Master
Type design

TYPE DESIGN

Wallace

with Kai Bernau

Wallace is a semester project by Gabriela Jaime and Pauline Heppeler, developed during the course “Tools Make Shapes”, led by Kai Bernau. “We worked with the metaphor of dancing and how our body behaves when it moves. This led to experimentation with two types of mechanisms; the first prototype followed the scissors logic, while the later one (and final) followed the compass logic. This typology of object allowed us to translate dance movements like spin and pivot, drag and drag across (sliding along the floor) onto an open typographical stroke and structure. It was important for us to show the coordination and movement of two that becomes one – hence we chose to maintain the final output as an open stroke typeface.”

TYPE DESIGN

Labour Tool Product

with Julia Born

“Labour, Tool, Product” is an editorial project, self-initiated by Samira Schneuwly. The book explores the universal profession of farming, its evolution and the technologies and possibilities associated with it through carefully curated images from ETH Zürich’s online image archive and excerpts from her great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s inventory books.

TYPE DESIGN

Typetitle, projet de semestre par Quentin Coulombier

with Kai Bernau

Typetitle is a condensed typeface designed for newspaper headlines which was inspired by American wooden type models.

TYPE DESIGN

Didot Vafflard semester project by Dávid Molnár

with François Rappo

TYPE DESIGN

Inside-Out semester project by Dávid Molnár

with Radim Peško

TYPE DESIGN

Modern Gothic, Semester Project by Malte Bentzen

with François Rappo

TYPE DESIGN

Maria Kosheleva – Selime

by Maria Kosheleva

Selime is a contemporary humanist serif typeface designed for comfortable, immersive reading. Developed with a focus on long-form texts in the Chuvash language — a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Chuvash Republic of Russia — it combines cultural specificity with wide usability across both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Drawing inspiration from the earliest Chuvash typefaces and 20th-century Dutch humanist serif design traditions, Selime reimagines these influences through a contemporary typographic voice. The family includes five weights with matching italics, providing flexibility for editorial, literary, and multilingual publishing.

TYPE DESIGN

Stephanie Wilson – Iconic

by Stephanie Wilson

Iconic stands at the intersection of typography, social research, and inclusive design. It addresses a growing concern: making reading more accessible for senior readers. Through the development of a typeface named Iconic, the project aims to enhance reading comfort while offering an aesthetic, functional, and adaptable typeface suited to the changes associated with aging. The project was created in collaboration with senior-lab, a Swiss platform dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for seniors. Grounded in a participatory methodology, this collaboration enabled a reality-based approach: available in serif, sans serif, sans semibold, and italics, Iconic was designed based on feedback and testimonials gathered from seniors during sessions held at ECAL.

TYPE DESIGN

Jamie Michiki – Dutyfree

by Jamie Michiki

Dutyfree is a bi-script sans-serif typeface that supports both the Latin alphabet and Japanese scripts. It includes eight weights and covers the full range of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji characters. Designed to harmonize the atmosphere of both writing systems through shared skeletal structure, detail, and contextual nuance, Dutyfree bridges two distinct typographic origins: the Latin typeface Venus and the Japanese Ishi Chu-Futo Gothic.　With a theme of overlap and crossover between writing systems and design cultures, the project was developed under the concept of "logistics graphics." Beyond just a typeface, Dutyfree also includes symbols and signage elements designed for use in logistics and packaging contexts.

TYPE DESIGN

Lynn Birrer – Brienz

by Lynn Birrer

Important opinion: WE AINT BOYZ. Brienz examines “Swiss Style” in graphic and type design and its legacy which is learned and appreciated but doesn’t feel relatable to everyone. Brienz is a type family consisting of 4 styles ranging from Buch to Kursiv and from Schmal to Schmalfett. A typeface that feels more human, vernacular, and rooted in a different set of values. Like mash-up culture in music, it mixes contrasting influences to create something that feels familiar but new, responsive, moving and with its own voice. Construction, deconstruction, and then reconstruction. Kisses from Brienz. Type beat!

TYPE DESIGN

Ratchanon Boongsrithong – Sahn

by Ratchanon Boongsrithong

Sahn is a solemn yet flavorful typeface designed to expand the possibilities within the Thai loop typeface family. In this project, both Thai and Latin scripts were developed simultaneously. Features from one script can influence and be integrated into the other, creating a cohesive visual language. While the Thai script may appear very different from Latin, both scripts share a similar repertoire of shapes; although they are disconnected, they seek moments of connection. Sahn aims to foster a dialogue between the two scripts by highlighting their commonalities in terms of tone and texture, while honouring their unique cultural differences.

TYPE DESIGN

Rebekka Hausmann – Equilibre

by Rebekka Hausmann

Equilibre is a typeface inspired by depictions of fragile balance in 20th-century art. The project began during a residency at Kunstbibliothek Sitterwerk with a study of how artists capture moments of tension, just before collapse. To translate these observations into type design, the designer explored eight approaches including contradicting counters, extreme shapes and physical instability. The final typeface takes a subtler path: vertical stress, condensed proportions and tense curves provoke slight discomfort. The italic style’s harsh slant further reflects instability. Equilibre is not a neutral container, but a strong voice for long texts and expressive italic highlights.

