Where does typography live today? And where will it be in 2050? The tenth issue of TYPEONE Magazine doesn’t aim to give definitive answers, but it does raise the right questions. Like every discipline reshaped by the pace of the digital world, type design has expanded in ways no one quite expected. Yet here we are, observing what’s changed and, more importantly, what we’d still like to change. This issue goes beyond documenting insights; it opens them up for shared reflection.

Designing a typeface today is rarely enough. It must be showcased, animated, distributed, and translated into multiple visual languages. The type designer has evolved from being purely a maker of forms to an art director, a collaborator, and a strategist of visibility. It’s both an added burden and a natural evolution of the craft.

In Typebeasts, tote bags and stoneware serifs, TYPEONE Magazine highlights how foundries are finding new ways to exhibit their work. The technical specimen alone no longer suffices; type now lives through objects that people wear, share, and desire. This creates new connections with audiences but also a risk, when a tote printed with a font loses its original intent, it becomes just another tote. The answer, as the article suggests, lies in collaboration: inviting others to reinterpret a typeface expands its context and renews its meaning.

Another key point revolves around speed, the pace at which typefaces are created and whether they truly need to exist. Elizabeth Goodspeed reflects on how the boom of custom fonts in branding has shortened timelines and, as a result, often led to typefaces lacking a clear purpose or distinction beyond bypassing licenses. Compressing such a complex process into the fast turnover of branding inevitably exposes its limits. Ideally, this should prompt studios and designers to ask when it’s worth developing a custom typeface. Realistically, though, and this might be our prediction, we’ll continue to see type used in projects as a blend of scattered intentions.

Across the issue, one thing becomes clear: typography no longer lives only in text. It appears in memes, reels, activist campaigns, and textiles, inhabiting new spaces where it risks blending into the noise. Functionality and innovation now coexist in constant tension, and in the race to stand out, legibility often pays the price.

Still, interviews like Benoit Bodhuin’s or Xiaoyuan Geo’s How to use free tools to create a fun typeface, together offer a hopeful counterpoint. Both celebrate imperfection as fertile ground, a reminder that experimentation and accidents can be just as valuable as precision.

 Ultimately, TYPEONE points to decision-making as one of the most critical aspects of type design today: when to collaborate, when to create custom work, when to guide clients toward existing fonts, and when to keep control over distribution instead of opting for open platforms like Google Fonts. Balancing legibility and experimentation is, in itself, choosing the direction of the discipline. This issue becomes a thoughtful guide for navigating that space.

 What remains after reading is a sense of motion, typography as something alive, mutating, and self-aware. And we, as designers or simply observers, are invited to think alongside it: to wonder where it lives now, and where it might go next.

TYPEONE MAGAZINE Issue 10 doesn’t seek absolute truths, but it offers perspectives worth considering. In a time defined by acceleration, that feels less like a conclusion, and more like a much-needed pause.