But we have two more for you! We’re pleased to share a preview of Escalator and Elevator, two new typefaces that are almost done. Visit the minisite to see more, and contact us to purchase an advance license to these in-progress families.

See lots more of these typefaces on the minisite designed by Faculty at 
geometricsans.com.

The fonts take inspiration from prefabricated letterforms of the 1950s and the era of phototypesetting. On the minisite you can play around with the two variable font axes, seeing how the designs go from easy-to-read text to tight 1970s display settings.

Looking back at 2021

We kept busy this year

Ben released Ballast version 0.2 at Future Fonts, with a bigger character set and stronger language support.

We had a lively chat with Lizy & Travis of Future Fonts, which you can read on their site.

We’ve made great connections with people who are getting started in type design, via Type Crit Crew, Alphabettes Mentorship, and AIGA NY Early Career Mentorship. We’re always happy to chat.

Our friend Kelcey Gray used Escalator beautifully in her newly-published book Let’s Make Letters, which is chock-full of fun lettering exercises. 

We made custom fonts & lettering

We’ve been busy with client work, and we’re pretty sure it didn’t hurt that we finally added a “Custom” section to our website. Get a quick overview of some past projects at xyztype.com/custom.

One of our favorite recent projects was custom lettering for the new incarnation of Gage & Tollner, a historic Brooklyn restaurant. Order designed the identity system, with Jesse’s help on the logo. Order has a detailed case study of the project on their site.

We embraced social media, with help

Our Instagram takeover series has been a wonderful opportunity to hand over our fonts to talented people and see what they make with them. Thank you for shedding new light on our typefaces: Jun Lin, Chandni Poddar, Nat Thomas, Tatiana López, Claudio Rodriguez, and Kruttika Susarla!

Turns out other people make our work better

• Vanna Vu did heavy lifting on revamping our font specimens and designing new things for our upcoming new website.

• We unofficially sponsored the MFA IVC program at Washington University by hiring Cydney Cherpak, Noah Jodice, and Kruttika Susarla to make things for our new website and for promotion.

• Rachel Zemser helped dial in our marketing and social media. 

• Graybits tore down and redesigned & rebuilt our website. Look for a January launch of a site that will let us sell variable fonts and show off our work in new ways.

Cheers to you!

We couldn’t do what we do without your support. Thank you for sharing our work, buying our fonts, hiring us for custom work, and being interested in what we’re up to. It means the world to us.

—Ben & Jesse