Dinamo is another type foundry from Switzerland, founded by Fabian Harb and Johannes Breyer in Basel. After moving to Berlin for a few years, they now operate from different cities and via a network of satellite members across the globe. They don’t see themselves as a foundry only but take on various projects from graphic design to app design and beyond. Dinamo also runs a small shop, Dinamo Hardware, where they transform type-thinking into tangible objects.
One of their most important and popular type designs is Favorit, which has been used by the independent label Warp records (home to Aphex Twin and Brian Eno, for example) as their official typeface. The sans-serif feels somewhat familiar but still different and interesting. Fabian Harb describes its DNA like this: slightly “mechanical” in character, “low contrast” in terms of the way in which it is drawn, a real “workhorse” in that it has the ability to handle any content, and, very importantly, having a “humorous touch” — the odd, toothless uncle you meet at a birthday party who always tells the best jokes.
Their catalogue of fonts includes various designs from sans (Repro, Monument Grotesk) to serif (Laica) to mono (Diatype Rounded Mono) as well as more experimental typefaces like Grow or Maxi. Gravity also stands out as a playful and powerful headline typeface.
Dinamo also lets you customize your font files with their Font Customizer™ before checkout so that you can select which alternate character like double or single story a should be the default for your fonts. Really nice.
They offer variable fonts for most of their typefaces and you can download trial fonts for free.
Also check out their great tutorial on how to use (and animate!) variable fonts.
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This post is part of the Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar 2022
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