Counter Forms is a platform that champions emerging, discursive, antipodean type designers. Driven by typographic research, education and advocacy, we publish original typefaces and texts towards a more accessible, diverse and equitable future.
Counter Forms was made on/across/between the stolen lands of many Sovereign people including on Wurundjeri and Whadjuk lands. We acknowledge and honour Ngati Whatua and Te Kawerau a Maki. We recognise that our practices are situated on unceded land and that colonisation continues today. We seek to wrestle, reckon and confront these ongoing injustices.
Counter Forms Pty Ltd
ABN 27 667 085 145 / ACN 667 085 145
mail@counter-forms.com
@counter__forms
Dominic Hofstede, Founder and Design Director
Vincent Chan, Founder and Type Design Director
Robert Janes, Founder and Technical Director
Sasha Wilmoth, Aboriginal Language Advisor
Wei Huang, Mastering
We are not currently seeking out submissions for texts or typefaces but if you would like to share either of the above, you are always welcome to email us at mail@counter-forms.com and we will endeavour to get back to you. Please note that our broader goal is towards a more diverse antipodean typographic landscape which means we are cognisant of firstly promoting, engaging and nurturing minorities in our industry. This includes, but is not limited to, female, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC type designers.
David Bennewith is a New Zealand-born graphic designer and design researcher based in Amsterdam. Under the name Colophon, he works on research and commissioned projects focused on type-design and typography. He has done extensive research into New Zealand type design, particularly the work of Joseph Churchward, publishing a monograph on him in 2009. In 2018 his essay “A mixture of semantics, poetry and marketing.” Approaches to the Typeface Design of Inuktitut Syllabics — a contribution to Fredrik Ehlin and Hinrich Sachs editorial framework Fog Friend Font — was published by Humboldt Books, Milan. From 2015–2024 Bennewith was the head of the graphic design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and is currently on sabbatical. www.colophon.info
Robert Janes is an Australian type designer based in A Coruña, Spain. He seeks to explore the tension between historic, contemporary, and experimental sentiments. Aside from drawing typefaces, his practice involves font engineering, programming and offhanded graphic design. From 2018–2022 Rob worked as a type designer and engineer for Dinamo in Berlin, Germany, during which time he designed the variable-width titling typeface Gravity and forthcoming serif superfamily Gramercy. www.robert-janes.com.
Sasha Wilmoth is a non-Indigenous linguist living and working between Wurundjeri and Pitjantjatjara country. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has worked with a number of Australian Indigenous languages, particularly Pitjantjatjara, on which she recently completed a PhD. Sasha’s research focusses on detailed description of grammatical structures, and what this can contribute to our understanding of how the world’s languages may vary, as well as language change and maintenance between generations of speakers of Indigenous languages in the context of colonisation. She is also working to support Pitjantjatjara bilingual education and culturally responsive curriculum development at Areyonga School in the Northern Territory. www.sashawilmoth.com.
Daniel Veneklaas is a designer, born in Utrecht to Dutch & Colombian parents, living and working in Perth/Boorloo, Western Australia. Daniel’s practise centres around type design, branching out to graphic and motion design, often incorporating 3D, creative coding and analogue processing—all with a firm rooting in typography. He is interested in exploring the tension between historical and current typographic conventions and technology. Steering away from straightforward revivals, he endeavours to craft contemplative, functional typefaces reflective of contemporary culture and use. He also maintains a musical practice within the local music scene & works in printing, expanding on a pervading curiosity in the physical/ tactile mediums of design. www.instagram.com/daniel_veneklaas.
Seb McLauchlan is an independent designer based in London, specializing in the fields of graphic & type design. Born in Hong Kong and raised in New Zealand, he attended Massey University in Wellington before moving to Tokyo and eventually London where he worked with OK-RM for a number of years as a graphic designer. He has released typefaces Ginto, Marist and ROM through Dinamo Type Foundry. In addition to retail releases, he has created custom typefaces for The Royal Mint, Bottega Veneta, Goldwin Zero, Peter Do and Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery. From 2019–2022 he was a lecturer at Kingston School of Art, teaching the type design courses 1000 and 2000UPM. www.sebmclauchlan.com.
Wei Huang is an independent typeface and graphic designer living on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land. His practice is informed by the history of visual communication and technology, vernacular typography, and subculture. He splits his time between engineering and design: producing and engineering fonts, drawing typefaces, logos and sometimes graphic design. In 2014, Wei released the open source typeface Work Sans through Google Fonts. In 2022, he released another open source typeface, Fragment Mono — a monospaced coding version of Helvetica. He was a winner of the Type Directors Club's Ascenders competition in 2022. Wei's dream commission is to design typefaces for video games. www.weiweihuanghuang.github.io.
