About Grilli Type

About us

Noël Leu and Thierry Blancpain founded Grilli Type in Switzerland in late 2009 as a collaborative avenue for working with other designers. Although the foundry is based in Lucerne, we’re active on a global scale. Thierry now lives in New York City, and Noël travels extensively, ricocheting between East Asia, North America, and Europe. The studio now numbers eight, with colleagues dispersed across the globe.

But just because we’re Swiss doesn’t mean we’re neutral. We make type with a point of view, type that conveys meaning beyond the words it spells out. It also transcends technical excellence, which we consider a given—after all, if our type didn’t read and perform well in a wide range of challenging environments, we wouldn’t be doing our job. What matters to us is this: What story does a typeface tell? What kind of personality does it have?

Type may be our main gig, but it’s far from our only one. We’re graphic designers by training and temperament who happen to run a type foundry. The relationships we’ve forged with other designers are collaborations in the truest sense of the word. They’re essential to our mission and inform our desire to produce useful type. That’s why we make minisites for our typefaces. We want to show them in action, in context—to give them a voice let them tell a compelling story in their own words.

Services
Besides offering retail typefaces, we’re also a service provider. Our Commissions section unspools a highlight reel of sorts, showcasing a constellation of selected and diverse projects. From customizing our existing typefaces to producing language extensions to drawing custom families for global brands to creating original wordmarks, we develop wide-ranging, type-focused projects tailored to our clients’ precise specifications.
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People

Our team
  • Noël Leu
    Noël co-founded GT while studying graphic design in Bern, Switzerland. He is now traveling frequently for inspiration and to give lectures around the globe. He designed multiple typefaces with GT and supports our designers for their future releases. He lives in beautiful Lucerne, Switzerland.
  • Thierry Blancpain
    Thierry co-founded Grilli Type while studying at the University of the Arts Bern. In order of preference he likes his dog (Barley) and cooking. When not being busy with one of those two things, he reads Wikipedia articles about the Spanish Inquisition or the Oregon Trail. He moved to New York City in 2016.
    → Website
  • Reto Moser
    Reto lives and works in the beautiful city of Bern, Switzerland. He studied graphic design at the University of the Arts Bern and joined Grilli Type as senior type designer in 2015. Aside from solving Rubik’s cubes (for fun!), he’s often swimming in the local river, the Aare, and cycling up and down the mountains of the Bernese Alps.
    → Website
  • Tobias Rechsteiner
    Tobias studied graphic design at the University of the Arts in Bern and holds a Master of Business Administration MBA. In 2015 he moved to Berlin, Germany and co-founded a digital consultancy in Basel, Switzerland. He joined GT as account director in 2018. When not commuting between Switzerland and Germany, he enjoys hanging from boulder holds and reading fiction.
    → Website
  • Katja Schimmel
    Katja received her master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague, in 2018. She joined Grilli Type as a type designer in 2020 and is currently living in Essen, Germany. She gets her sense of humor from her dad, likes science-fiction books by Liu Cixin, and being outdoors.
    → Website
  • Kelly Rogers
    Kelly (she/they) is a writer/editor who lives and works in New York City. In 2019 she received her master’s in art history from the University of Oklahoma (her home state) and published a thesis reviewing post-digital publishing practices in contemporary arts. They joined GT in 2021 as community manager. When they’re not working, Kelly likes to run in Central Park, make pancakes, and add new artist books to their bookshelf.
    → Instagram
  • Nathalia Pavón
    Born and raised in beautiful Mexico, Nathalia studied advertising and marketing communications at FIT in New York. In 2021 she left her office job to travel the world while working from her laptop, and joined Grilli Type in 2022 as customer support. During her free time she likes to read, pretend to be a local wherever she is, make playlists, and learn how to surf.
  • Jonas Baun
    Jonas lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds a master’s degree from The Royal Danish Academy. In 2022 he joined Grilli Type as a graphic designer. His work is characterised by a conceptual approach, a love for typography, and the philosophy that the strongest concepts unfold when cut down to their essentials. Besides design he’s very passionate about art, rap music, and a frequent are.na hoarder.
    → Website
Typefaces released by
  • Thierry Blancpain
    • GT Maru
    Brooklyn, USA
    → Website
  • Dominik Huber
    • GT Planar
    • GT Pressura
    • GT Sectra
    Zürich, Switzerland
    → Website
  • Marc Kappeler
    • GT Sectra
    • GT Pressura
    Zürich, Switzerland
    → Website
  • Rafael Koch
    • GT Cinetype
    Zürich, Switzerland
    → Website
  • Noël Leu
    • GT Super
    • GT Walsheim
    • GT America
    • GT Sectra
    Luzern, Switzerland
  • Reto Moser
    • GT Alpina
    • GT Zirkon
    • GT Eesti
    • GT Haptik
    Bern, Switzerland
    → Website
  • Mauro Paolozzi
    • GT Cinetype
    Zürich, Switzerland
    → Website
  • Tobias Rechsteiner
    • GT Zirkon
    • GT Haptik
    Berlin, Germany
    → Website
Past and present collaborators