London's Foundry Types Releases Foundry Kingdom, a Typeface for Everyone

The Foundry Types, the Charlotte Street type foundry founded by Freda Sack and David Quay in 1990 and relaunched under its current name a few years ago, released a new typeface called Foundry Kingdom on 10 September. The foundry describes it simply as a typeface for the people, and is running a 20 percent launch discount with the code KINGDOM20.

Foundry Kingdom joins a catalogue that already includes the well known Architype revivals and retail families like Foundry Sans and Foundry Sterling, alongside the bespoke brand typefaces the studio builds for clients. The Foundry Types has spent three and a half decades building a reputation as one of the UK's first digital type foundries, and new retail releases from established British foundries like this one do not happen every week.

Typefaces rarely make headline news, and that is precisely why they deserve more attention from anyone doing brand or web work in the UK. A well judged retail typeface from a foundry with this much history costs a fraction of a bespoke commission and still carries genuine craft: kerning pairs tested across dozens of languages, weights built to hold up at both display and body sizes, licensing terms written for studios that need to use a face across print, web, and motion in the same project.

We keep an eye on releases like this because type is one of the few brand decisions that touches every single deliverable a client gets from us, from a one page website to a full exhibition stand. A strong new British typeface is worth the five minutes it takes to read the specimen, and worth keeping in a shortlist long before a brief actually calls for one.

It also matters where a typeface comes from. A foundry that has been cutting letterforms since 1990 tends to test a release harder before it ships, checking spacing at small sizes and awkward accented characters that a newer, faster foundry might only catch after a client complains. Foundry Kingdom is a small release in the wider scheme of type news, but it is the kind of small release worth knowing about before a brand project needs exactly this feel.