Fontdue conversations: Tüpokompanii

This is our first in a series of conversations with type designers about their practice. We hope this serves as a useful resource for type designers, from those just getting started and thinking about how to publish their work for the first time, as well as those already running their own foundries. It’s an opportunity to share learnings and promote a discourse around publishing fonts independently.

“We made a pact at the graduation party!” Andree Paat says when we ask him how Tüpokompanii , the foundry he runs together with Aimur Takk, got started. “There was an audience, telling us, you two, you really have to go for it. We shook hands in front of them. So it was decided.”

We’re in Tallinn, where I’ve joined Céline, who was invited for the second year in a row to give a week-long workshop to the graphic design students at EKA, the Estonian Academy of the Arts. We meet Andree in the old town, where he leads us to an inconspicuous entrance we’d passed just days before, oblivious to the small Tüpokompanii & sõbrad (friends) sticker on the buzzer. The door opens up to a medieval courtyard where a group of kids are playing. Andree, tall and quiet, waits for us at one of the doors and leads us up the stairs to the studio, where the two continue the origin story of their collaboration.

Initially, they met as coursemates in the graphic design programme at EKA, where their interest in typography and the history of type got sparked in the classes of their teacher Ivar Sakk. Andree: “He would bring stacks of collected magazines and held a small competition: every student got one and if you could recognize the font, he would tell you if you’re right or wrong, and give you the next one. It got many people really enthusiastic. And since then, it never stopped. Now, Ivar emails us, ‘guys, do you know what font this is? The students are asking, and I don’t know’.”

“Estonians are quite well-connected”, Andree says. “There are many of our generation of designers who have studied or worked abroad, quite a few designers in the Netherlands who are still living and working there. That makes it easier to get interesting people from abroad to come and teach here. Our teachers in the bachelor’s were also really well-connected. That was something we learned from them.”

It’s through these connections that Fabian Harb and Johannes Breyer of Dinamo ended up giving a week-long workshop at EKA. “That’s where we learned Fontlab for the first time. We still didn’t know what we were doing, but it was some kind of introduction. We could make a font file, which was a big step forward.”

Aimur: “But the start wasn’t easy at all. The first typefaces I remember using in my graphic design projects, during the Bachelor’s, always got me this kind of feedback: ‘we see what you are trying to do, but it’s not getting there yet’. Of course, because I’m a beginner! I was trying to push hard, but there’s not that many people to learn from, locally. We were searching for mentors.”

Drawing in the club

Andree: “after graduating, I wasn’t interested in going for a Master’s degree in type design. I had a girlfriend here and couldn’t imagine going abroad for a few years. So I started looking for internship opportunities instead. I had been learning on my own since the second year, but I wanted an internship to really learn on the job. I started looking around Europe, writing different foundries. Paul Barnes, from Commercial Type, who is based in London, was also on my list. They were the only ones who wrote back and accepted me—but I only figured out then that most of the team is actually in New York. So I ended up going there.

“Then afterwards, I got in touch with Dinamo again and ended up freelancing for them for six months in Berlin, around 2019, and afterwards continued collaborating with them on different fonts over the years. So in a way I got my alternative to a master’s degree, just learning practically on the job.”

“I got lucky right after graduation,” Aimur says when reflecting on his trajectory. “One of the members of design studio AKU was on the jury, and he invited me a few months later to draw a custom font for Tallinn Music Week. And I accepted, even though I had never done a proper font yet. There was not much time, and Andree was away on his internship, so there was not much space for feedback. I tried to learn really quickly on my own, working days and nights, because the font had to be handed over to the web designer within three months.”

“There was even a moment when I worked on the font during a club night. I had this silly idea of, I need to rest, but I’m so anxious about the work at the same time… Maybe I can just sit in the corner, enjoy the music, and work on the font. I ended up finding the whole creative idea for the font, the point of it, that night basically. Later, we even named the font after the venue. It was called Sveta bar, the font is called Sveta.”

