Welcome to Leinster Type, the type foundry of Australian born Typeface Designer—Troy Leinster.
For me, designing a typeface is like creating a unique artwork or fine piece of jewelry. Each project develops slowly in stages, starting with a sketch, then drawing a prototype, then carefully arranging, testing, and improving the intricate moving parts until they all work together effortlessly. This process can take months, and in most cases years from conception to completion. It’s the building process of making a typeface that appeals to me, it’s like one big jigsaw puzzle.
With such a huge selection of free fonts available for quick download, it’s apparent to me that if what you make is not distinct, it’s not worth making. At Leinster Type I’m building a collection of fonts for graphic designers, typographers, and branding specialists, that are well-made, expressive, and unique. When you’re looking for that perfect hidden gem to express yourself and enhance your work, please consider a font from Leinster Type
Troy.
After 13 years as a graphic designer I started studying type design full-time in 2009—I’ve traveled extensively to collect my knowledge from many different Instructors, most of them personal hero’s in the type industry. I started my journey in Brisbane, and have lived in Melbourne, The Hague, Amsterdam, and New York.
I hold a Masters Degree in Typeface Design from the Type & Media program at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, The Netherlands—and a Postgraduate Certificate in Typeface Design from the Type@Cooper Program at Cooper Union in New York. From 2014–2021, I was a full-time typeface designer at the Hoefler&Co Type Foundry. My projects included retail typefaces such as the Ringside superfamily, Operator Mono, Peristyle, Isotope, Cesium, Parliament, and Decimal. I have accumulated over ten years of typeface design experience and now share my knowledge with students of the Principles of Typeface Design course at Cooper Union, The Type at Cooper Condensed Program, and through Typemasters one-on-one typeface design coaching.
Chris Caldwell is a designer and lettering artist based in New York City. A passion for letters developed from his experience as a brand designer at Mucca Design, where he was exposed to the vast potential and value custom typography can bring to design.
After studying typeface design in the Type@Cooper Extended program in 2021, Chris started a personal project culminating in a three-year collaboration with Troy Leinster and the launch of the typeface family Gardein.
In 2023, he launched an art and design studio from a shared daydream with his friend Chris Skinner called The Power of Friendship. The studio creates brand experiences and lasting memories and exists to push things in an optimistic direction—as do their collaborators.
If the perfect font for your project is proving hard to find, I will happily make it for you. From a logotype or wordmark, to a small characterset or a fully developed family of fonts, I will work with you to establish the right fit and timeline for your budget. Please email me if this is something you’d like to learn more about.
If you don’t want to go to the effort and expense of developing a new font from scratch, I can create a customized set of alternate characters for one of the fonts in my library, or an unreleased type seed. All tailored to your brand and available to license exclusively for one, three, or five years. Please email me for a free quote.
If you’re a creative agency or independent designer and would prefer to develop your own custom type or wordmark but would like experienced eyes on the project. Please email me about my one-on-one type design coaching service.
