Fresh wallpaper for the new year

As a little gift, Zrinka designed these digital wallpapers for you, using our typefaces Polymode, Study, and Plumbago. Formatted for use on your phone, tablet, or computer.
▶ Download wallpaper

Reflecting on 2024 at XYZ

As we start 2025, we wanted to look back at the productive year behind us at XYZ Type!

We kept busy with client work

We started 2024 by delivering a new identity typeface for HashiCorp, followed by one for the Brand New Conference just a month later. 

Later in the year, we shipped new typefaces for New York magazine, Rick Bayless’s restaurant Tortazo (in collaboration with Abraham Lule), and Kingsford Charcoal (commissioned by FCB Chicago’s Design Group).

Throughout 2024, we worked on a large system of sans and serif typefaces for Edward Jones, and that project is now in its very final stages. We’re pretty proud of the results of this massive undertaking, so watch for a case study soon. (Jesse already spotted the Sans typeface in use at his local branch.)

We saw some new faces

Zrinka Buljubašić joined our team in April as a full-time typeface designer, and she has brought a fantastic new perspective to both custom and retail projects. Tyler Dean also now works for us part-time in project management and ops, helping us run things smoothly with an increased workload.

We kept our retail library fresh

Plumbago debuted on our site as an “early access” release, with new versions coming soon. Being too busy with client work to focus on retail typeface development is a good problem to have. Still, we’re hoping to make time for more retail releases in 2025.

We continued rolling updates to our website with a new font overview page (compare the whole library with your chosen text), updated the font page with better type testers, and made some other nips and tucks.

We saw people in person

As always, we were at Typographics in NYC, where we helped kick off the week with a Lubalin Lecture Series talk about Polymode. Jesse made it to the Brand New Conference in Salt Lake City to see our custom typeface put to great use.

Jesse and Zrinka attended Letrastica 5 (which Zrinka helps to organize) in Guadalajara, where they did a type crit workshop. Much fun was had.

We ‘marketed’

We still love print, so we were happy to have the chance to be on press with two PMS colors and a large press sheet for the Polymode specimen. Ben keeps dropping them into the mail weekly.

▶ Fill this form out to get one

On the digital front, we added Background Layer—an email newsletter about the behind-the-scenes of XYZ, an Are.na, and joined Bluesky (but have yet to post). And we have something special in the works for 2025 with our friends from Polymode.

We partnered

We were fortunate to work with a great crew this past year: 

• Chris Skillern, Travis Kochel, Inga Plönnigs, Robin Mientjes, and Ben Tuttle all helped out drawing type for various projects

• Dyana Weissman drew type and helped us with project management for Edward Jones

• Saga Söderback forced TrueType hints to do the correct thing for Edward Jones

• As always, Vanna Vu helped out with all things graphic

• Cem Eskinazi designed the aforementioned Polymode specimen

• Chappell Ellison helped us step up communication about our capabilities

• Cydney Cherepak added Zrinka to our illustrated portraits

• Jason Chew directed and edited video about Polymode (coming soon!)

• Edgar Casarin made graphics both static and moving for various Polymode things

• R.J. Hartbeck made the photos of our physical goods pop

• Field Club Media with DLiNX Media wrote/shot/edited a social campaign for Polymode

• Graybits, as ever, wrangled refinements to our website

It takes a village, and we are thankful to all — this includes you for following along and supporting our foundry. We wouldn’t want to do it alone.

Wishing you a good new year!
—XYZ