“Looking back, I’m happy I didn’t know it would be that hard. Most of the things I’ve done as a designer, if I would have known how hard the process was, I wouldn’t have started them!”

Keeping the pact

Andree: “One of the reasons we started the foundry is because there basically was no Estonian foundry. We had to make our own context. There’s Anton Koovit of Fatype, but they are not really based in Estonia, now there’s East of Rome (run by Lewis McGuffie), who just released a typeface by Jaan Rõõmus, who was a year above us at EKA and was one of the first who graduated with a typeface project; also our close friend Patrick Zavadskis… There are other type designers, but they don’t have foundries. But that also gave us a good opportunity.”

At the start of 2020, both Aimur and Andree found themselves back in their home town, after Aimur returned from his MA studies at ÉCAL in Switzerland. In a strange way, the onset of the pandemic made it possible to set up the foundry. Andree: “It had already been weird, working from home”, says Andree, ”So quitting my job at Stuudio Stuudio, the design agency in Tallinn where I was working at the time, and starting to freelance, wasn’t that big of a transition.”

Aimur: “After coming back, I somehow felt that I couldn’t go back to any studio in Tallinn. I still feel similar: I can collaborate on typefaces, but not work there every day. I already found myself in rough discussions at the studios I worked before going to ÉCAL. I want to be in a position where I can defend my creative ideas. But sometimes I wouldn’t even be able to meet the client.”

No longer bound by studio work, the time had come for Andree and Aimur to make good on the pact they formed during the graduation party. But it would still take more than a year until the official launch of Tüpokompanii and their first two typefaces, the sans serif Ladna and geometric, decorative display font Trafarett. Andree: “A lot of work needed to happen at the same time. And it was the first time I had to complete a font family on my own as well. We wanted to get everything right, the design of the website, what we posted on Instagram… Aimur started Trafarett around this time too, and that was a quicker project, but technically it was complicated, so in the end I tried to help figure out the workflow.”

Aimur: “Looking back, I’m happy I didn’t know it would be that hard. Most of the things I’ve done as a designer, if I would have known how hard the process was, I wouldn’t have started them!”

“If you cut out the repetitive things from your work, you are going to miss potential moments of exploration, because you instantly get what you were planning.”

Welcome to the stadium

Right now, the two run the foundry next to their freelance work and teaching at EKA. Andree describes his routine as “quite strict”, having to combine work with his two kids, while Aimur works late hours often, “almost like taking shifts”. Similarly, when it comes to drawing type, it’s a matter of taking turns rather than collaborating on every last detail. Andree: “So far the typefaces are always led by one of us, but luckily we have a very similar taste.”

Aimur: “Since our studies we have been trying to find moments to collaborate closer on drawing, but it’s not that easy. So far it has made more sense to get on the same page on what we want to achieve, rather than sharing the file and dividing the work letter by letter.” “Maybe one day there will be this kind of interface where you can work on the same letter with two cursors at a time, online,” Aimur muses. “That would be fun. Double the amount of work, double the amount of time spent. I’m really into inefficient workflows. If you cut out the repetitive things from your work, you are going to miss potential moments of exploration, because you instantly get what you were planning. I often find myself changing the idea during these repetitive moments.”

“We haven’t been forced yet to give parts of the work away”, Aimur says. “We can allow the process to marinate.” A good example is Siluett, a typeface Andree started during his internship at Commercial Type, and has been drawing and redrawing ever since. “When you develop a typeface over years, you can take long pauses and come back with a new perspective, new knowledge. It can feel like you will never finish, but I believe it’s a good thing in the end.”

Siluett being available in beta also offers the opportunity to receive feedback from people who use the typeface. Aimur: “Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, but it’s always good to listen to the user’s perspective, and valuable to see how people are using it. It starts to work when there is a critical mass of comments that go in a similar direction”. Releasing fonts in beta is also useful to make decisions about what to release next. “If there is suddenly a lot of interest towards one font, it makes sense to get it done quicker, just to get it out there. I often have trouble with that final push, like, how do I finish this?”

