A2-TYPE
Type foundry run by Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel, based in London and founded in 2010 as a division of their design studio A2/SW/HK.
A2-TYPE is the type foundry run by Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel, operating from their studio in Shoreditch, London, as of 2026. They founded the design studio A2/SW/HK together in 2000[†]Aperture 2013, Scott Williamsand opened A2-TYPE as its foundry branch a decade later[†]A2-TYPE About.
Williams and Kubel run the foundry, with a wider network of partners for non-Latin scripts and production work when needed[†]A2-TYPE About. Williams’s background is in design and art direction; Kubel is the principal typeface designer, though every typeface in the catalog is developed and approved by both[†]Eye Magazine no. 67, 2008. Both are members of AGI, Alliance Graphique Internationale[†]Tokyo Type Directors Club.
Williams has led designs of his own in the catalog: Cubbit, a geometric family built on elliptical forms; Game Over, a pixel typeface; and Eyes Lies[†]Luc Devroye, Scott Williams. In 2014 he and Kubel co-designed A23D, a typeface fabricated as 3D-printed letterpress type by model-making specialists Chalk Studios, shown in use at New North Press. It won a type design award at TDC New York in 2015[†]Luc Devroye, Scott Williams.
Kubel started drawing type in 1992, teaching himself, while studying at Denmark’s Design School[†]Eye Magazine no. 67, 2008. After graduating, he studied typeface design at the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Cooper Union in New York, and the University of Reading[†]TypeParis, Henrik Kubel. He’s been clear about what that gives him beyond technical skill.
"Having graphic design and art education as a background is a strength that you can use in typeface design. It is not just about being technically proficient in the latest software program, you need to have a lot more in your bag before you can actually contribute something."
A2-TYPE launched in autumn 2010 with 15 typefaces[†]Print Magazine 2010. Nearly all of them had come from client design work over the previous decade; the foundry was the platform to release them. Two exceptions, Klampenborg (1997) and Battersea (1999), predated the studio itself[†]Print Magazine 2010.
Zadie started as lettering for the cover of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty in 2005[†]Print Magazine 2010. CWM was drawn for the Cold War Modern exhibition catalog at the V&A in London in 2008[†]Print Magazine 2010. Danmark grew out of stamp designs for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark[†]Luc Devroye, Henrik Kubel. A design commission comes in, a typeface gets drawn for it, and once the work is done the typeface gets expanded and released. Clients typically hold an exclusivity period first, giving them time to build their brand before a typeface enters the retail catalog[†]A2-TYPE About.
The catalog is over a hundred typefaces now: editorial serifs, grotesques, slab serifs, display faces, wayfinding alphabets, revivals, a pixel font, ornaments[†]Tokyo Type Directors Club.
Alongside the retail catalog, A2-TYPE draws custom type for specific clients. Moscow Metro is one of the most visible public examples: a wayfinding typeface covering Latin and Cyrillic, the Cyrillic drawn alongside type designer Ilya Ruderman, with a system of more than 40 pictograms, developed with Margaret Calvert[†]Luc Devroye, Henrik Kubel. Typefaces have also gone to The New York Times Magazine, Network Rail, LinkedIn, Android, Instagram, CNN, Eurosport, and UK Government, among others[†]Tokyo Type Directors Club. A lot of it ends up in places people encounter every day without noticing the type at all.
Several typefaces in the catalog trace back to specific historical sources: English 1766, Mazarin, Foundation, Schwiss, New Transport[†]TypeParis, Henrik Kubel. Each uses that material as a starting point and builds somewhere of its own from there.
"We always try to infuse our own thinking in the drawings so that our contribution isn't solely a carbon-copy of history. Yes, we are inspired by the past, but hopefully, we are also engineering the next generation of a certain style."
Williams has described other starting points: production method rather than historical form, neon, laser-routing, weaving, processes that shape the letter from the outside[†]Aperture 2013, Scott Williams.
The foundry sells exclusively through its own site, with no resellers.
"We are 100% independent for all of the right reasons."
Afterall Serif has its own page here. Kubel drew it for the Afterall Research Centre at Central Saint Martins, part of an identity redesign for which the studio proposed a custom typeface. At body sizes it’s a calm, readable serif. Set it large and the roman shows more: the capital R and P leave their counters open, the bowl of each stopping short of the stem, a choice that runs through both and through the lowercase e too. The Afterall Serif article here covers the ligatures and the figure system in full, then some more.
The full catalog, with trial fonts and licensing, is at a2-type.co.uk.