Dear friends, colleagues, family — everyone, I am very happy to announce the launch of my new type foundry : D0UBLE ZER0. After many projects and collaborations, I have decided to create my very own, independent platform. When starting a new foundry you have a unique opportunity to start a type catalogue from scratch, to elaborate standards and to define a “business philosophy”.

A double-headed typographic unicorn

I am opening the shop with two new mega type families : 00 Hypercube (the sans) and 00 Wagram (the serif). To put it very bluntly and not very accurately, these are revivals of Helvetica and Times New Roman. Reviving these 2 ultimate classics has always been a fantasy of mine (and pretty much every other type designer out there). Side by side, Helvetica and Times New Roman start to create a specific aesthetic. A sans & a serif. Default. “Invisible”. Starting a foundry with these two archetypal “bland” typefaces felt like a very strong foundation. In both cases, the starting point is very neutral, but thanks the dblzr typogaphic torture machine™, in other words, when the typeface is taken into dark corners of the design space™ like Mono-Display-Black-Italic, the result becomes very not-neutral: expressive and recognisable.

The system, the manifesto, the rules

Everyone loves constraints. Ok, maybe not everyone, but I think most designers do. And so while thinking about standards for this new foundry, I started to think about creating a set of rules to which every new typeface should obey. This slightly totalitarian design framework creates one large system out of all fonts — which are already systems in and of themselves… Eventually, this should make the user's life much easier : everything matches, is aligned, is interchangeable, etc.

Finally, the boring yet essential stuff

Everyone loves to read license agreements. Ok, more like no one. I certainly almost never do. So my first thought was to use existing licensing models and to basically spend the least possible amount of time on the matter. Then I started to think about pricing and the more research I did the more I realised this is utterly (yes, utterly) essential. Do you give discounts to students? Do you do subscription? Trial version? Do you charge per media or per computer? All of these answers define a business philosophy, and that usually tells a lot about you.

Our fonts are free, until used in a commercial project

This is why we have two licenses: Commercial and non-commercial. Our Non-commercial license is totally free and contains full working fonts in all formats (otf and variable). Our Commercial license is priced on company size and is perpetual, with unlimited medias and usage. Simple!

Voilà!

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I plan writing very irregularly (tough word to say for a french man), only for big news like a new baby or typeface releases. But if you don't know who I am and/or couldn’t care less about type (I don't blame you), please go right ahead and press the big unsubscribe button!