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

MarkJohnson · February 24

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 · February 24

type.lol seems quite impressive and useable. Congratulations.

Stephen Coles · February 24

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 · February 24

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 · February 24

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 · February 24

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 · February 24

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.

MarkJohnson · February 25

@Typedesigner! Looks like you are

https://type.lol/f/sergej-lebedev Hopefully everything is looking okay for your profile here so far.

Typedesigner · February 25

@MarkJohnson It looks good. Thank you very much.

James Montalbano · February 25

@MarkJohnson Looking at the Terminal Design entry on the site it indicates that Terminal Design has 33 typefaces. There are 33 typeface families on the Terminal Design site that contain over 900 individual typeface. A bit misleading I may say.

John Hudson · February 25

‘Typeface’ has both a precise use and a general use. The general use does conflate typeface and typeface family, so might be misleading if one is presuming the more preceise use in which a typeface is one constituent of a typeface family. People generally talk about Palatino as a typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, but precisely about Palatino Italic as one typeface in the Palatino family. Like James, I favour the more precise use of the term, but acknowledge that the general use is probably the more common. As long as a site like type.lol is consistent in its use, so different foundries don’t end up with different reckoning, that seems fine, but maybe specify ‘typeface families’ if that is what is being counted?

MarkJohnson · February 26

Hi @James Montalbano long time no see! Sorry for the misleading issue, happy to work on fixing this! Also hi @John Hudson! Totally agree with both of you on the misleading/general use issues here.

The taxonomy could use some massaging. I tried to keep it relatively simple to start, but no surprise—that didn't take long to require new solutions.

You're both right that the terminology and taxonomy needs some love and tightening and you bring up fair points for sure.

Right now I have a pretty simple model that's:
Designer → Typeface
Designer → Foundry
Foundry → Typeface

That's mostly it right now.

I have two different taxonomy problems I could use opinions on if you've got them...

1. Typeface related: Super Family → Type Family → Typeface (Is this accurate? Or are Super Families and Type Families taxonomically the same basic thing)

2. Distributor/Marketplace related (this one is very gnarly) Monotype for example is...Distributor, Marketplace, and Foundry? How would you imagine I track something like Colophon or Hoefler&Co when they're acquired by a larger entity? Do I track/manage these relationships? How much do we care about this? (I've gotten some requests to add some larger entities, but that immediately create these problems both for me (taxonomy/product wise), and for the clarity of work done as things change over time)

My thought for this right now is: Distributor → Foundry → Designer(s) → Type (Super Family/Family/Face) (more or less, there's up/downstream connections here).

Is there a clear mental model for this laying around and I'm just late to the party?

John Hudson · February 26

I’m not sure what the direction of your arrows suggest, but I would tend to think of the relationships more like this:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/1d/iza0e5jnjid7.jpeg

Personally, I would exclude distributors per se, because those relationships are not static. Designers or foundries may change distributors, add new distributors, fire distributors. All the other relationships in the diagram are more or less stable: a result of what has been made and by whom. A distributor is just someone who has an agreement with the designer/foundry, and the agreement is subject to change or cancellation.

John Hudson · February 26

From what I have seen from a brief perusal of your site, you are mainly using the term ‘typeface’ to mean something like ‘one or more typefaces collected together under a common trademark’. So that could be a single typeface, a typeface family, or a typeface superfamily. I don’t object to that use, so long as it is consistently applied.

MarkJohnson · February 26

That drawing is great, thank you for that! Yeah, I think that makes sense. I might add some taxonomy layers to try to make this more clear, but collection-wise it's a little finicky/weird. (Do users want to add a superfamily to a collection, or one typeface...usually I think a typeface for a project, or multiple and they're trying to figure out which styles/weights/etc., but I could be wrong.)

Would you add Monotype as a Foundry, or FontFont as a foundry, even if it doesn't exist anymore as a stand alone entity? Exclude distributors, but include...the foundry element?

John Hudson · February 26

Would you add Monotype...?

I would have left Monotype in the gutter in 1996.

I am always going to favour promoting independent foundries and individual designers. I think the whole font business looks much more interesting and vibrant if one looks at it without Monotype’s presence. That could mean sticking with the original foundry identities, e.g. FontFont, Linotype, Hoefler & Co, etc. as if these were still distinct entities with their own histories and legacies, and not just entries in the Monotype balance sheet. Or it could mean draping such foundries in mourning colours and considering them gone beyond the realm of the living.

MarkJohnson · February 26

Or it could mean draping such foundries in mourning colours and considering them gone beyond the realm of the living.