Thy Hà is a Vietnamese designer, born and raised in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, and currently based in Melbourne, Australia. In 2019, she received her MA in Communication Design at RMIT University. During the day, she works as a UX/UI designer, creating websites and digital experiences. At night, Thy runs her type design practice — Mai Type, focusing on Vietnamese localised typefaces. She is also a member of Lưu Chữ, a Vietnamese typography collective. In 2021, Thy was selected as one of three finalists of The Malee Scholarship, a scholarship fund initiated and funded by Sharp Type. Seeing that type design is still perceived as a Western-centric discipline, she hopes to minimise the dissimilarity gap between markets in the future. www.maitype.xyz.
Vincent Chan is a type designer based in Naarm (Melbourne) where he works under the moniker Matter of Sorts. For over a decade Vincent has collaborated with studios, organisations and individuals across commercial and cultural fields. He has designed custom typefaces for institutions such as Australia Post, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Melbourne Airport, Telstra and the Powerhouse Museum. He is course coordinator of Typography 1 and Type Design at Monash Art Design and Architecture where he completed his doctoral degree in 2021 focused on discursive typographic practice. In 2019 He was granted an Ascender award from the Type Directors Club — one of ten international winners recognised for expanding the medium of typography. www.instagram.com/matterofsorts.
Daniel has had a widely varied career path, whether it’s been during his time as a chef or his time designing custom mechanical keyboards the focus has always been on the experience of the end user. This range of experiences has allowed Daniel to explore design from angles others may not consider, having taken on projects involving sign writing, physical merch logistics and CNC manufacturing to name a few.
Along the way type design has always been present, leading to him spending time working as an intern at Dinamo in Berlin far from home where he developed Estragon, a woodblock print revival and expansion from a circa 1890 Harrild & Sons specimen. Boasting a massive 1194 character glyph set across 6 weights the typeface offers an alternative character for every letter, number, diacritic and most punctuation giving the end user an entirely modular experience. www.finder.works.
Chiarra Paton-Dowling is an Australian graphic designer based in Naarm (Melbourne) currently finishing her studies in a Master of Communication Design at RMIT University. Throughout her studies, she has developed a contemporary perspective of type design using elements of code and AI to craft abstract type forms in her project “New: Experimental Typographic Forms of the Past, Present and Potential Future”. For her thesis “Rematerialising Typography”, she explored the relationship between generative code, typography, tangible objects and materiality. Resulting in the development of over 16000 characters, represented within a 1028-page tome and a variety of interactive sticker sheets called Kinetic Gen Type. Her ongoing design and typographic practice connect generative methods, tangible objects and more traditional elements of type design. www.tameferalstudio.com.
Dennis Grauel is a person on Wurundjeri land, animated by an interest in typography, its shapes and its politics. Dennis’ practice is an entanglement of workshops, publications, typefaces, research and conversations. www.dennisgrauel.com.
Michael Bojkowski (aka okinterrupt) is a design practitioner with 2+ decades experience across a wide gamut of projects, working between Melbourne, London and the Netherlands. These projects have included wayfinding, textile and typeface design for public transport, exhibition posters for Arts Access Victoria and the Emerging Writers Festival, book and ePublication design for titles for Uro Publications, editorial design and direction for Grafik magazine and more. Michael’s recent focus has been on publication design, type design, education and research. Michael has facilitated various studios as part of the Communication Design teaching team at RMIT University. Past studios have investigated experimental typography (as commons), publishing and distribution as design practice and the unpacking of stories that question existing design canons. In 2020 Michael completed the Critical Inquiry Lab MA programme at Design Academy Eindhoven. His thesis investigated story-telling as design practice and a method of preserving archives. He also participated in the Futuress Troublemakers workshop. www.okinterrupt.website.
Alistair McCready is a New Zealand born designer, currently based in Auckland. His work has been recognised through various awards and accolades from both local and international institutions, including being named a 2022 Ascender by the Type Directors Club. Since 2015, Alistair’s studio; Monolith — has tasked itself with producing work composed out of attention to aesthetic and technological detail. Monolith is founded on the belief that the best ideas are measured by an ability to execute them with care and craft, working alongside an international design studios, type foundries and independent organisations. Alistair’s conviction and work in the preservation of heritage, has taken him to important sites and ceremonies across the globe. Over the last decade, Alistair has travelled, documented, and engaged with monumental sites around the world — helping to educate various individuals and communities on the importance of understanding links to their past. Alistair acknowledges and honours Ngati Whatua and Te Kawerau a Maki, the traditional custodians of the land on which he resides and works. www.monolith.nz.