Freda and David, you’re each among the most experienced designers working in type today. Where did your love of letterforms develop?

Freda Sack: That is very kind of you to say! I discovered my fascination for letterforms at school, when we practiced calligraphy in art class. In addition to a natural love for language and literature, my school experiences with art led me to enroll at the Maidstone College of Art’s School of Printing. Their hands-on approach suited me well, and I learned traditional typography there. We had classes in typesetting, printing, and photography, too — even bookbinding and lithography. Whatever we didn’t typeset ourselves, we would letter by hand.

David Quay: When I was ten, I bought a book on the American Wild West at a jumble sale. Its illustrations excited me more than the stories. I loved the wood type Wanted Posters, and I tried my hand at making a whole alphabet inspired by them. Later on, at 14, my art teacher encouraged me to apply to art school for commercial art, as it was then called. I turned my hobby into a profession at Sidcup College of Art and Design. They introduced me to illustration, as well as etching, lithography, screen-printing, and wood engraving. A year later, Sidcup was absorbed by Ravensbourne College of Art and Design. That school had a strong modernist tradition, and the Bauhaus and the new Swiss typography greatly influenced the graphic design curriculum. However, Ralph Beyer was one of the lettering teachers; he had been an assistant to Eric Gill. The large stone panels in Coventry Cathedral had made Ralph successful, and I starting working for him as a freelancer. The knowledge about the underlying structure of letterforms I gained from him was invaluable — a great contrast to what I learned in school.

Freda: My college was near Letraset in Kent. Once I was finished, I started working there. My first job in the type industry! Since they were unionized, or a “closed” shop, I had to earn my union card by retouching film for Letraset’s dry transfer lettering and Letratone sheets for six months. After this painstaking work, I finally made it into the type studio as a trainee, where my five-year apprenticeship began. We drew artwork for all possible kinds of letterforms. My next job was with a London design company called FONTS/Hardy Williams. I was a senior type designer for Adrian Williams; we produced phototype fonts that the advertising industry used to set headlines. Type directors from design consultancies would brief us, and our jobs were done under pressure, subject to ridiculous deadlines. Still, we put every effort into creating beautiful handcrafted type. Clients understood that type and typography are the essence of communication. Each typeface elicits a different audience reaction, however subtle.

David: After college, I kept busy with various graphic design jobs. These always involved some form of lettering. For a while, I was a freelance art director for Secker & Warburg, one of the last small independent publishers in London. In one year there, I designed or art directed over two hundred book covers! Colin Brignall, who was then the type director at Letraset, saw some of these in an exhibition. He asked me to expand my cover lettering into full alphabets. This is how I met Freda; in the Letraset studio, she was secretly redrawing my rather dodgy attempts at type design. After my Letraset typefaces were published, I received my first serious typeface commission for Berthold, and named it Helicon.

Freda: David and I decided to go it alone after that, and start our own business. This is how The Foundry was born. The rest is history, as they say!

The Foundry’s first release was your Foundry Old Style family. How did this typeface come about? Is it a Venetian revival?

David: Foundry Old Style is loosely based on late incunabula models, like the typefaces cut by Nicolas Jenson and Francesco Griffo. However, the design is more of a free interpretation; it isn’t based on any specific historical type (you can trace some Jenson or Griffo revivals back to specific Renaissance books). Instead of reviving pre-existing letterforms, I wrote out all the letterforms myself, with a broad pen. As much as possible, I wanted to retain the structure of the pen stroke in the fonts’ final digital outlines.

Brody Neuenschwander’s Letterwork, published by Phaidon and designed in your studio, uses Foundry Old Style and Foundry Sans. Did you intend for those typefaces to be used together?

Freda: Well, it is true that they are used together there. We actually favour very reduced typographic palettes ourselves; one specific typeface, used in a limited range of weights.

David: Exactly; I try to never mix typefaces. Since Foundry Old Style and Foundry Sans were The Foundry’s first two designs, we did tend to use them a lot ourselves — sometimes we combined them together. The best way to prove a typeface is to try it out on live projects, like in this book.

Freda: While creating Foundry Sans, David was inspired by the forms and proportions of Garamond’s typefaces. It is little known that the first sans serifs were pre-twentieth century. Their individuality can act as an inspirational model, so that news sans faces can also have a hint of personality in them. You just shouldn’t go overboard too much!