Incredible quote.

I'm generally of the same mindset. I think the original foundry entities make the most sense to me. It's just tricky because the references all live within Monotype now 🪦

Nick Shinn · February 26

This is news to me.
I had a quick look, and my entry is full of errors and omissions.
For instance, typefaces with Extended Latin, Greek and Cyrillic support are listed as “Basic Latin.”
And I haven’t lived in Leeds for 50 years.
Is it incumbent upon me to fix this misinformation?

Johannes Neumeier · February 27

Great redesign and expansion, it's an amazing transformation @MarkJohnson

I think as long as a designer/foundry hasn't explicitly claimed ownership all data should have a big fat "draft" banner. It's not so much that it doesn't get some info right, but that there is very blatantly wrong information that, from my personal perspective, I have no way of even comprehending how that got scraped or deduced and or what from. And it's all presented as fact — so now I'm doubting all information on the site, just based on how wrong some of the foundries I know or have involvement with are listed:

- I'm not from the UK, have never lived there, have no associations there, in fact my foundry site's first sentence mentions Finland

- My (latin only) typefaces don't support Japanese or Chinese

- When you don't have publication dates for a typeface, don't set them to 2025

- Generally: When you don't have reliable information, don't set it

I would loooooooove if all your data had an API. In fact, I was working on a scraping project a few years back for something similar. Like you mentioned, a lot of information is solidly within corporate hands, or maintained by typohiles in their own closed-off realm, and changes or disappears from the web on a whim, or simply as time goes by. As an industry, we should have a more active role in maintaining such a public recollection of the industry's (digital) history and all the relations within.

MarkJohnson · February 27

Hi @Nick Shinn! Sorry for the misinformation, product in progress. Hard to make everything correct out the gate, but I'm trying.

I think the draft idea @Johannes Neumeier mentioned is a great way to make it more clear that data is in more of a draft state than confirmed state. I'll add that today so hopefully this stops being such an annoying quality. Being wrong isn't ideal, but knowing why (it's a draft) makes it less bad I hope.

It's hard to maintain this much data alone, so people claiming their profiles is the best way (you can control the data and edit it) to keep it accurate realistically.

API is also a great idea/a thing that does exist, but I haven't exposed yet. I want to fix some stuff before I ship that.

Appreciate the input, patience, and support!

Nick Shinn · February 27

It's hard to maintain this much data alone, so people claiming their profiles is the best way (you can control the data and edit it) to keep it accurate realistically.

As I said, why is it incumbent on me to do the work for you, verifying the accuracy of your site?

If this is a service (providing marketing), charge for it, or if it is your platform that requires content, pay for it.

Otherwise, just include information that does not require verification.

Now you might say, it is to the benefit of both of us, so there’s no need for money to change hands. But nonetheless, I am busy enough already without being obliged to do the work your site requires.

Typedesigner · February 28

The question is also: Who is the target audience of your website? If you're aiming to engage end customers, the ".lol" domain extension might appear less professional and is not very widely recognized. For instance, I also use the domain typedesign.org. The ".org" extension is much more established and carries a sense of trust and credibility, often associated with reputable organizations. Even tdc.org uses it. For a public directory like yours, a ".org" domain might be a more suitable choice than ".lol."

Miles Newlyn · February 28

I can't navigate the site on mobile, all sorts weird things happen. Impossible to use.

Igor Petrovic · March 1

Thank you for your awesome idea and great effort so far. Also on your kindness in hearing suggestions of the community from this early stage.

My perspective, both as a graphic designer (user) and type designer (foundry), would be to see one main functionality well-polished, then many features in the drafting stage.

The core idea (making interactive online font albums) is already more important for the independent type industry than it might seem. Galaxy of type design relationships or locations on the globe are impressive, but maybe they are candidates for a paid plan.

So I would rather see core functionality with UX improved. For example:

— Submit dialogue disappears along with all entered data if I accidentally click outside the dialogue. This is an important step, and I would expect it to close on a button, maybe even with a confirmation dialogue.

— "Edit Profile" and "Settings" on my account panel look like duplicate functionality.

— Vertical vs. horizontal scroll on the main page (desktop) feels a bit confusing. I realized it depends on the pointer position, but it gets stuck from time to time because of loading. Also, the area that enables the horizontal scroll is too narrow and has no clear indication. Solution could be that it scrolls horizontally by default everywhere, and enters vertical scrolling only when clicking on particluar card. Then all the other cards are disabled, and only one is active, and scrolled vertically.

