Nigerian type designer launches TypeAfrik, a design community for African creatives interested in type design
TypeAfrik is a type design community that aims to help get more Africans into type design by bridging the type education gap, according to Joboson, who recently worked with Google Fonts on Ojuju
Chisaokwu Joboson, a Nigerian-based brand and type designer, has launched TypeAfrik, a design community for African creatives curious about learning typography and willing to shape the future of type design that is Africa.
TypeAfrik is a type design community that aims to help get more Africans into type design by bridging the type design education gap, according to Joboson, who recently worked with Google Fonts to create Ojuju, a san-serif typeface of an afro-grotesque style.
“Global design communities don't understand what it is to create type design for Africa. At the end, we are left with ourselves to navigate into the world of type design,” Joboson shared.
“[TypeAfrik] is a type design community [to] help get more Africans into type design… not to disrupt what exists but to contribute to the future of type design which has Africa in it.”
In a conversation with The Creatives Note on why he got into type design, Joboson shared that working on brand identity projects for African brands made him realise that most typefaces didn’t cater to African languages. “I realised that in trying to find typefaces, while I found some that I loved, most of the typefaces available lacked African letters and symbols that could be used to properly communicate to an African audience,” he shared.
“This made me feel like African languages were really under-represented and overlooked by type designers. They made support for Latin and a few other languages and moved on.”
I saw that problem and felt that it would be nice to be one of the people who would do something to solve it, he told The Creatives Note.
Working on the Ojuju typeface with Google Fonts opened him up to the world of type design, and according to him, made him realise the work that still needs to be done to achieve global inclusion and adoption of African languages, scripts and writing systems in type design.
“It's like a case of opening a Pandora box; once you open a box, you see more problems,” he explained. “Working on Ojuju, I realised that there's a need to create support for more African languages and script.”
I am fascinated with type design and I feel like I have a mission to contribute to more typefaces supporting African languages, he told The Creatives Note. “Everything has led to this point where I have now found a mission in helping to get more type support for African languages,” he said.
TypeAfrik is Joboson’s attempt at bringing more Africans into type design by providing learning support, tutorials, and resources.
“The African type industry is fresh & in need of more individuals who not only see the possibilities of making an income from it but desire to help build African languages & writing systems digitally”, says Joboson. “It's a gradual process I feel having a community can help foster.”
