Freda Sack, British type designer and typographer, was one of the principals of The Foundry a UK-based type design partnership. She also had fonts included in the Letraset,
International Typeface Corporation (ITC), and
Linotype libraries.
Freda studied typography at Maidstone College of Art, School of Printing. Her type design career started at Letraset, and included working with URW Hamburg developing the first font creation applications. Since the late 1970s she has worked for various font manufacturers including Stempel, Linotype, Berthold and ITC, in all aspects of type design and font development. During this time she created numerous fonts particularly in photosetting technology for advertising.
Since the late 1980s she worked in partnership with David Quay 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 license 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.
Ten years on, David's yearning to spend more time teaching in mainland Europe was realized when he became a professor in Germany, and then located to Amsterdam. Meanwhile Freda set up Foundry Types Ltd in 2000 to manage and further develop The Foundry fonts. Still working closely together, the typeface library was expanded to cover further formats and various languages, with several new families added by the partners. Foundry Types was commissioned to design more corporate typefaces notably for Swiss International Airlines, new fonts for NatWest, More Than, the Science Museum and in in multi languages for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Freda was awarded an Honorary Master of Arts by the University for the Creative Arts, and is a governor on the UCA Board. She was co-chair of the International Society of Typographic Designers with David Quay 1994–9 when they ran the memorable ISTD Lecture series; and ISTD Chair from 2000–4. Now as a Fellow, past-president and board director of ISTD, she is dedicated to promoting typography in all of its inspiring forms. Freda was also a member of Letter Exchange and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
