The Sharp Type rebirth: what’s next for Lucas Sharp and Chantra Malee?

Sharp Type has always been known for pushing boundaries in type design, but the recent sale of its entire existing catalogue to global type conglomerate Monotype marks a new and unexpected phase for the veteran foundry. Now, with the launch of what they’re calling Volume Two, Lucas Sharp and Chantra Malee are hitting reset, reflecting on their past successes, and embracing new creative possibilities. In this conversation, we dive into the studio’s evolution — from its experimental beginnings to becoming a global leader in multi-script typeface development – and explore their philosophy on creativity, collaboration, and navigating the intersection of modernist ideals with cultural individuality. In a field where longevity and innovation rarely go hand in hand, Sharp Type is striving to have it all.

EG:Sharp has definitely had some really big hits over the years, like your typeface Ogg, which I would argue kicked off enthusiasm across the design industry for more calligraphic, organic, and Art Nouveau-inspired styles. To your point about being the up-and-comer versus cool older brother, I suppose it’s sort of hard to know what you do after something as successful as Ogg in your early years.

ST: Ogg is really interesting because it was extremely particular, but at the same time, it essentially became its own genre. Some typefaces respond to demand, or a gap in the market; but Ogg didn’t respond to demand as much as it created demand for a whole new approach. So it was very successful for us, but it also became successful for a lot of other people too, you know? I wouldn't be surprised if some of the typefaces that kind of followed in the same visual vein as Ogg, like Margot Lévêque’s Romie, actually made more money than Ogg itself did.

EG: You’ve always had a very diverse catalogue, though. You have faces like Ogg or Respira, which are, as you say, super particular, but then you also have super-families like Sharp Grotesque which you can use for just about everything. You’ve always found a way to develop very functional, highly multifaceted families alongside quirkier side-projects like Greenstone. I guess that’s what I find most interesting about this deep dive into the 24 typefaces released during the first eight years of the studio’s history, aka Volume One: what does it mean to have such an eclectic body of work be unified into one collection? The title almost makes me think of a compilation album; a piece with many voices.

ST: Definitely. We really like to get experimental and draw crazy calligraphic display type, but at the end of the day, we're basically selling drills. We’re building tools for people to use. It’s imperative to the functioning of the business that we always take a step back to try and figure out what’s actually going to be useful to our audience — because the Sharp Sans and the Sharp Grotesques are what allowed us, from a purely financial perspective, to find time to be creative and keep going with those other pet projects along the way.

We definitely envision Volume Two having a similar level of eclecticism. We know we have to start building our workhorses again – that's priority number one – but following that, I think we’re always going to find those moments to build another Respira or Ogg.

EG: One thing I find unique about type as an industry, at least compared to other fields within design, is how much longer the timelines are in type. The time needed to make a poster might only be days, or to make a brand identity, maybe multiple months, but developing a typeface almost always takes multiple years – and of course, in the case of revivals, that timescale gets even larger if you think of the current iteration as part of process that could have begun hundreds of years ago. I’m curious, then, how do you think about and approach trends in type design?

ST: We’re often doing a bit of ‘fashion forecasting’ to try and anticipate market demand from customers. But most of the time, our team is just looking at each other and comparing notes, which isn’t always productive. It’s the nature of the beast in today’s design world. Take something like the retro-futurist trend [typefaces like DJR’s Megazoid or Dinamo’s ABC Maxi] – I’m not even sure it started because graphic designers were asking for it. Maybe they are now, but it’s a classic chicken-and-egg scenario. The question often becomes “are you releasing this in the perfect trend moment, or are you creating the trend?” Which one comes first, and is one better than the other? I think, ultimately, what we’ve tried to build as a brand is a sense of trust in our overall production – our audience can have confidence in the quality of our typefaces, which gives them room to explore the trends, and the fringier edges of trends, on their own.

