Kris Sowersby, New Zealand (2013)
The Klim Type Foundry (Klim) was founded in 2005 by type designer Kris Sowersby. Klim sells its typefaces directly through klim.co.nz and is based in Wellington, New Zealand. Since releasing...
Read full biographyThe Klim Type Foundry (Klim) was founded in 2005 by type designer Kris Sowersby. Klim sells its typefaces directly through klim.co.nz and is based in Wellington, New Zealand.
Since releasing his first retail typeface, Feijoa, in 2007, Kris has received numerous awards and accolades, including: a Certificate of Excellence from the New York Type Directors Club for his second typeface, National, in 2008; being named an ADC Young Gun in 2010; being accepted as a member of the prestigious Alliance Graphique Internationale (the second New Zealander to do so) in 2013; and receiving the John Britten Black Pin in 2015, the highest award given by the Designers Institute of New Zealand.
Kris studied at Whanganui School of Design and working briefly as a graphic designer before starting Klim. His typefaces combine historical knowledge with rigorous contemporary workmanship, and are used internationally in analogue and digital media.
Exhibitions
There is no such thing as a New Zealand typeface
2018
Objectspace, Auckland
The British have Gill Sans, the French, Garamond, the Italians, Bodoni, the Swiss, Helvetica. Is there a relationship between a typeface and place? Can a typeface have a regional accent? With a lack of digital typefaces to choose, and motivated to create a typeface that local designers could use to communicate with rather than reaching for foreign ones, typeface designer Kris Sowersby began investigating a typeface that would be from New Zealand. It was released in 2007 and was named National.
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