A New Type.lol - A type foundry index—and more!

MarkJohnson

Hey there! My name Mark Johnson, and I run Type.lol as well as TrashType and I wanted to announce a new version of type.lol and seek some feedback if you're willing and able! 

I made the original type.lol with my friend Thomas Drach in 2015/2016 as a list of type foundries and have been managing it roughly as a fancy airtable doc for years, but managing it the way it was was a bit painful, and I thought the value provided wasn't nothing, but could have done so much more. As a designer I alway struggled remembering where I found something even when I myself was using type.lol.

I always dreamt of doing a much more comprehensive job of being able to create collections of typefaces I might be able to use one day for this project or that. Or figure out what my friends are using so I can try some typefaces out and finally was able to make it a reality! Or figuring out who worked on this typeface and why I like it so much. Or follow a type designers work as they go from Foundry A to Foundry B. Or highlight foundries I've never heard of in places I didn't realize had so many foundries or designers.

So I built a new type.lol. It's a free directory of over 800 foundries from 61 countries, 14,000 typefaces, and 1,500 designers. People can browse a carousel of every foundry, typeface, and designer as long as their information exists. You can browse as a grid, list, graph, or globe. You can filter by classification, trial availability, designer, country, language support, or release era.

It's not a store. There are no sales. There are no commissions or affiliate links. I just want to connect designers to type and ideally help type designers make a good return on the work that's done, while making it easier for designers to find that work. I offer Pro accounts for designers who want to create unlimited collections, or make them private or collaborative and that's $2.99 a month, so I'm trying to keep the price accessible so I can hopefully pay for servers and if I'm lucky—myself a little.

I have a bunch of ideas for what I want to do next and I'm happy and willing to share that if anyone is interested, but I figured I'd start here and see if what exists now resonates, what's missing, or what might make it more useful to you!

I hope you're all doing well and find some of this useful! I'm all ears for anything you've got to share.

John Hudson

type.lol seems quite impressive and useable. Congratulations.

Stephen Coles

Congrats on a major upgrade! The graph may be one of the less obvious features, but it’s very cool. One can click a designer, like Barbara Bigosinska, and see all the foundries who offer her typefaces. Of course, the data isn’t complete (e.g., “historical” foundries like FontFont are absent, and there are many more designers associated with House Industries than these five), but it’s a really nice start!

Stephen Coles

I don’t know how I feel about displaying “specimens” by simply loading from the foundry websites within iframes. I suppose this allows each font’s foundry to display them as they wish, but it does make a pretty chaotic browsing experience. 

Ermin Međedović

Congratulations, Mark. It is an excellent idea and very usable. Thank you for including Lettermin. I do have a few additional pieces of information that are currently missing from the Info section. Is there a procedure for adding them?

MarkJohnson

Thanks @John Hudson, @Stephen Coles, and @Ermin Međedović! Appreciate your comments!

Re: graph
I've thought about making the graph a bit more in your face, or changing the floating toolbar since I think some people miss it, but I'm not exactly sure what might work better. Also it's not the most performant thing on earth, so I might need to take another stab with another graph library I found that's quite a bit faster, but will need to be massaged to look/feel like this one does.

Re: incomplete data
Yeah working on this bit! Tough cookie to get assembled, but it's getting there little by little. I'm super cautious and curious how I should approach adding massive foundries like FontFont...also how I'll show acquisitions since some existing foundries are absorbing so many others. With something like Monotype it's both a foundry and a marketplace...so it creates a lot of potential duplicate listing and data problems I'm trying to sort out how to resolve. Maybe filtering that association is all that needs to happen to ignore the connection, but my priority has been on more independent shops since that's who I'm hoping I can create more exposure for out the gate. Open to ideas if you've got any! 

Re: specimens
Yeah the specimens started as individual view switch you could do per card, but I've got a kind of weird problem where I try to load sites as iframe, if not that, specimen, if not that—screenshot. When I browse foundry sites with my designer hat on, I'm usually hunting for those things, and they're not always in the same spot so I figured at least it's in a consistent location if it exists. Is there something you think would make it feel less chaotic?

@Ermin Međedović of course! You can either tell me and I'll add it manually, or (there's also a submit button if you create an account), or if you create an account you can "claim" both your designer profile and your foundry profile and you should get all the edit abilities I have so you can manage/edit your foundry/designer/typeface info.

Typedesigner

I really like your directory - such a valuable resource for the type community. The new version looks great, especially how you connect designers, foundries, and typefaces.

If I’m not already listed, I’d love to be included as well: https://typedesigner.de

Thanks for putting this together.