Where are typefaces being designed?
By Mark Johnson · Founder, Type.lol ·
These figures use the current Type.lol catalog and may change as records are added or corrected. They describe our catalog, not a census of the type industry. When citing a figure, include the date you accessed this page.
Type.lol tracks 1,414 independent type foundries publishing 24,450 typefaces, and places 1,220 of them in 81 countries.
It cannot place the other 194 (14%), which between them publish 2,025 typefaces. If those foundries were a country they would rank near the top of every table below, so read all of this as a map of what is documented rather than a census of what exists.
United States holds more type foundries than any other country, with 226 publishing 4,113 typefaces, followed by Germany with 153. Foundry count and output do not rank the same way, which is the point of this study: the countries with the most foundries are not the countries whose foundries publish the most each.
- Foundries tracked
- 1,414
- Placed in a country
- 1,220 (86.3%)
- Country unknown
- 194
- Countries represented
- 81
- Active typefaces
- 24,450
- Data basis
- Live catalog data
Which countries have the most independent type foundries?
The leading countries in Type.lol's current catalog are United States (226 foundries), Germany (153 foundries), France (96 foundries). These 3 countries account for 475 of the 1,220 foundries with a country recorded (38.9%). Another 194 foundries have no country recorded and are outside this comparison. This is catalog coverage, not a worldwide census.
Does a foundry’s location tell us where a typeface was designed?
We assign typefaces to their foundry's recorded country, preferring its headquarters. This locates the publisher. It doesn't establish where each designer worked on each typeface. A studio's address and its collaborators' locations can differ.
How complete is this geography dataset?
Type.lol records a country for 1,220 of 1,414 foundries (86.3%). Among the located foundries, 238 have no active typefaces recorded. A missing catalog doesn't mean a foundry published nothing. Figures change as records are added or corrected; include your access date when citing them.
Sources, counting rules and limitations
Countries by number of type foundries
| Rank | Country | Foundries | Typefaces | Typefaces per foundry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 226 | 4,113 | 17.8 |
| 2 | Germany | 153 | 1,815 | 11.9 |
| 3 | France | 96 | 1,190 | 12.4 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 72 | 1,673 | 23.0 |
| 5 | Netherlands | 60 | 1,227 | 20.1 |
| 6 | Switzerland | 55 | 668 | 12.1 |
| 7 | Indonesia | 43 | 2,795 | 65.6 |
| 8 | Japan | 39 | 722 | 17.9 |
| 9 | Spain | 37 | 607 | 16.4 |
| 10 | Canada | 24 | 406 | 16.9 |
| 11 | Italy | 24 | 377 | 15.7 |
| 12 | Czech Republic | 24 | 378 | 15.8 |
| 13 | Sweden | 21 | 355 | 16.9 |
| 14 | Brazil | 18 | 179 | 8.2 |
| 15 | Argentina | 17 | 525 | 30.3 |
Type foundries by region
| Region | Foundries | Typefaces | Share of foundries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | 702 | 11,042 | 57.5% |
| North America | 261 | 4,683 | 21.4% |
| Asia | 156 | 4,814 | 12.8% |
| South America | 51 | 1,164 | 4.2% |
| Oceania | 21 | 429 | 1.7% |
| Africa | 18 | 153 | 1.5% |
| Other | 11 | 140 | 0.9% |
Countries publishing the most per foundry
Ranked by mean catalogue size, among countries with at least 10 foundries. A per-foundry rate on a smaller sample describes one catalogue rather than a country.
| Rank | Country | Typefaces per foundry | Foundries in the rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 65.6 | 42 |
| 2 | Russia | 31.8 | 11 |
| 3 | Argentina | 30.3 | 16 |
| 4 | Denmark | 25.4 | 10 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 23.0 | 71 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 20.1 | 59 |
Type foundries in United States
- Blambot
- P22 Type Foundry
- BN Type Foundry
- Commercial Type
- Positype
- Jen Wagner Co.
- House Industries
- Justified Ink
Type foundries in Germany
- Designova Fonts
- TypeType Foundry
- Hubert Jocham Type
- HvD Fonts
- Astype Fonts
- IngoFonts
- TypeMates
- Cape Arcona Type Foundry
Type foundries in France
- Blaze Type
- Typofonderie
- Production Type
- 205TF
- Black Foundry
- Typothèque Bye Bye Binary
- Velvetyne
- Pizza Typefaces
Type foundries in United Kingdom
Type foundries in Netherlands
- Hanoded Fonts
- Typotheque
- Vetteletters
- Novo Typo
- Bold Monday
- Characters Font Foundry
- Atelier René Knip
- Dutch Type Library
Type foundries in Switzerland
Type foundries in Indonesia
Type foundries in Japan
How we know this
Each foundry's country comes from its recorded locations, preferring the one marked as headquarters, normalized to a canonical country name. Output counts ACTIVE typefaces only: the catalog also holds deprecated and unreviewed rows, and counting those inflates output by roughly a third and reorders the productivity ranking outright.
Three limits belong with any figure above. 194 foundries have no country on file and sit outside every country table. 238 placed foundries have no catalogue recorded at all, and they sit in the denominator of every per-foundry rate as though they published nothing, when in fact we have not read them. 11 foundries whose catalogue sits exactly on the crawler's per-foundry ceiling are excluded from rates on both sides of the division. Type.lol documents independent foundries by editorial policy, so this is a map of independent type rather than of all type.