer and art-director of BigCity Magazine, where he used his personal lettering, that was the base of the Pilar typeface, released by CSTM Fonts last year. He is an author of several book series designs and logotypes.

Both typefaces of Ilya Ruderman and Yury Ostromentsky were the winners of such type design competitions as Modern Cyrillic 2009, Modern Cyrillic 2014, Granshan 2011, European Design Award 2012. Kazimir typeface and Tele2 Typefamily, the CSTM Fonts’s latest releases, were among the winners of Granshan 2015.

Jean-Baptiste Levée works methodically in a process where history and technology are approached altogether within the nuances of artistry. He manufactures functional, yet versatile digital platforms for designers to build upon.

Levée has designed over a hundred typefaces for industry, moving pictures, fashion and media. He is the founder of the independent foundry Production Type, and a partner in tech startup Prototypo. His work has won multiple awards and has been shown internationally in group and solo shows. It is featured in the permanent collections of the French national library (BnF), the Decorative Arts museum of Paris and the National Center of arts (Cnap); of the Newberry Library in Chicago, and several printing museums in Europe. He is a board member at ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) and consults as a design expert advisor for the French Public Investment Bank (BPI) where he is contributing to the spread of design in innovative businesses.

Levée curates exhibitions on typeface design, organizes research symposiums and teaches typeface design at the Amiens school of Arts & Design and at the University of Corte. He is a typography columnist and editor on Pointypo.com.

Ilya is a type and graphic designer and teacher, lives and works in Barcelona. He is a graduate of the Moscow State University of the Printing Arts (2002), where his graduation project was done under the supervision of Alexander Tarbeev. He has a MA degree in type design from the Type & Media program at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague (2005). After completing the program, he returned to Moscow, where he has collaborated for a number of media: Kommersant, Afisha, Moskovskiye Novosti, Bolshoi Gorod and Men’s Health Russia. In 2005-2007 he was art director for Afisha’s city guidebooks, following which he was art director for RIA-Novosti, a news agency, for several years. In 2007–2015 he has also supervised the curriculum in type and typography at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow. He has been very active as a consultant on Cyrillic since 2008. In 2014 he founded CSTM Fonts with Yury Ostromentsky.

Typefaces by Ilya Ruderman: BigCity Grotesque Pro, Kazimir, Kazimir Text, Navigo, Permian (a typeface-brand for the city of Perm) and Cyrillic versions of: Austin, Dala Floda, Graphik, Marlene, Moscow Sans (as a consultant), Typonine Sans, Thema.

Graphic and type designer, co-founder of type.today store. Graduate of the Moscow State University of Printing Arts (Department of Arts and Technical Design of Printed Materials). Yury worked as a designer and art director for publishers and design studios. From 2004 to 2012, he was art director with Bolshoy Gorod (Big City) magazine. In 2004, he and lya Ruderman, Dmitry Yakovlev, and Daria Yarzhambek launched the DailyType webpage. Later in 2014, Yury and Ilya Ruderman founded CSTM Fonts type design studio which released Pilar, Big City Grotesque, Kazimir, Navigo, Normalidad, RIA Typeface, Lurk, Loos, Maregraph typefaces and CSTM Xprmntl series, as well as Cyrillic versions of Druk, Graphik, Spectral, Stratos and Apoc. The works by Ostromentsky and CSTM Fonts were awarded by European Design Award, Granshan and Modern Cyrillic Competition.