Andree agrees: “Once you’re stuck in the production phase and it starts to get boring and annoying, it’s tempting to just pick up another project and tinker with that. You have to really push yourself to power through. I try to remind myself that the process is actually the most important part.”

“I’m kind of triggered by this question of what is the correct time to release,” Aimur admits. “It’s a never-ending game, figuring out what typefaces will be trendy. Some people are good at being on time. But I feel there might be another moment that works out for us. If we are late now, maybe in several years it makes sense. Sometimes it’s best to wait.”

“I started to imagine it as a kind of stadium”, he continues, “with all type designers competing against each other. The audience just randomly comes in and leaves, and there’s a chance for everyone in the audience to decide who’s in the lead. That somehow describes what is happening for me. And who is leading does not have so much to do with the pure visual character of the fonts they make, but more with how they sell it when the audience is there. You can never know what comes out on top. That means you can’t be strategic, you just have to be true to yourself.”

“It’s a never-ending game, figuring out what typefaces will be trendy. Some people are good at being on time. But I feel there might be another moment that works out for us. If we are late now, maybe in several years it makes sense. Sometimes it’s best to wait.”

Check out the whale

Besides releasing retail type, the two continue to draw custom type for commissioners. In 2022, they worked on their largest custom project to date, when they drew a collection of fonts for the identity of the city of Tartu in South Estonia. The rebrand of an entire city required a suitably big font collection: three sans serif fonts with countless alternates, many of which were inspired by the hand-painted enamel street signs still found everywhere in the city. Aimur: “we are into these neglected qualities in a font, something that maybe comes from an eastern European perspective, or history. Low quality, mistakes, amateurism.”

Andree agrees. “I’m really into the kinds of ideas that are brought up by amateurs. There’s so much potential in these kinds of first moments… Even at EKA, sometimes for the students it’s hard to be positive about their first accidents, or they think that type design is something where there’s all these rules that you have to follow. But actually, you don’t.”

The commission came through AKU, the studio where Aimur interned after graduating. “These projects always come about through personal connections”, Andree says. “A lot of people we know personally, or through EKA, want to use our fonts. Also, if a client project is somehow related to Estonia, that’s often a good argument for using an Estonian typeface.”

That type of local promotion has worked better than social media, the two agree. “With Instagram, it’s difficult to tell if it is actually the place to sell type. The like count doesn’t always convert into sales. For now we mostly do promotion on the fly, or based on what we are feeling in the moment. Maybe it would be nice to hire someone for the campaigns, and to plan a bit more, but on the other hand, planning can also make you start overthinking things.”

“We’re still figuring things out”, Andree says. “Maybe there will be a turning point when we will be able to pay ourselves a salary only from licenses. Because that hasn’t happened yet. Establishing your name as a foundry takes time. There’s not going to be a big boom, it’s about putting in work. But maybe it’s better that it is this way, rather than harbouring an illusion.”

Aimur: “Sometimes even the students have this illusion, that we are already somewhere. And they’re surprised that we’re not working 100% on the foundry, because it’s not possible yet.”

All the same, the work that the two have put in has made Tüpokompanii grow into one of the most prominent type foundries in Estonia. When we ask what would be the dream application for one of their typefaces, their answer is characteristically down to earth: “It’s great to see your fonts in the street,” says Andree. “Estonia is tiny, but when I see them in the real world, it has a big effect on me.” Aimur adds: “I’m happy with any kind of surprising thing that happens with my font. I’m a bit of a trickster, and I love when someone pokes fun at my font, or something strange happens. With the font for the Tallinn Music Week, the posters were glued onto public trash bins in the city, and because the typeface contains really thin contrasting horizontal lines, the whole meaning of the sentence changed, from ‘check out the schedule’ to ‘check out the whale’, if I had to translate. It became a kind of meme, and got posted to a Facebook group where people discuss bad design. Those are the moments I keep.”

typokompanii.com