For Jason Smith, the founder of Fontsmith, a love for lettering has grown since his student years. At the age of 21, Jason graduated from Reigate School of Art and following an internship at Monotype, he headed to London. With £50 a week in his back pocket from the Prince’s Trust, Jason settled into a studio space and began to bulk out his portfolio. At this time, Jason was “one of the youngest people creating lettering in London,” he explains. “And I was also doing it digitally which was kind of unheard of.” While at a job at Wagstaffs, designing packaging for brands such as Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, Jason was being regularly commissioned to create typefaces. He took a leap and set up Fontsmith, a forward-thinking type foundry with traditional attributes.
As a company, Fontsmith’s ethos has always been to retain a bespoke element in order to create typefaces with craftsmanship. Still a small company of just seven, they are not corporate, but have the ability to provide corporate work. Jason modestly names brands they have worked with over the years: an initial few projects with the Post Office which led to creating E4’s launching logo and typeface, “which led to Channel 4, Film4, BBC, then ITV and Sky News. It was going really well and all the while I was designing my own typefaces also”.
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Source: itsnicethat