I Love Typography launches a mentorship program for women-led (or co-led) foundries.

Today, as we celebrate the first International Women’s Day since launching our store, we are thrilled to announce that we are starting a mentorship program for women-led or co-led foundries which will focus on providing regular advice on business development and marketing strategy. We are also working to establish a network of support between our foundry partners in order to facilitate knowledge transfer and demystify the font business to newcomers.

For many years now, we’ve celebrated the many talented female designers in our community but it is not enough to celebrate the “existence” of female type designers. Gender equity and representation needs to happen at all levels, including in leadership positions. We must make sure that type design is an inclusive and supportive industry, where women can lead their own businesses and set their own design directions and goals. This is not to say that there aren’t already many successful foundries with women at the helm — TypeTogether, Laura Worthington Design, LiebeFonts, Typesenses, Foundry5, Kimmy Design Co., Mota Italic, Nomad Type, Nova Type Foundry, Type-Ø-Tones, The LazyDogs Typefoundry, Debi Sementelli, Type Salon, and Zetafonts are already setting great examples of how this can be done — but they remain a small minority. Much more work still needs to be done.

The ILT Mentorship Program has already signed up three foundries who will be joining ILT in the coming months, and we are taking this opportunity to raise awareness and open the door to more foundries who would wish to join this program. Write to us at [email protected] to begin the conversation! The first foundries taking part in our mentorship program are Letterjuice, Alanna Munro, and Blast Foundry, and we are very excited to start this journey together!

– Nadine

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