Aside from UX, what's your suggestion regarding Foundry vs User profiles? I've just submitted my foundry data, but also named a user profile by the foundry details. Is this expected, or should I enter my personal name as a user?

Thanks again, keep up the good work!

MarkJohnson · March 2

Thanks for all the comments over the weekend! I added some features that maybe help with some of the issues you all pointed out.

A draft status for information that hasn't been verified or foundries not claimed
A data flag button to say data is wrong/what type of data is wrong.
Mobile enhancements (light, not heavy work here, still more to do).

Now you might say, it is to the benefit of both of us, so there’s no need for money to change hands. But nonetheless, I am busy enough already without being obliged to do the work your site requires.

I re-enriched your page and tried to make the information correct, but the profile is free for you to claim anytime if you want to. If not, the remarks to me are also free to make and I'll do my best. You have no obligational requirements haha. I'm just trying to expose more typographic work to more people, that's all.

Thanks @Igor Petrovic for the incredibly thoughtful and thorough comments! Appreciate it and I think you're right about pretty much everything you wrote.

I originally thought about feature gating the network/globe views, but part of my intention is to show the network of credit more clearly, and expose more global typography (I'm actively adding many new type foundries particularly outside of Europe and the US, not because I don't want those foundries to be listed, but because I think the rest of the world has been more poorly captured and documented in terms of typography, and the impact is not fairly displayed.)

I'm working through a better workflow for some of these things, but I'm currently of the opinion that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission while this is coming out the gate, but that doesn't mean your experience and comments are incorrect. I agree with pretty much everything you said. It's just me working on this product, and it's not my full time job, so things may take some time, but you letting me know about it is genuinely helpful for making this product better and helps me set priorities

— Vertical vs. horizontal scroll on the main page (desktop) feels a bit confusing. I realized it depends on the pointer position, but it gets stuck from time to time because of loading. Also, the area that enables the horizontal scroll is too narrow and has no clear indication. Solution could be that it scrolls horizontally by default everywhere, and enters vertical scrolling only when clicking on particluar card. Then all the other cards are disabled, and only one is active, and scrolled vertically.

This one in particular is finicky and needs some work. I tend to scroll on the top/header area on desktop to prevent this scroll problem. It's a tricky situation to manage, but agree it needs to be improved and have more affordance.

— "Edit Profile" and "Settings" on my account panel look like duplicate functionality.

This is a good call out. Technically it is the same thing. The edit used to pop up a modal, but it had the same issue you've pointed out with the feedback submission flow which is why it's built into the page now, and why "settings" is just a tab. Edit profile is just another way to get there. But it is...strange. I'll see what makes more sense here.

Aside from UX, what's your suggestion regarding Foundry vs User profiles? I've just submitted my foundry data, but also named a user profile by the foundry details. Is this expected, or should I enter my personal name as a user?

This is expected at the moment. I don't currently have a "single entity" which is "dual" which makes some stuff complicated. Right now the simple solution is a designer and user are two different entities. The reason for this right now is pretty straight forward—a user can collect, follow, etc, a designer/foundry can not.

This makes the navigation a little more gnarly because when you view a user you see the typefaces they've collected, the foundries they follow, the collections they've created. A designer profile doesn't have the same ability, because that's taken over by "credits" in effect. Their "typefaces" and "foundries" are places they worked, or work they contributed to. A user can be given access to manage and edit: their user profile, their designer profile, as well as their foundry profile.

I may end up merging these profiles, but in essence your user account is for managing your collecting profile as well as account manager for any other entities you may have edit access to. I have a somewhat similar problem/situation with single person foundries of the same name. Does "Mark Johnson" need a user, designer, and foundry entity if he's one guy making type? Currently—the answer is yes, but it's mostly because it makes the taxonomy less cumbersome and annoying. I might create more layers or complexity with fewer accounts, but at the moment this is why it is how it is.

Thanks you again for all the thoughtful comments, feedback, and encouragement!

Igor Petrovic · March 2

Thanks Mark. I agree, and even think it is preferable that Designer and Foundry are not active users, to keep things comprehensible. I might disconnect my user appearance from the designer/foundry identity altogether.

I think this project should be supported and appreciated here, because back in 2023, we discussed something like this as the probably optimal solution for the independent type industry:

https://typedrawers.com/discussion/4808/for-the-creation-of-an-international-association-of-type-designers-post-your-proposals-here/p1

Nick Shinn · March 3

You have no obligational requirements haha. I'm just trying to expose more typographic work to more people, that's all.

