Can We Still Build a Future in Type?

There’s an unease in the air. For months, maybe years, I wondered if it was just in my head. It isn’t. With three panels on “The Future of the Industry,” the Font Business conference this June made the subtext unmistakable, leaving me buzzing and exhausted—a state I still can’t quite shake.

Are young designers empowered to succeed? What happens when the ground keeps shifting under our feet? How do we carve a path when opportunities shrink by the day? These set the tone of the “Future Leaders” session, moderated by Nadine Chahine, where I sat alongside Maria Doreuli, Jakob Runge, Lisa Huang, and Omaima Dajani. The framing suggested direction. Confidence, even. But I’m not sure any of us had a clean horizon. Just the sense of being in the fog together.

History shapes how we work: slowly, methodically. It requires patience, iteration. As Kris Sowersby summarized, “We’re extreme specialists, modern artisans, crafting original fonts across multiple genres, supporting multiple scripts, using the latest technology, ensuring our fonts work seamlessly across 30 years of digital platforms, apps, software environments, and operating systems.” Little room is left for quick pivots—exactly what disruptive times demand.

We’ve moved through wood, metal, phototype, digital, variable fonts. Each era brought its own struggles. Change isn’t new. The difference is how much is converging. Far-right movements gaining global strength. Economic volatility. Wars. Commercial pressure. Corporate monopoly. It’s turbulence in every direction, all at once.

As a niche industry, fragile in many ways, it’s getting harder to make a profit or stay inspired. Crisis leaves residue, making structural weaknesses more apparent. The sheer amount of time and effort required to run a sustainable foundry is increasingly out of sync with what the world rewards. What’s the point of shipping new work constantly when sales have tanked and automation keeps creeping in? Will any of this matter in five years? Am I being too gloomy?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s money to be made. If you price strategically and land the right client, a single deal can reach millions (and no, these numbers aren’t astronomical.) Yet, from where I stand, very few are able to do so.

Whoever controls distribution controls the story. Today, the landscape is held by a handful of giants and a long tail of independents. Monotype sits at the top, the IP fortress holding a massive collection, wielding its weight through aggressive licensing terms. Adobe dominates the ecosystem, leveraging the way most creatives access type. And Google Fonts, with its flourishing open-source library, has redefined expectations around “free,” shifting market values altogether. How are we supposed to compete? We shine at making; not marketing, selling, or playing platform politics. If originality and precision were once enough, we’re long past that. What comes next is a mix of thirst, grind, and a whole lot of nerve.

AI just adds a new slope. A system grounded on the fantasy of scale—faster, cheaper, infinite. And honestly, I’m less scared of what the machines can spit than of what people will consider “acceptable,” wrapped in the language of “efficiency” and “access.” We know how this unfolds: the big players get louder, the field gets narrower. Not because the craft lost its worth, but because the perception did.

For better or worse, I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal. No matter the tide, I choose to stay busy. Building, showing up, refusing to freeze. And I keep thinking that combining our glasses might be the only way. The cost of going alone has become too steep. We need shared resources, ways to pool risk—the new Fontstand co-op being one experiment I’m watching closely. Nurturing connections and amplifying diverse voices is how we stay visible. Collaboration isn’t altruism anymore; it’s infrastructure.

Still, I have more questions than answers. No prediction, just a hunch: those who are the brains and soul behind what they make (beyond pure execution) will probably not fold. We need to get sharper at reading patterns and move with intention. The only thing they can’t consolidate is our collective refusal to play by their rules. That’s my math of survival. What’s yours?

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Marginalia

🔤 Font:

Ragequit by Benn Zorn (Future Fonts): A condensed spiky serif unafraid of going against classical models—I love how the italics, at a steep 29-degree angle (what!), demand more space than uprights. Fierce and loud in the best way.

💬 Quote:

“The most resilient communities are the ones that learn from each other, collaborate, adapt, and partner up.” — Heba Daghistani

🔖 Bookmarked:

Ohno Radio x Kris Sowersby: What does it take to build a foundry from the global south? How many hats must a solo founder wear? How long until sales compound? Is there a good exit strategy? Three years later, Kris’s honesty still hits. The stakes only got sharper.

🧑‍🎨 From the Field:

Monotype, the board game: Ryan Bugden’s satirical take on Monotype’s acquisition tactics—Monopoly style. Because sometimes the best critique is the one that makes you laugh.

📡 Elsewhere:

Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here): Based on the true story of Eunice Paiva during Brazil’s 1970s dictatorship, Walter Salles’s film is a gut-wrenching reflection on memory, resilience, and the fight against erasure

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