Jessica Walsh launches her own type foundry, focused on 'emotional type'

Renowned designer Jessica Walsh has long been known for her passion for type. And now she's taken that to the next level by launching Type Of Feeling. It's a type foundry with a difference, one that's dedicated to creating unique typefaces that convey "distinct and rarely spoken emotions".

"I have fallen in love with the power of unique typography and its power to tell stories and create an ownable brand language," enthuses Jessica, who's known for her New York-based creative studio &Walsh.

"Type of Feeling offers a select retail collection alongside custom typography services. Each typeface in our collection is meticulously crafted to evoke a range of feelings, blending artistic expression with functional design."

Inspiration

Jessica's inspiration came, as you might expect, from her own experience as a designer. "I've always believed that typography can be one of a brand's most distinctive assets," she explains. "In our brand projects, we try to push for custom typography because a font can convey so much effortlessly. When we don't have the opportunity to do custom typography work, we spend a lot of time sifting through foundries and looking at non-trendy fonts that are still unique and ownable."

But that hasn't always worked out the way she'd hoped for. "We've spent a lot of time in foundries that were either too trendy or too mass-market, inspiring us to start our own," she explains. In contrast, her aim with Type of Feeling has been to "establish a destination where each font is crafted to be not only expressive but also distinct and timeless".

Seven typefaces are on offer at launch, and Jessica says there are more in the making. "A lot of scrapped ones, too," she adds. "It was important to us not just to put more typefaces out into the world but to create fonts that we felt were very effective in evoking emotion and could allow for true distinctiveness when utilised by designers.

"So many foundries focus on creating typefaces for mass distribution," she stresses. "We decided to hone in on more niche typefaces that can still have broad appeal while really helping brands stand out through their uniqueness.

"We also wanted to learn from designers about their pain points with discovering fonts, testing them, and licensing them so that we could build those learnings into Type of Feeling. Our goal was to simplify the whole process, as those details can be a very draining part of the design process for brands and designers."

Target audience

So who are these fonts aimed at, exactly? "We picture our target audience as designers who want to create emotion-driven work," says Lauren Walsh, strategy and new business. "We've priced our fonts to be accessible, so they can be used for small projects or by bigger brands. We're all super excited to see how people use our fonts.

"After working on them for so long, you start to imagine them in specific settings, so I'm especially eager to see how designers and brands push those boundaries. Because of the expressive nature of fonts, a music/entertainment application would be especially cool.

"I'm not saying it needs to be a splashy BRAT moment," she adds. "But just seeing how one of these fonts could closely relate to someone's musical or artistic expression would be very rewarding."

How the fonts were designed

Jessica explains how she created the fonts. "Our team set out to create a world for each font to live in," she begins. Everything starts with the feeling, and then the world is created around it.

"Ssonder, for example, is drawn from the feeling and realisation that each person you see, each person you pass, and each person that exists has their own complex and distinct life, like a web of experiences and memories. I have had this feeling before but never knew how to describe it.

"It's one of my favourites because every detail of the font was designed to capture the delicacy of the feeling," she adds. "It was crafted with beautiful ligature stylistic sets that reflect this concept."

The team has also tried to reinforce the idea through the mockups they show Ssonder on. Candles, matches, and books all help establish the unique feeling and complexity of this realisation. The idea is that each typeface has its own little world, making it easier for designers and brands to see it visually in connection with their own projects.

"I'm also a big fan of Jubel, which is the expression of joy and celebration," she adds. "The thick strokes and lively curves exude excitement. And the 'e' almost smiles at you, reflecting the word's jubilant mood and celebrative feeling."

Bespoke designs for agencies

Along with their standard typefaces, which are available to all to buy, Type with Feeling is also offering a bespoke service for brands. Jessica explains how that works in practice.

"We approach custom typography through a four-stage process including strategy, conception, execution and testing," Jessica says. "The first stage is critical to understanding what we want people to feel when they come in contact with the brand and typeface."

She offers an example of their work with indoor vertical farming company Plenty: "So many brands in the produce space make their greens and produce just look edible, with fairly neutral palettes and indistinct branding elements. The question we asked ourselves is: Why shouldn't greens and produce look as delicious as a hamburger and fries?"

Following that realisation, the team set out to create custom typography for Plenty that made you desire to eat their produce. "Our working name for the font file was Tasty Type because the brief to the team was a typeface you actually wanted to eat. Instead of the type indicating 'healthy', we asked what about feeling 'hungry?' The type became the central element of the branding and what allowed Plenty to really stand off the shelf from other greens and produce brands out there."

Future of the Foundry

Being frank with us, Jessica says that she sees Type of Feeling as more of a passion project than a business. "I doubt it'll be profitable, as everything we create is niche, and it took a lot of time and money to get this finished," she admits. But that doesn't mean she launched the project on a whim: quite the reverse. "Our team has been working on this for almost five years!" she reveals.

"A type foundry is new territory for us, and we have learned a lot along the way. This took a lot longer, and a lot more money, to launch than I could have ever imagined."

"Our team had big ambitions," she adds. "We really wanted each font to have its own little world, which could be seen in the terminals, ligatures, and kerning, as well as in the way each font is shown on the website and how we eventually launch them in our campaigns.

"It's hard with personal projects to say 'it's done' when you don't have a client deadline forcing the project to come to an end," she muses. "However, after five years, I had to draw the line to get this out there. We originally thought it was only going to take a year to finish!

"There are so many more things I would have liked to do before launch, but we felt it was time to launch it, even if that means learning from our audience and iterating instead of working behind closed doors for another five years."