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font magazine online Issue 004 - Underware
  In a land where Enschedé is king and Dutch Type rules, half the population seems to be busy developing their own typefaces. The bar is set high for fresh faces looking to make an impact in a typographer’s paradise. Great work is not good enough; it has to be different.

Margaret Richardson gets inside Underware and uncovers a trio of witty young designers that do different in a very big way.

By Margaret Richardson

  

Underware is a design studio specializing in original, contemporary type designs with attitude and nuance.

One example, the Sauna family, called by its creators “a typeface for all sizes,” consists of 18 fonts, including two italic styles, ligatures, and five quirky sauna-inspired dingbat fonts. The typeface is unexpected. Large point sizes offer puffy, sassy headlines, while smaller sizes become delicate and pristinely legible.

The Underware website offers formidable insight into Sauna and the studio’s other faces. Here, type is not presented as an artifact or a mere sales item; it is portrayed and marketed as a creation, the result of a prolonged artistic process. Underware fonts have individual personalities and, for each, there is biographical detail.

The site includes type in animation, samples of type in use featuring other designers’ work, PDFs for type demos and, unusually, related stories. The text is informative, often amusing, and technically astute.

Bello, a recent Underware release designated the typographic mate of Sauna, simulates fluently written handwriting (in script and small caps intended for headlines). The underlying sketches are compelling, as is the informative detailed text on the design’s evolution and the repeated tagline: “Bello: trust the brush.” Auto, another recent release, is described as a triple-italic sans serif. The rationale for these varied but related italics is to provide a solution for complicated typographic tasks. “Synergize their forces,” Underware demands. “Get these three italics rolling.”


Underware is Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs, and Sami Kortemäki. Individually, these designers run their own studios. Collectively they are Underware.


 

Kortemäki hangs the Sauna book out to dry.

 

Underware is Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs, and Sami Kortemäki. The three met while they were students at The Netherlands’ Royal Academy of Art and Design in The Hague. They worked on projects together, became friends, and decided to start their own business in 1999. What is intriguing about their collaboration and how Underware works is that its founders live in different cities. Jacobs says, “it just happened that we were spread over three cities.

We don’t plan everything so well in advance; our own personal wishes are the most important thing. It also just happens that we are three different nationalities. Akiem is German and lives in The Hague, Sami is Finnish and lives in Helsinki, I’m a Dutch guy living in Amsterdam. Everybody desperately wants to live in the city he’s living in right now, so why move or travel?”

Helmling regards The Hague as his home. He talks about the city’s amenities, including access to the coast and the diverse cultural events held there, especially in the summer. He says that The Netherlands, as a small European country, is experimental and cooperative, offering more possibilities for young designers. “People here have to take care of each other,” he says.

Jacobs luxuriates in his proximity to Amsterdam’s many museums, and is constantly reminded of the city’s rich history. His studio, for example, is located in an early 17th-century building known as “West Indisch Huis.” “It was in this building that the Dutch decided to found ‘New Amsterdam,’ which we now know as the city of New York,” Jacobs explains.

Kortemäki, among family and friends in his native Finland, literally rows to work on an island off of Helsinki, where his studio is part of an artists’ community. The idyllic setting he describes is marred only by a flock of agitated Canadian geese.

Individually, these designers run their own studios. Collectively, they are Underware.

One example, the Sauna family, called by its creators “a typeface for all sizes,” consists of 18 fonts, including two italic styles, ligatures, and five quirky sauna-inspired dingbat fonts. The typeface is aune-pected. Large point sizes offer puffy, sassy headlines, while smaller sizes become delicate and pristinely legible.

The Underware website offers formidable insight into Sauna and the studio’s other faces. Here, type is not presented as an artifact or a mere sales item; it is portrayed and marketed as a creation, the result of a prolonged artistic process. Underware fonts have individual personalities and, for each, there is biographical detail.

The site includes type in animation, samples of type in use featuring other designers’ work, PDFs for type demonstrations and, unusually, related stories. The text is informative, often amusing, and technically astute.


Spreads from “Read Naked,” featuring Sauna’s saucy dingbats.

Bello, a recent Underware release designated the typographic mate of Sauna, simulates fluently written handwriting (in script and small caps intended for headlines). The underlying sketches are compelling, as is the informative detailed text on the design’s evolution and the repeated tag line: “Bello: trust the brush.” Auto, another recent release, is described as a triple-italic sans serif. The rationale for these varied but related italics is to provide a solution for complicated typographic tasks. “Synergize their forces,” Underware demands. “Get these three italics rolling.”

Sketches from the development phase of Auto Regular, the roman counterpart to Auto’s triple-italics. 		 
Underware is Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs, and Sami Kortemäki. The three met while they were students at The Netherlands’ Royal Academy of Art and Design in The Hague. They worked on projects together, became friends, and decided to start their own business in 1999. What is intriguing about their collaboration and how Underware works is that its founders live in different cities.

Jacobs says, “it just happened that we were spread over three cities. We don’t plan everything so well in advance; our own personal wishes are the most important thing. It also just happens that we are three different nationalities. Akiem is German and lives in The Hague, Sami is Finnish and lives in Helsinki, I’m a Dutch guy living in Amsterdam. Everybody desperately wants to live in the city he’s living in right now, so why move or travel?”

Helmling regards The Hague as home. He talks about the city’s amenities, including access to the coast, and the diverse cultural events held there, especially in the summer. He suggests that The Netherlands, as a small European country, is experimental and cooperative, offering more possibilities for young designers. “People here have to take care of each other,” he says.

Jacobs luxuriates in his proximity to Amsterdam’s many museums, and is constantly reminded of the city’s rich history. His studio, for example, is located in an early 17th-century building known as “West Indisch Huis.” “It was in this building that the Dutch decided to found ‘New Amsterdam,’ which we now know as the city of New York,” Jacobs explains.

Kortemäki, among family and friends in his native Finland, literally rows to work on an island off of Helsinki, where his studio is part of an artists’ community. The idyllic setting he describes is marred only by a flock of agitated Canadian geese.

Individually, these designers run their own studios. Collectively, they are Underware.