Tim Vanhille

How did you come to type design? Have you always been drawn to letters, or was it a more indirect path through other forms of design or creative practice?

My interest in type design developed gradually during my studies. I would say I went from complete indifference to a mild obsession. I think there was a moment when I realised all the possibilities that type design offered within my graphic design practice, and that pushed me to explore it further. At the time, I was in a very generalist course, so I was largely self-taught and had a very naïve approach, where the goal was to experiment as much as possible and find the most distinctive forms. Then I met Matthieu, who took me on as an intern at Blaze Type, and that was decisive, as I was able to professionalise my practice and start taking this field seriously.

You are a co-founder of Olympic Studio. What place does type design occupy in your daily practice today? Does it represent the majority of your creative time, or is it a more occasional activity?

At the moment, Olympic Studio is on hold, as is my graphic design practice. I am currently dedicating 100% of my time to type design.

What kinds of projects are you mainly working on? Are they personal creations intended for publishing, custom typefaces developed for specific identities, or complete families designed to support brands over the long term, including text use?

I would say a bit of everything. But at the moment, I am mainly working on building a catalogue that combines display and text typefaces for my own foundry.

How did you meet Matthieu Salvaggio from Blaze Type?How did you meet Matthieu Salvaggio from Blaze Type?

As I mentioned earlier, I met Matthieu through an internship towards the end of my studies. Blaze Type was already one of the foundries that had inspired me for some time.

You have collaborated extensively with Matthieu Salvaggio on a wide range of projects. In terms of your personal preferences, do you feel more comfortable working on contemporary or even avant-garde designs, or do you have a particular affinity with older, more classical or historical sources?

Today, I would say I have a stronger affinity with older forms and historical sources. That said, I still have a particular sensitivity towards more avant-garde and experimental creations, as that is how I first came to type design.

In Dean Gothic and Dean Slab, there is a strong attention to structure. How did you approach this relationship with industrial traditions without falling into simple quotation?

We first began by collecting a large number of sources, which helped us define the overall aesthetic. Then, after drawing an initial version, we took the time needed to experiment as much as possible until we reached a result that satisfied us.

Dean Gothic and Dean Slab. Historically, sans-serifs and slabs emerged almost simultaneously at the beginning of the English industrial era, to the point that the terminology was sometimes confused. Conceptually, do you see sans and slab as two fundamentally different families, or rather as two closely related branches of the same formal trunk?

During our research, we noticed that slab and gothic were often used together, and we concluded that, beyond formal correspondences, they could belong to the same imaginary. So yes, I think these two families can be seen as closely related branches of the same formal trunk.

Dean Gothic and Dean Slab. Does the shift from a sans-serif structure to a slab version fundamentally change the way you think about rhythm, density, and typographic colour?

The addition of slabs inevitably changes many things, especially rhythm. But the slab version was not conceived as a simple variation. The two families were developed in parallel, with the idea of keeping the structure as stable as possible from one to the other.

Fusion is probably the most extensive family in the catalogue, both in terms of the number of styles and the scale of its system.

I joined the project later to create the extended versions.

Are you comfortable working on such large type families, both in managing the system (weights, widths, variable axes) and in the endurance required by a project of that scale? Or do you prefer more focused, experimental, or targeted projects?Are you comfortable working on such large type families, both in managing the system (weights, widths, variable axes) and in the endurance required by a project of that scale? Or do you prefer more focused, experimental, or targeted projects?

Since that project, I have worked on other large families, and I think it was very formative. It is always quite exciting to see how far you can push the development of a typeface.

Is there a particular glyph you enjoy drawing, or one that plays a decisive role in your design process? Is there, for you, a test letter — a character that immediately reveals the strength or weakness of a system?

Beyond the “control characters” H, O, n, o, which I often start with, I really enjoy drawing the letters a, E, and F.

Do you have any other current or upcoming projects with Blaze Type? Can you tell us a bit more about their direction, stylistic register, or ambitions?

At the moment, I am working with Inès on further variations of Dean, including Soft and Stencil versions.