How to Get There – Designing Tomorrow Today

The Underware team explores the expanding universe of variable fonts. In doing so, they uncover that VFs are not the destination—they’re the vehicle. The question is not ‘how to get there?’, but ‘how to get where?’

TYPE DESIGNER

Akiem Helmling

One of the founders of Underware, Akiem is a visionary self-made man and type conceptualist with love for espresso machines and exclusive gsub-programming. After studying graphic design at the Fachhochschule Mannheim, Akiem completed his type design postgraduate studies in 1999 at KABK, the Hague.

TYPE DESIGNER

Bas Jacobs

One of the founders of Underware, Bas devotes his days to designing type, optical illusions, language research, dialects, ambigrams, and answering fan mail. He completed his type design postgraduate studies 1998-1999 at KABK, the Hague. Then studied visual communication at the Art Academy ABK in Maastricht. He was born in a village of impressionist painters, Wanssum, the Netherlands, in 1976. 

TYPE DESIGNER

Sami Kortemäki

One of the founders of Underware, Sami was born in Kerava, Finland in 1975. Over the years 1995–2001 he studied graphic design at the Lahti Polytechnic/Institute of Design. During 1998–1999 he also studied at the KABK in Den Haag. Lives with his wife Ulrika and their son in Helsinki, Finland.


DJR

Designing Fit

DJR shares the process behind his expanding typeface, Fit, which started as a fascination with the common impulse to stretch and squish letters to fill space.

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PLAU

Variable Brand Voice

Rodrigo Saiani of Plau presents a talk on Variable Brand Voice, explaining how the fields of identity design, brand cultivation, and type design are becoming increasingly linked.

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SPACE TYPE

Designing with VFs

Lynne Yun and Kevin Yeh speak on Designing with Variable Fonts. They show how to combine variable fonts with real world-inputs and animation to create one-of-a-kind designs for any project.

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