Data & Methodology

How We Source Data

Type.lol started as a spreadsheet of foundries kept by hand. The first 132 went in during 2018, and the sheet grew to 438, a lot of them sent in by people outside the team. Foundries are still added one at a time, by us or through a submission we approve.

Typefaces and designers come from each foundry’s own site. We read the foundry’s pages, write down what’s there, and run it through import checks before anything is saved. A typeface with the same name under the same foundry, or the same URL as one we already hold, is refused rather than added twice. A claimed profile is skipped entirely.

We also watch foundry sites for new releases. A new page gets staged, re-read, and checked by a model against the page itself before it goes live. In the import, a classification, release year, or script list is only saved as fact when we can quote the sentence on the page that says so. Without the quote it stays a suggestion.

What “Enriched” Means

An entity counts as enriched once it has something beyond a name and a URL. For a foundry, that’s a description, a location, or a founded year. For a typeface, it’s been through at least one enrichment pass against its foundry’s site. For a designer, it’s a bio, a profile photo, or a country.

Field coverage is the stricter number: every field we track, across every entity, and how many are filled. An enriched typeface can still be missing its glyph count, its pricing, and its release year, so the enriched share always sits well above field coverage. Both count only what you can browse on Type.lol. Treat them as a floor.

Owner Verification

Foundries and designers can claim their profiles, and a person reviews every claim. We check whether the email on the claim matches the foundry’s domain, and we can send a confirmation link to that address before approving it.

Once a claim is approved, the owner edits their profile directly and our imports stop writing to it. Until then, the profile says it hasn’t been verified by the foundry.