It might also be said that you are developing an intellectual property which, once the framework is built, will rely on foundry “suppliers” to provide data content.
Then you will sell this platform to Monotype or some such corporate investor.
Or perhaps start charging your “suppliers” a fee to be included—on the principle of enshittification, which is the nature of platforms.
This might not be your intention now, but it’s the kind of thing that happens.

Ray Larabie · March 4

If you’re looking for a reasonably central place to set the record straight about your fonts, Wikidata is worth considering. Projects like Type.lol can pull structured data from there and incorporate it into their own databases.

I understand the fatigue of endlessly submitting the same information to the latest font index site. Most of us have probably done that more times than we can count, and after all that effort a lot of those sites eventually disappear anyway.

One advantage of Wikidata is that large language models and AI-assisted search tools tend to treat Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia and Wikidata) as relatively high-trust sources. In practice that means the information there has a better chance of showing up correctly in AI-driven search results, rather than whatever metadata got scraped from pirate sites or old font archives. The idea is you maintain the information in one place and other projects can reuse it.

The downside is that contributing isn’t particularly easy. The data model isn’t especially tailored to typefaces, and there’s very little automation involved. Each font has to be entered and structured manually, which can be time-consuming until you get used to the workflow.

MarkJohnson · March 4

I think all of your concerns are totally and completely valid @Nick Shinn and I respect what you're saying, but I have some thoughts and opinions that might be helpful to know or consider.

It might also be said that you are developing an intellectual property which, once the framework is built, will rely on foundry “suppliers” to provide data content.

Yes. I am creating software. Software is IP. You putting data in software that is readable by any human or machine on the internet is not proprietary in any way. Nothing is stopping other people from scraping or writing down the same data you've made available on your website. Typelol isn't novel in that it is a website with data. I ran it for 10 years as a fancy airtable document that was annoying manual labor for me to maintain. I've managed to create a version I've wanted which has more capabilities and gives edit ability to foundries and allows designers to collect the type they want today or may want to purchase tomorrow.

Then you will sell this platform to Monotype or some such corporate investor.

This is completely antithetical to the purpose of type.lol. While I understand the concern, I run a foundry and don't sell through any other resellers despite the potential to make more literal money, but with far worse terms, conditions, and financial incentive.

I'm making typelol as a way for designers to collect type, but more ethically/purposefully to push against monopolistic marketplaces that take huge revenue cuts from designers and foundries. I'm paying for all of my servers, software, and using my time to run Type.lol. I have a job as a product designer in tech at the moment, so fortunately I have another source of income that has no relation or conflict to this work. If I could do it full time—that would be incredible, but financially that's not currently possible so this is my relationship to the work.

Monotype's money, and VC money is no good here. I care about giving Type Designers the best opportunity to make money directly from their customers as effectively as possible. I spoke with another friend in type about this very thing and they asked, "What if they give you $1M, $2M, $20M???" I do not care. That defeats the purpose of the product and it doesn't align with my values ethically.

Or perhaps start charging your “suppliers” a fee to be included—on the principle of enshittification, which is the nature of platforms.

I'm one person, and I have no investors or board to report back to so this doesn't make any sense. I also don't need or have an incentive to increase costs to type designers. I am a type designer as well. I don't want to increase my costs. Typelol has been free (or considered another way it's cost me money and time to run) for the last 10 years and will continue to be free now and always. I think it will be possible to offer some services that are worth paying for, but that would be optional.

At the end of the day, I totally get the pessimism, but I feel like maybe if you flipped your hat around and were like, "What if Mark isn't trying to be T-1000 from Terminator." you may see that I'm trying to do a nice good thing, and not a bad evil thing.

If I put on my optimism hat and look into the future I would hope what Type.lol has actually done is make it more feasible than ever for type designers to make a living designing type by making their type better known, available, and understood.

MarkJohnson · March 4

@Ray Larabie that's a really interesting idea! I wonder if that can be bi-directional. I'll need to look into this more. The thing I'd love to not do is make it hard to maintain the data or edit the data. Right now it's painful for both. Maybe there's a way for me to make it easy to edit foundry data on typelol, but populate in both or something that keeps it available? For the data itself I think this could make sense! I'll look into this over the weekend. Thanks for the suggestion!

Nick Shinn · March 4

I totally get the pessimism,

Sorry, Mark, optimism and good intentions won’t persuade me. I’m looking at the site as it is now, and being realistic about the future, based on past experience.
Frankly, there are too many mistakes about my fonts, and too much messy appearance in the way that my work is imported, and I have other things I’d rather do than address those issues.
Please remove me and my foundry from the site.

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

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