A lettering archive that started as a group chat

Most lettering inspiration online comes in a very particular form. A perfectly lit final piece, a few thousand likes, and no sense of how it got there. It's useful, sort of, but it can make lettering look like something that arrives finished.

Friends of Type is the other kind. It's an archive of sketches, experiments and client work from a small group of designers who used to share an office and kept sending each other drawn letters long after they'd moved on. One night in 2009, Erik Marinovich sent Aaron Carámbula a drawing, and Aaron stayed up building a website to give it a home. That site ran for 14 years, and it's now preserved as an archive of 1,307 sketches.

The friends

The core four are Aaron Carámbula, a product, brand and letter designer who co-founded Objective Subject; Erik Marinovich, who draws letters all day and works as Big Animals; Jason Wong, an art director and half of enormouschampion; and Dennis Payongayong from San Francisco. Erik alone has 477 sketches on the site.

Over the years they invited guests too, and the list reads like a who's who of American lettering: Jessica Hische, Jon Contino, Dan Cassaro, Tad Carpenter, Jennifer Daniel and plenty more. Each guest has their own archive page, which makes the site a handy way to discover people whose work you'll want to follow further.

What's in it

Everything. Rough pencil warmups sit next to finished client work, like the New York Magazine brush lettering at the top of this article, made by Erik for a run of merch. There are Sprite cans with lyrics turned into lettering, a Valentine's Day workshop Erik taught to his daughter's class using Crayola markers, and early drawings of Roko, a five-weight display face that's now available through Nuform Type.

That mix is the point. Seeing the sketch, the digitized version and sometimes the animated one tells you far more about how lettering works than a feed of finished pieces ever will. Posts are labeled with how they were made (drawn, digitized, animated, created), so you can go looking specifically for process.

How to browse it

The homepage scrolls back through the whole archive. There's search, tags, browse by year and a Random button, which is honestly the best way to use it. Hit it a few times while your coffee brews and you'll land on something you would never have searched for.

Heads up

It's an archive now, not a living publication, so nothing new is being added at the old pace. The most recent posts are from 2023. Search and tags are fine but not deep, so if you need a specific style, say a condensed script from the '70s, you'll do better in Fonts In Use or on Typewolf.

The site is also clear that the work is "for inspiration, not replication." These are real people's drawings, many of them commissioned, so treat it as a reference shelf and not a clip art folder.

Who it's for

Lettering artists and type designers who want to see how others think on paper. Graphic designers who draw the odd logotype and want a push. Students trying to understand what separates good lettering from okay lettering. Anyone who misses the era when designers posted sketches for each other rather than for an algorithm.

Open it, press Random a dozen times, and see who you end up following.

Written by Steve Salgado