Arthur Schwarz
Schwarz developed an interest in type design early in his design practice. He began his studies at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD), graduating with a Bachelor’s degree with honors. His diploma project, created in collaboration with Maël Bächtold, was a variable font named Bolid, inspired by car racing and speed. Schwarz pursued further studies at École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ÉCAL), where he graduated with a Master’s degree in Type Design. His master's project was a compendium of three fonts, comprising two scripts and one sans-serif. While interning at the creative agency &Walsh in New York, he worked on type design and font art direction. After completing his master’s degree, he interned at Extraset Type Foundry, where he developed the ES Build typeface, drawing inspiration from Herbert Bayer’s research on a universal typeface. Later, in collaboration with Xavier Erni from Neo Neo, Schwarz designed ES Dokument, a type superfamily consisting of 60 styles. This typeface is characterized by its inspiration from the curves of various early 20th-century German industrial grotesques. Schwarz joined Production Type as a designer and later advanced to Communications Manager. He delivered a lecture titled “Business of Type: Type of Business” at IDWT in Paris, where he discussed the creative freedom that typography can offer to branding projects. Subsequently, he presented “The Font Business is Broken: Can We Fix It?” at ATypI, addressing issues surrounding font licensing, misconceptions, and unenforceable clauses found in the end-user license agreements (EULAs) of multiple type foundries. For his second lecture at the yearly IDWT, Schwarz delivered a presentation entitled “Everything Old Is New Again” about legacy design standards and their translation into the typographical environment. Schwarz co-founded with Maël Bächtold in 2025, the independant type foundry Bolid System.
- Type designer
- from Switzerland