Type Design

“I fell into type design… which is a little embarrassing to admit within such a meticulous and detail-oriented field of practice. I have realised too that, since the 1990s, much of my interest in type design has been buoyed by the evolution of digital font creation tools.

Homepage graphic for The Type Testing Centre, c.1992.

When first introduced to the Apple Mackintosh computers at university in the early 1990s, the font creation tool was Fontographer. Up until this time I had been drawing type by tracing forms from printed material using my grandpa’s Rotring pens. With Fonotgrapher it became super quick and easy to digitise your drawings and populate complete character sets. There was also the opportunity to crack open existing typefaces, see how they are built and then bend and bash them into different forms [Bucky, et al]. To my mind though, the most exciting feature of Fontographer was the ability to ‘Merge Fonts’—taking two sets of existing letterforms and smooshing them together to create a new forms [Unmade].

These early experiments were well suited to the ‘grunge’ aesthetic of the time (think RayGun magazine, Ed Fella’s hand-drawn letterforms and some of the blunt forms provided by early Emigre releases) [HiQual]. Together, with a friend, we set up a foundry to house our grotesqueries and named it ‘The Type Testing Centre’ or TTC for short. TTC wouldn’t last past our studies but type design had proved itself a useful and intriguing field to include within my designer’s toolbox.

Much of my type design during this post-grunge era happened in Illustrator and I would classify as ‘lettering’ although often with a view to expanding these type treatments into full character sets. Overtime, an archive of these completed designs and sketches built up and started spilling over into my project work as complete sets. [Rhodium] is a prime example of this. Starting out as some marks made on a gridded sketch pad, I started digitising these starkly geometric forms to use within the identity system for Linefeed, a blog-based self-publishing project. I ended up utilising these forms so extensively that it was much easier to make up a font to contain the burgeoning variations.

For the IDA Interior Design Awards, we had developed an identity around a series of photos of wooden [Tangram] pieces arranged in various ways. When it came to choosing a typeface to complement this, a set of angular letterforms were developed into a display font which was then used throughout the campaign, both in print and online.

Further opportunities to utilise customised type would arise. For Grafik magazine, we had a standard set of supplied typefaces which were extrapolated into new variations on a ‘per issue’ basis. This way we could nod to an issue’s theme whilst maintaining an oover-arching identity for the title. [Newsstand] was born out of this process. Existing letterforms were stripped down to skeletal remains and then these wireframes were built upon. In this case, heavy marker style linework was employed, alluding to the newspaper headlines hand-scrawled onto sheets and posted outside newsstands, as used to be seen around London and similar cities.

It wouldn’t be until Influence that I would have the confidence to draw a complete typeface from scratch which could be used exclusively throughout the one title [Lorry]. Inspired by a nostalgia for the architecture of the 1980s, Lorry started life as a limited set of characters included in a wordmark drawn for an identity proposal for Public Transport Victoria. This set was then extended and made into a display font using Glyphs.

Speaking of Public Transport Victoria, this was where I became properly (and initially reluctantly) immersed in the realm of type design as a graphic designer. Our in-house team was tasked with bringing the many nodes and operators within the public transport field into graphic alignment. I was assigned the task of compiling lists of typefaces to replace what was currently in use. The problem this highlighted was that for the transport network to be easily identified, this typeface needed to be unique to the system. We looked around for a type designer who could help us. They needed to be local and able to work to a strict budget. Melbourne was on the cusp of forming a community of capable and talented type designers… but were not there yet. We tried many options but all led us further afield. It was eventually decided we would take the project in-house [Network Sans]. [Click here to read more about Network Sans].

Years later, the typeface we produced has blossomed into a family with many siblings produced for all manner of applications. [Network Geo] was developed exclusively for station signage. [Network Neo] has generous round forms for promotional material. And we have only recently completed a suite of condensed versions with the possibility for further adaptations in the future.

All the above activity means there are many experiments and new letterforms languishing on hard drives and in desktop folders waiting for the right project to spur them into action. If you are curious to find out more feel free to get in touch.”

—Michael Bojkowski, 2025

Early experiments in creating ‘blends’ between fonts using Fontographer, c.1991s.

Unmade is a typeface that creates new forms out of a blend of two distinct typefaces. (Can you guess which ones?)

HiQual as it appeared typeset in a journalling assignment whilst at University, c.1992.

Rhodium, named after the Rhodia gridded notepads that inspired it. This typeface contained many ‘alts’ at different widths and was used on blog posts, in videos and on print-on-demand material.

Newsstand as it appeared in Grafik magazine, c.2011.

Tangram was developed as part of the identity for the IDA Interior Design Awards whilst at Magnetic Design, c.2010.

Red Lorry as it appeared throughout Influence (see more in the Publication Design section), c.2019.

Network Sans on one of Melbourne’s many trams. The typeface appears throughout the State’s public transport network as well as in promotional material and as part of the wayfound navigation system. Click the image to read more.