Indie foundry Sharp Type is ready for its next phase with a new website launch and an ambitious release schedule (one typeface a month in 2024). I’ll tell you more about two new typefaces, Sharp Earth and Doss. But first, the foundry’s story is worth a closer look. I chatted with founders Chantra Malee and Lucas Sharp about the new website and how their business is changing, and we naturally found ourselves talking about where type design is headed.
Lucas Sharp and Chantra Melee came together as personal partners in design school. Malee branched off into branding while Sharp found his footing in type design. Soon, they became professional partners, forming Sharp Type in 2015. Early clients were the Hillary Clinton campaign and Samsung. Their flagship ‘Season One’ typeface, Sharp Sans, emerged from the team’s work with Samsung.
As with any design business, the churn of clients and work can make it challenging to stand back and look at your own brand. “It was important to have a beautiful product from the beginning. The way we presented ourselves would make or break our relevancy,” says Malee. “When we came out with the initial website, it was groundbreaking in its own way. But by four years in, we knew we needed to start updating it.” Sharp Type had been leapfrogged by their foundry peers’ new websites. Even so, the team took their time envisioning the new site in-house over four years, which launched this May.
Justin Sloane, the foundry’s lead systems designer and typeface designer, whom Malee and Sharp also met in design school, led the website redesign. On bringing the website project in-house, Sharp says, “We didn’t go the agency route. Our preferred mode of collaboration involves absorbing vs. interfacing. And we were finally at a point where we could afford to hire Sloane. So we gave him the time and space to explore.” Here’s a fantastic profile of Sloane’s process and the iterations of the new website.
So, why ‘Season One’ and ‘Season Two?’ Sharp describes how different the current industry is from when they started. Malee and Sharp anticipate a breaking point in the industry, especially in the age of AI, where it will be hard to rise above the noise. “It used to be that designers’ styles got turned into conventions,” Sharp explained, “but citing source material and that chain of custody is no longer relevant. The model we’re moving to is more akin to fashion versus fine art. We were really into this idea of starting a whole new library. We wanted to pursue new stuff all the time. So we decided to de-emphasize the old library and develop a whole new suite of fonts.”
Before it was about timelessness. Now, it’s about timefulness, and doing stuff that’s really relevant in this moment.
Lucas Sharp
“Our new strategy aligns with some of the industry changes, but it’s also acting as a motivator. We’re excited about the creation around the corner. Having this as a new paradigm for the team creates this new dynamism and energy,” says Malee.
Sharp Earth
Sharp Earth, a multi-script san serif typeface family, was developed simultaneously and launched with the new website in May. This new multi-script sans serif typeface was spearheaded by Lucas Sharp and drawn in collaboration with a team of local experts from around the globe. Sharp started sketching Sharp Earth on a trackpad in Thailand. “Globalization is like toothpaste—we can’t put it back in the tube. It’s not going away. Western culture drove the first wave of globalization and has been absorbed, remixed, and adapted. The artifacts from globalization end up being greater than the sum of its parts.” Sharp explains. “The way that adaptation comes through in typography is very cool.”
Sharp was inspired to create a post-modern typeface in how it interacts with other language scripts. “Everything has already been done in this modernist paradigm, responding to that first wave of the modernist aesthetic. It’s interesting to see the character of cultures in the type specimens.” Sharp said. “In Thailand, for example, to fit into the modernist box, type had to contort itself, which removed the script’s very particular loop style. I wanted to create a typeface about that beautiful interaction, one step removed, where the foundation isn’t the Latin paradigm but the adaption and remixing.”
The whole process of building Sharp Earth for a global design culture had to be collaborative. Malee explained, “We always work with native designers in those language scripts. But there are moments where we can innovate in these collaborations. Bringing our outsider perspective and using our creative expression through this new form, there are moments where we can innovate in these collaborations. Some of these ideas really worked! (Many did not). Those incremental moves give typefaces something new.” Sharp adds, “You can understand the platonic ideal of the alphabet and writing system, but you still need to work with native designers and have them be the filter for your crazy ideas.”
But for all it is, Sharp Earth is not a typeface that throws out the rule book. At its core, it is a san serif workhorse. The team wanted to create something eminently useful. Trendy moments add some tension, like what Sharp calls the “overbite vibe.” But the story here is about Sharp Earth’s utility across language scripts. “We worked with each collaborator, not just ‘how do we replicate that move in your script,’ but what is its semiotic meaning? What does that feel like to a Western audience, and how can we deliver that feeling to the audience of the language script it’s drawn for?” Sharp explains. It’s not always one-to-one. Form is an international language, but the bending of conventions works differently in different languages and cultures. Building Sharp Earth was a cool learning experience.”
Sharp Earth doesn’t really fit into the genre signifiers. It’s not exactly geometric, or grotesque. It’s really a mash-up of globalization.
Lucas Sharp
This case study goes into the creation of Sharp Earth and includes some of the team’s near-term plans for the font family, including Chinese and Hangul scripts.
DOSS Collection
In keeping with its release schedule, Sharp Type released another fun new superfamily in June. DOSS is a techno-futurist collection, drawing inspiration from rave and underground culture. Designed by Marc Rouault, DOSS is designed as a series on a theme “like House Industries, or Emigre for Gen X,” says Sharp. The collection encompasses four styles: Exaflop, Acid, Plexus, and Problem. Read more about the process behind the DOSS Collection.
Malee and Sharp describe the new website as a beautiful display case, and they are excited to fill it. And, I agree, the website is gorgeous. “We want to be like a boutique clothing store: there are a few things on display and we want to draw your eye to those things.”
You can follow along with Sharp Type’s ambitious year of new releases on Instagram or at sharptype.co.