Lunch Talks

Tobias Frere-Jones

Founder Frere-Jones Type
October 9, 2015

“There are few if any actual rules in typeface design, but there are a lot of trends. There are a lot of reliable directions.”

Tobias Frere-Jones is the founder of Frere-Jones Type, a typeface design studio in Brooklyn, New York. Frere-Jones is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading type designers, and has created some of the most popular typefaces in use today, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten, and Retina.

Frere-Jones received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Art in 1996 and has lectured throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006, The Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague (KABK) awarded him the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs for his contributions to typographic design, writing and education. In 2013, he received the AIGA Medal in recognition of exceptional achievements in the field of design.

  • A person wearing a striped shirt is presenting in front of an audience. They are gesturing with their hands towards a large screen displaying a stylized letter "d" with overlapping geometric shapes. The audience is seated and observing the presentation attentively.
  • A person stands in front of an audience giving a presentation. On the projector screen behind them is a slide displaying large uppercase letters from A to K. The room is filled with seated attendees, attentively listening to the speaker.
  • A group of people, sitting closely together on chairs, attentively listen to a speaker in a dimly lit room with large windows covered by curtains. The room has a casual setup with desks and computer monitors in the foreground and a camera on a tripod at the back.
  • A group of people sitting in rows of chairs attentively listen to a presenter standing near a projection screen. The screen displays a slide with text that reads, "Intimate lectures featuring the world’s top creative talents." The room has high ceilings and large windows.
  • A person in a green and white striped shirt stands by a large screen during a presentation. The screen displays the word "THANKS" in capital letters. An audience member's head is partially visible in the foreground.

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