Overlap Type is an experimental type foundry based on pushing new ideas. Our typefaces follow a simple but unusual rule: overlap on purpose. Through this foundry based around a theme, I hope to create a home for experimental type designers, and a destination for folks who use type. We're breaking conventional rules and exploring new ideas in display type.

Our license can be found at the link below, or in the folder with every typeface purchase. If you have questions beyond what the license covers, please reach out.
End User License Agreeement (License)

"I got interested in type design through lettering and signage, but realistically it was my background in graffiti that led to this current project and shapes my thinking about letters. In type school you learn the many official and unofficial rules that make sense to our latin type reading brains, based on the history of type. Early technology didn’t allow for letterforms to overlap when they were seperate pieces of metal. When Photo-Lettering became the dominate type setting mode, spacing got tighter. Manufacturing type today is much simpler, making way for new evolutions and new aesthetics to shine. As a graffiti writer, I have spent the last 20 years drawing and studying letterforms that almost always overlap. Instead of spacing concerns, writers are typically worried about keeping an even amount of overlapping throughout, and making sure that nothing important to legibility is tucked away. Sign painting also follows similar ideas. A sign painters “Casuals” letters are bold, italic and overlap often. In the showcard lettering of the 1920’s, it was common for people like Samuel Welo or Ross George to use tightly spaced and overlapped headlines to create the weight and emphasis they wanted. Overlap type is an attempt to lean into this rule break, to see what new ideas can come out of it."

-Kel Troughton