Inside Superior Type’s new website, fonts and artist collaborations Digital Illustration Motion

The Brand Identity: Superior Type has relaunched its website alongside four new typefaces: Grain, Edgy, Typograf and Svatopluk Max. The Prague-based studio – which operates from a 1930s villa – built the site to evolve continuously rather than remain static as the catalogue grows. Each specimen pairs a typeface with artwork by a selected artist, an approach the team debated most intensely for Edgy, a serif drawn with the absolute minimum number of anchor points. Grain takes a different tack: a neo-grotesque with subtle serifs that Founder & Director Vojtech Riha compares to fine grain in vintage photography.

In this interview, he discusses what wasn’t working about the old site, why the studio calls itself a label rather than a foundry, and how Prague has quietly become a ‘small typographic Switzerland.’ TBI Hi Vojta, it’s been a while! How are you doing? VR Good, thanks! Things are moving in the right direction. New studio, new websites, new fonts, new collaborators. It’s intense, and we’re enjoying it. TBI The new website was designed to give your work more space, clarity and structure. Why did you decide to make the change? VR It had been weighing on us for quite some time; the old websites weren’t evolving.

The number of fonts kept growing, but the structure and core of the sites remained the same. An important step for us was deciding to develop the new website more in-house. Everything aligned nicely when we moved into our new studio space and were able to offer workspace to a web development studio as well. That made it much easier to begin working on the full redesign together. There are still many features that will continue to be added and refined over time. And that’s exactly the advantage of being in one place, we can keep improving the websites continuously. TBI Each specimen on the site is paired with a visual by a unique artist.

How do you approach matching a typeface to an artwork? VR This part was quite fun from the beginning, because we didn’t want to present the new fonts, or even the older ones, as just basic typographic specimens. Each typeface carries either a surface-level or deeper concept, often reflected in its name (for example, Typograf, which is the Czech word for typographer). What we enjoyed most was adding a visual layer that either reinforces the core concept or explores how the typeface could be used. Not all fonts are connected to external artists through artwork, but many are.

For the Mixtape superfamily, for instance, we created a tongue-in-cheek rip-off campaign inspired by Supreme, since the typeface itself draws heavily from Renner’s Futura. When it came to selecting artists, we initially had a very broad list, which we gradually had to narrow down, something we regretted a bit. At the same time, it was exciting to match specific visuals with individual typefaces. We probably debated the visual direction for Edgy the most, since the font is so distinctive on its own.

In the end, though, the collaboration with @kunstkammerai feels like the right fit. Looking ahead, we’d love to publish physical specimens for individual typefaces, including visual artistic interventions. The good news is that we’re close to finishing several more fonts, which means new artworks are already waiting to be released alongside them. TBI Rebuilding your entire catalogue as variable fonts is a significant undertaking. What made that investment worthwhile? VR I think it simply reflects the fact that this has become the standard today.

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The article discusses a significant rebranding effort by a type design company, which is relevant to brand strategy professionals, but the concepts of collaboration and evolution in design are increasingly common in the industry.