Foster Type
Work included
Wireframing
UX/UI
E-commerce website design
Project Overview
Foster Type is the typographic work of Dave Foster, an independent designer based in Sydney, Australia. He draws typefaces and lettering for design studios, type foundries, brands and individuals around the world. Foster Type approached Harley Johnston Design when looking to set up a new online foundry to sell their type. The website needed to be responsive, make it easy to buy fonts, show off his portfolio of custom lettering and type work, display clearly the details of his type for sale and be easy to navigate.
The result is a clean website that draws inspiration from old type specimens; using an off-white background and the ‘teardrop’ appearance of the fonts page. We started by designing the site in mobile, making the most of the space available. When we adapted these designs to larger formats we realised we would need to create alterations in terms of content, the proportions of the portfolio images for example didn’t translate well to desktop. So for the portfolio we decided to have two different sets of images – one for mobile, one for desktop – allowing for the best of both worlds. When it came to the type specimen page the ability to drastically cut down the content was possible due to Sol1 who built a custom CMS for the development. The type specimen shows off the fonts at various sizes and allows for small type for Foster Type’s first release; Blanco. The fonts page also allows users to edit the type and format the type with the type tester.
The whole website was custom designed including the cart and checkout process. We wanted to remove any barriers to people purchasing fonts especially on mobile.
Web Development: Andy Foster, Luke Myers & Matt Streatfield of Sol1
All images and text ©Foster Type
Awards:
Merit – AGDA Awards 2018 – Website
Finalist – Best Awards 2018 – Small Scale Website