TYPE DESIGN

Chandra Sperle – Gradual

by Chandra Sperle

How we perceive and interpret the world is influenced by scale—by the distance, size, and the spatial relationship between observer and object. This project explores how scale influences meaning and perception through an experimental dialogue of type design, photography, and visual art. At its core is Gradual, a typeface that remixes Ladislas Mandel’s Galfra and Adrian Frutiger’s Roissy, reversing their original scale of habitat. In collaboration with artist Pai Litzenberger and the design duo Scinema (Leidy Karina Gómez Montoya and Tonda Budszus), the project expands the typographic concept of optical sizes from nano to macro dimensions. Together, Gradual offer a multi-layered reflection on our spatial interactions with the world.

TYPE DESIGN

Giulia Zanzarella – Minut

by Giulia Zanzarella

How long does a Minut last? Time is standardized, but its experience follows no rules, being mathematically equal for all, but felt differently by each. Minut explores this gap: a play on words between “minute” and “unit,” it is a type family built around four styles defined by width constraints—72 units (proportional), 9, 3, and 1 (monospace). Each style reflects a degree of mechanization, inspired by unit systems used in proportional spacing typewriters. Celebrating the beauty of constraint, the characters of Minut find their own rhythm, generating textures with subtle variations. Rather than being interpolated, each style of Minut is drawn individually, prioritizing the overall texture of each font—going against the limitless flexibility of digital design.

TYPE DESIGN

Jonathan Bruun – Sekvens

by Jonathan Bruun

Sekvens is a typeface family of five weights with corresponding italics shaped by a continuous dialogue between perceptions of time and the design of letterforms. Revisiting early digital aesthetics and humanist sans serifs, Sekvens balances a standardized structure with subtle, idiosyncratic details. It navigates the familiar, embracing defaults, norms, and conventions, while simultaneously questioning how the inherited connotations of these forms are aging within the current landscape of type design. Embracing this duality, Sekvens represents both a documentation of past tendencies and a search for new proposals.

TYPE DESIGN

Lucas Portron – Dialectic

by Lucas Portron

Dialectic is a multi-script typeface family supporting, Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, designed to allow different writing systems to coexist in harmony. Developed side by side, the scripts share a common design foundation, encouraging a visual dialogue that respects their individual identities. With seven weights and matching italics, the family explores a balance between controlled visual disruption, within the letterforms themselves, and a consistent text color. These subtle tensions challenge established norms of legibility and reading habits, opening a critical reflection on legibility and readability. In doing so, Dialectic invites us to reconsider our relationship with text and how we engage with written form.

TYPE DESIGN

Xiang-Xiang Lee – Revue

by Xiang-Xiang Lee

Revue is an expressive, versatile typeface family inspired by the drama and typographic flair of 19th-century theatre posters. Its 12 serif styles—Romans and Italics—are grouped by contrast: High, Low, and Slab. Each shares a stem width within its weight, exploring contrast, serif shape, and proportion to evoke distinct tones and dramatic tension. The family also includes a Grotesk, based on the Slab’s structure and tuned to echo its rhythm in sans form, and a Hanzi Slab, an experimental serif-gothic hybrid that brings the same sense of character across scripts. An Open Ending is a photo-text book where a photographer and a type designer offer parallel interpretations of moment and mood. The reader is invited into a shared performance shaped by rhythm, reading, perception, and pause.

TYPE DESIGN

Yearbook

with Nejc Prah

In October 2021, the Master Type Design welcomed Nejc Prah for a one-week workshop. Being in a masters program is a special time, both personally and professionally. To keep a memory of it, the students were invited to create a Yearbook. First years and second years were assigned into pairs and asked to make a contribution about their partner. Drawings, collages, letterings, doodles, patterns, 3D-modelling, … Experimentations and explorations were encouraged. It resulted into a colourful and joyous publication, displaying a diversity of characters and approaches. After a collaborative effort for the production on the last day, each student got a copy, as a memory.

TYPE DESIGN

Böcklin Zoo

with Karl Nawrot

Workshop with Karl Nawrot. Handpainted compositions inspired by the typeface Arnold Böcklin from Schriftgiesserei Otto Weisert (1904).

TYPE DESIGN

All Over

with MATD, Job Wouters (Letman)

Workshop with Dutch designer Job Wouters.

TYPE DESIGN

Workshop with studio NORM

with Dimitri Bruni (NORM), Manuel Krebs (NORM)

Workshop with Zürich based studio NORM on the theory, the design and the use of stencil typefaces.

TYPE DESIGN

Workshop with Thibault Brevet

with Thibault Brevet

Workshop with Thibault Brevet.

TYPE DESIGN

Type Poster Workshop with Dafi Kühne

with Dafi Kühne, MATD

TYPE DESIGN

Atlas of Letterforms, workshop with Radim Peško

with MATD, Radim Peško

TYPE DESIGN

Sign Painting Workshop with Alaric Garner

with Alaric Garnier, MATD