Custom type gives a brand a voice that no one else can borrow. I design bespoke lettering and typefaces for brands across New Zealand, and I can work with you wherever you are. It's careful, detailed craft, from a studio small enough to move quickly.
Brands that want a wordmark or headline type that's theirs alone. Arts and culture organisations that need distinctive titles for a season or campaign. Agencies looking for a type specialist to collaborate with. And organisations reviving lettering from their own history.
Kombucha, my curvy display serif inspired by avant-garde fashion, shows the kind of expressive letterforms I love to draw.
We talk about what the type needs to do, where it will be used and the feeling it should have. I sketch first, then draw and space the letters digitally in Glyphs or Robofont, testing them in real layouts as I go. You see progress at each stage, and you work directly with me, remotely, wherever you're based. For agencies, that means specialist type skills on call, on budget and without the overheads. Nothing's a problem, apart from badly spaced letters.
Type design is its own craft. I studied typeface design at Type@Cooper in New York and through other programmes, such as Practica and the Alphabettes mentor programme. That specialist training, on top of 15 years as a designer, really matters when it comes to custom logo design.
A font you buy is available to anyone. Custom type is drawn for your brand, so its shapes, spacing and personality are yours alone, and it can be shaped around the exact words you use most.
A revival brings historical lettering back to life as a usable typeface. My revival Toa is based on the printed type of the Māori-language newspaper Te Toa Takitini from 1924.
Yes. Much of my type work has been in collaboration with agencies, such as the Auckland Theatre Company 2022 season typography with True. I'm happy to collaborate remotely, wherever your team is based.
Want type that no one else has? Tell me about your project and I'll be in touch.