WIP For many designers, publishing a typeface used to be kind of a long process. How do you think Future Fonts has helped open up that process and what kind of culture do you think has emerged from that openness?

TK I think that it was kind of the big inspiration point; this long process of spending years on a typeface, not having any idea of whether it was going to be commercially viable or bring in any money. And I think Future Fonts has helped in that a little bit. I don't think that it's sped up the process at all. Like, we're looking at releasing one of our typefaces and we started it a few years before Future Fonts opened. We're only now planning the final version of it and the launch, so it's probably been almost 10 years in the making. So it hasn't sped up the process, but I think that it's gotten in front of people's eyes a lot sooner. And it's a way to test the market a little bit, which is really valuable.

WIP I'm enjoying you guys' dynamic in this conversation.

LG We’re yin and yang here!

WIP That made me think about you collaborating together. How would you say that has evolved or even you both as persons? Do you feel like things have changed since you started working together?

LG Yeah, I would say so. I think this dynamic has always been at the foundation because we approach life and work very differently and have very different strengths. And together we form a stronger team. But I think, as we've gotten older and have been working longer together, we're more confident in it than we were in our twenties, where it felt really scary and anxious. And we've also been through harder projects together and life challenges. So I think we're more comfortable letting each other be each other. And I think we're both more confident with what we bring to the team than we used to be.

WIP Future Fonts supports independent designers, and often type design is a field where many big companies dominate. How do you feel the current leadership is affecting you right now?

LG I think Monotype, Adobe, and Google own a lot of the big clients because they own a lot of the intellectual property. So they can easily make the licensing for big agencies. And even though they're more expensive and more litigious and companies don't really like working with them, they have more tools and resources. And it's good because it actually sets a price standard for us. But they might have a little too much power in all of the bigger licenses and those relationships. And once type designers want to do this full time, there's limited options of where they could go and where that creative energy and expertise goes.

TK I think Adobe and Google probably have more of an impact on us as independent designers because they have done a lot of really great things for type. However, it is sometimes hard for companies to justify buying another typeface when they can just use Creative Cloud. So, in that sense, I think Google and Adobe have the most potential to hurt the industry, but so far I think they’ve been a good and beneficial addition. Even Google, is making a huge amount of typefaces available for free with wide language support. And they’ve invested pretty heavily in paying designers to make a lot of typefaces. But, we'll see how long that continues.

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