Darden Studio on rooting the foundry’s rebrand in their rebellious spirit and pursuit of continuity

It’s safe to say that change has been a constant at Darden Studio. The foundry was first established in 2004 by Joshua Darden, an acclaimed designer with many feathers in his cap – he created Freight, a workhorse superfamily with a sweeping set of styles and cuts, used by W Magazine and Medium, and crafted the typeface which was used by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. After more than a decade at the helm, Darden sold the company to his long-time business collaborator and now CEO, Joyce Ketterer, who has since steered the ship to newer waters, while always anchoring it in its history. Hot off the heels of a rebrand – with a fresh identity and website – Darden Studio is ready to hold a mirror to its own journey, reflecting an honest image of the foundry. Here, Ketterer, along with Chief Designer Eben Sorkin, takes us through the rebrand, their web-first attitude, and reveals how a certain sense of irreverence laced with their pursuit of continuity makes their secret sauce.

RB Hi Joyce and Eben, how has this month been treating you? 

JK We’re a good kind of tired.

RB Could you tell us about how Darden Studio has evolved, since it was founded, almost 20 years ago?

JK So much of what has changed is really just maturity. Josh founded the studio when he was first striking out on his own. Pretty much the only asset the Studio had was his reputation, which was considerable after the release of Freight (published elsewhere). He had yet to release Omnes, which eventually became our flagship font. Foundry websites were still very skeletal; webfonts weren’t yet a thing. He did custom work but the goal was always to be primarily a retail shop, which he achieved before handing the company off to me.

Our recent rebrand blends evolution and maturity. Our previous brand, created with Matteo Bologna of Mucca in 2008, was of the steampunk aesthetic. We first knew it needed to change when Josh moved to Nebraska; steampunk was just too Brooklyn.

Our transition into the post-punk tradition was born from a desire to stay in the ‘punk’ realm. Post-punk designers celebrated elements like CMYK and the printing process, which resonates with fonts. This aesthetic is all about revealing process artefacts, a concept that aligns perfectly with fonts.

RB Joyce, what changes or shifts have you brought to the studio under your leadership that you’re particularly proud of?

JK Josh first hired me in 2007 so “he could be an employee of his own company.” But I had no design experience, so I had to find a way to make myself an expert in something else. I genuinely believe that we have the best licence in the font industry.

RB What makes your licence so special?

JK Intuitiveness is the overarching principle of our licence. We want our clients to easily be able to understand and remember it.

Many foundries centre their licences around use, by which they often mean the venue of the end product (social media, e-book, broadcast etc). The problem with that is that the workflow for all those is the same, and in fact, it is the same as the uses permitted under their basic licence. We centre our licences around workflow – if the end product is an image, it’s covered by basic licensing, but if it gets embedded somewhere, it gets a separate licence.

With this new site, we aimed to construct a digital showroom.

RB Why did you feel like now was the right time to launch a new website?

JK Now was the right time to launch because we finished it! But it wasn’t ideal. The best time would have been before Josh left, as we had planned.

RB What led to the decision of designing a ‘web-first’ identity and website?

JK The last time we updated our prior website, in 2015, our web developer kept arguing with us. He would say “it’s a website, not a magazine.” He was totally right; as typeface designers we were still caught up in a very print-oriented mindset. So, with this new site, we aimed to construct a digital showroom, a captivating space to showcase branding, a fanciful virtual realm where glyphs glide in the background like fish.

RB Does the rebrand and the launch of a new website also nod to a shift or a pivot in your overall direction as a studio?

ES No, in fact, it better reflects where we are and have been for some time. Rebrands either mark a point of aspirational change or self-assured affirmation of one’s self. We chose the latter. With a creative company there are two components to the brand – the public presentation of the company’s voice and the product line. Our new website brings the two closer together.

I’m working really hard not to let business interests override the design interests.

RB Joyce, what’s the most significant challenge for you, as a non-designer owner of a design company?

JK Well, it snuck up on me when we were doing the rebrand. Most of the time I’m working really hard not to let business interests override the design interests – that’s death for a creative company. But with the rebrand, it was my job to be the principal, the voice of the brand, which can be awkward for a business-forward person.

ES While Joyce has always been insecure about her eye for design, she more than makes up for it in her understanding of how designers work.

RB To take off from that, Eben, what’s a challenge for you, as the Chief Designer of a company named after someone else?

ES When you take something on as a Chief Designer, you need to respect what came before, while also being confident in your own perspective. I was fortunate to have been a friend of the studio before Josh left, and I’ve made lots of connections. For the next chapter of Darden Studio, I’ve been leveraging these connections and friendships to build a collaborative process on the design principles in which the studio was founded.

RB The rebranded logo seems similar to the old one. How did you decide on it?

ES In type design, you try 1000 things, you throw them all out, and what you are left with is a few targeted changes. That was our process with the logo, though we didn’t know it till the end. The more we tried to change it radically, the more we found that continuity demanded we stay close.

RB How does the idea of a new typeface emerge in the studio?

ES The best Darden Studio font introduces surprise to a genre of font that everyone thought they already knew. Omnes did this so well with rounded fonts that, fifteen years later, “fonts that look like Omnes” have almost become their own genre. Halyard was such a great “Helvetica killer” that a few years later Monotype released an updated version of Helvetica, Helvetica Now, that duplicated our family structure. We know we have a new project when something arises – either from submissions by friends or internal noodling – that will add a fresh angle in a new genre. In the case of Kit, as a set, Rounded and Sans are unusual in that they don’t share joins or a contrast regime. Instead, they emote similarly at their target optical size and share gestures.

The best results emerge from harmonising opposites.

RB Could you give us a sneak peek into the WIP typefaces at the studio?

ES Next year, we will release Gamay by Viktoriya Grabowska. It has seven widths, which makes it incredibly versatile, and is a hybrid of Polish and British references. Gamay’s personality and rhythm are built on opposites, and so it stands as an example that the best results emerge from harmonising opposites. You might recognize the name Viktoriya because she designed the most beautiful and challenging font in the Birra flight, Birra Saison.

JK After Gamay, we are excited about Mahl – co-designed by Agyei Archer and Eben – which offers two Displays and a Text. Mahl’s source material is the vernacular of hand painted signage in the post-colonial world (from Port-au-Prince in the Caribbean to New Delhi in India, and everything in between).

Darden Studio