Two personalities, two approaches, one common vision: fonts you can really use.
Partners in life as in work, Tim Ahrens and Shoko Mugikura are the operative force behind Just Another Foundry. Though their respective cultures —Ahrens is German, Mugikura Japanese— and academic backgrounds are widely different, their love for typography led them both to the same place, a design program in southeast England.
Ahrens submitted his first design, Aroma, to the Linotype contest in 1999, and it was accepted for publication. Yet it would take him a number of years to gain experience and refine his style. “After I graduated from university, I spent a year doing type design, still completely on my own, without any feedback from professionals. I worked on several typefaces and decided to create Just Another Foundry, but at that time I couldn’t have made a living from type design. My plan was still to become a full-time architect, and in 2004, I moved to Oxford to start work there. The funny thing is that in the train on my way to the job interview, I passed through Reading (which I didn’t know) and I thought, ‘maybe if I get the job I’ll be close to the university’s department of typography and graphic communication, and then maybe I could be in touch with them!’ Indeed, Ahrens successfully applied to the MA program in typeface design as a part-time student, and for the first time in his life met other people sharing his interest. After graduating, he continued working as a part-time architect, but eventually decided to “do fonts” full-time around 2009. His MA project became JAF Herb (2010), a study in Renaissance broken letterforms that gave rise to a softened, yet potent blackletter face (in regular and bold, both with condensed versions).
Just Another Foundry font families available to rent on Fontstand for a fraction of their retail price.