Type of Feeling

Renowned creative director Jessica Walsh has unveiled her latest venture, Type of Feeling, a new type foundry that introduces a unique approach to typography by combining design with emotion. This innovative foundry offers a curated collection of typefaces, each meticulously crafted to evoke specific feelings, along with bespoke typography services.

Type of Feeling represents a significant step in Walsh’s mission to transcend traditional design boundaries. Drawing from her extensive experience in brand identity, Walsh and her team have developed fonts that not only serve functional purposes but also resonate emotionally with audiences. Each typeface in the collection, such as Jubel, Onsra, Conforto, and Serein, is named to reflect the emotions it aims to convey, integrating these sentiments into every aspect of the design.

“We believe typography has the power to convey emotions beyond the actual words they represent,” said Walsh. “Our goal with Type of Feeling is to create typefaces that evoke an emotional response, adding depth and meaning to visual communication.” Available now on the Type of Feeling website, the retail collection offers fonts with distinctive personalities and unexpected design elements, such as alternate sets, weights, and glyphs. In addition to retail offerings, the foundry provides custom typography services, helping brands and design teams create unique visual identities that stand out in a competitive market. Type of Feeling is poised to redefine how brands communicate through typography, offering fonts that are not only visually striking but also emotionally impactful.

Jessica Walsh, founder of &Walsh, is a renowned creative director recognized by Forbes’ “30 Under 30” and Ad Week’s “Top 10 Visual Creatives.” Her work, featured in galleries, books, and magazines, includes branding for major companies like Netflix, Google, and Apple. Walsh also founded Ladies, Wine & Design, a global initiative supporting creative women, and Let’s Talk About Mental Health, a platform for mental health dialogue. Her project, 40 Days of Dating, garnered over 30 million readers and inspired a book, with film rights acquired by Warner Brothers.

We had the opportunity to speak with Jessica Walsh and ask her about the new type foundry:

Why are you starting your own foundry?
At &Walsh we believe unique typography can be one of a brand’s most distinctive assets. When working with brands on custom type projects we always set out to create typography that is not only distinctive, but also full of emotion & feeling. For brand’s and designers that can’t afford custom typography we wanted to create a retail collection on Type of Feeling that was built on these same principles of distinction & emotion. So many foundries focus on creating typefaces for mass distribution. We decided to hone in on more niche typefaces that can still have broad appeal while really helping brands stand out through their uniqueness.

What is the profile of your foundry, what does it stand for?
Type of Feeling communicates exactly what we set out to do; create typefaces inspired by different types of feelings. Each typeface is inspired by a unique feeling or emotion. Our team explored feelings that are expressive and take you to a different place. Take Jubel for example: it is the expression of joy and celebration. The thick strokes and lively curves exude excitement, the “e” almost smiles at you, reflecting the jubilant mood and celebrative feeling of the word. We don’t focus on one particular style of typography but instead we aim to create distinct yet timeless typefaces that can help brands express their personality. 

How did you choose the first set of typefaces?
Narrowing in on these first 7 typefaces has been almost a 5 year process! We have more fonts in the making and a lot of scrapped ones, too. It was important to us to not just put more typefaces out into the world but to create ones we felt were very effective in evoking emotion & could allow for true distinctiveness when utilized by designers. We also wanted to take the time to learn from designers about their pain points with discovering fonts, testing them and licensing them so that we could build those learnings into Type of Feeling. Our goal was to make the whole process very simple as those details can be a very draining part of the design process for brands and designers.

What are your plans for the future?
We want to build a foundry known for distinctive type and bespoke services. We believe in the power of emotive typography and designing for that over scale. I would also love to see Type of Feeling become a space for new voices and designers to share their talents through collaborations. Historically, type design has been a predominantly male dominated industry in terms of ownership/leadership at top foundries. Because of this, it is easy to feel a sense of imposter syndrome when entering a space that I’m new to. I’m sure we won't get everything right on this launch and I’m hoping to create an iterative space where we can grow overtime. With that being said, we are always looking for new people to collaborate with!

Find out more about Type of Feeling here.