David Quay is a graphic designer, type designer, typographer, and teacher. Originally from London and now resident in The Netherlands, David is one of the principals of The Foundry a UK-based type design partnership. He has also designed fonts for Letraset,
International Typeface Corporation (ITC), and
H. Berthold AG, AG.
David studied graphic communication at Ravensbourne College of Art & Design from 1963–67. For the next seven years he worked in various leading London design companies as a packaging and graphic designer. From 1975 he worked as a freelance designer specialising in lettering and logotypes, until forming Quay & Gray with Paul Gray, in 1983. He started his own company David Quay Design in 1987, to concentrate on graphic and typographic design. He also began to design his first text typefaces which were subsequently released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in New York and H Berthold AG in Germany.
Since the late 1980s he has worked in partnership with Freda Sack on a broad range of type projects. The natural progression for their collective skills and experience was setting up an independent type foundry, and in 1989 they co-founded The Foundry, to design, manufacture and licence their exclusive typefaces. As a partnership their commissions have included bespoke typefaces, marks and logotypes including: a directory typeface to be readable at very small sizes for Yellow Pages (awarded a D&AD Silver); corporate fonts for BG plc (British Gas) NatWest bank, and signage typefaces for the UK railway infrastructure and the Lisbon Metro system, Portugal.
David lectures extensively in typography and type design in the UK and internationally. He has had a long association with the London College of Printing (now LCC) and has been a visiting lecturer at the Danmarks Designskole Copenhagen, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach. For three years he was professor of typography and book design at the Fachhochschule Mainz. This prompted a move from London to Wiesbaden in 2000 and then on to Amsterdam. Based in The Netherlands from 2001, he taught typography and design at Akademie voor Kunst en Vormgevin St Joost /Avans Hogeschool Breda. During this time he continued to work closely with Freda Sack and Foundry Types in London to expand The Foundry typeface library.
David was one of the founder members of Letter Exchange, and its chairman for many years. He was elected a Fellow of the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) in 1992 and was joint chair of the society with Freda Sack from 1994–9. During this period they ran a popular lecture series inviting leading international speakers to London. The Dutch lectures led to David's connections with Amsterdam, and the subsequent collaboration with Wim Crouwel and The Foundry for the Architype Crouwel Collection, and Foundry Gridnik.
Currently David lives in The Netherlands working as a type and graphic designer and creating new typefaces for The Foundry.