Type designers often see someone create something really cool, and they think, “I want to draw something like that.” That’s where you get a lot of overlap. People get excited about type, and when great work comes along, it sparks creativity across the board. Sometimes there are sharp elbows and debates over who did what first, but at the end of the day, art happens in movements. We’re not interested in tracing the chain of custody with a style. It’s a cycle where ideas build on each other, and that’s just how it works.

EG: Copycats are a problem in every part of the industry but I do think it’s especially hard in type. You have a really limited number of forms to play with! I mean, there’s a reason you legally can’t copyright a typeface; too many of them are just too similar.

ST: Yeah. It doesn’t work practically. It only works in a cultural way. This comes back to something I think is really missing in society overall, which is a general sense of honour and self-respect. The idea that you hold yourself to a standard, and you wouldn’t want to be seen as not doing your best to uphold the virtues of your culture and community.

Worrying that you’re not getting enough likes on your feed or that people are stealing your ideas is the opposite of creative energy. The best work comes from productivity, not reactivity. We’re kind of holistic health people, and there’s a saying in holistic health: you have to take full responsibility for your own circumstances. Until you do, it’ll always be someone else’s problem, and you’re giving that victimhood power over you. The only way to really heal is to take it back and own it.

I think every designer or artist has experienced that rush – that feeling of, “oh man, I'm really on to something!” When you’re really locked in like that, you can forget to eat for 18 hours and not even notice. It’s addictive. I think that’s why a lot of people do their best work when they’re younger – there’s this hunger in them.

But more and more I realise, okay, I’m just going to do my routine and take care of myself. Burnout is very real. You can spend so much effort climbing this ladder just to realise that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall; it’s not really where you want to be. That was a big part of how we made the decision to culminate everything with Sharp Volume One, and now start on Volume Two. We really took a pause and tried to think about what we wanted to be doing moving forward. Did we want to keep expanding Sharp Grotesque for more languages, customizing Sharp Sans and remastering it for a new client every month or two – basically bottlenecking our production into assembly line – or did we want to focus on the new stuff, and the stuff that’s actually giving us that kind of excitement and that rush we used to have?

EG: There’s such a relentless growth mindset in our culture. I think it’s rare – and really special – to be able to step back and say, “I’ve done enough, I don’t need to keep getting bigger.” It also allows Sharp Earth to feel like your first big launch all over again, which wouldn’t have been possible if you were tied down by all the previous releases; it gets to be special again. I would guess it also gives you permission to revisit ideas you’ve already explored, but without the pressure of the old versions hanging over you or feeling like you already have a certain idea represented in your catalogue.

Sharp Earth seems to embrace a super holistic, almost ‘Whole Earth’ inspired approach to type. Visually, the typeface has a unique balance of being forward-looking but also rooted in classic forms – and it’s especially universal given that you’re covering every language and working with so many different collaborators worldwide.

ST: Absolutely. Sharp Earth feels like a debriefing on universality. It really came from the influence of spending time in Thailand, where a lot of Chantra’s family is from. Thailand is especially interesting because it’s never been colonised, yet it’s always been welcoming and a little bit acquiescent, almost saying, “Hey, you don’t need to colonise us, we can be friends.” There’s a fascinating cultural diplomacy through hospitality, and that openness is reflected in the design of the typeface.

For example, in Japanese typography, the sans serif and monoline Kana and Kanji styles could easily fit into the international style. But in Thailand, they developed a whole new script (looped and loopless styles) which didn’t exist before this kind of cultural integration. These typographic forms became more Latin-like to sit next to Helvetica and Western fonts. It’s interesting how Thai culture always finds a way to integrate itself while still maintaining its identity – something we hope is reflected in the typography itself.

EG: What’s interesting about a modernist approach, which is what I see Sharp Earth as, is that while modernism is often viewed as a Western European tradition, at its core, modernism is about simplification. It’s about reducing things to their purest form and making them more universal. To me, that’s the fascinating part of applying modernism to global scripts – it’s less about forcing everything into a Western European canon and more about finding commonalities on a purely formal level between scripts that have their own distinct cultures, histories, and paleographies.

ST: I agree. I think the point we’re trying to make is that we should approach non-Latin scripts not as extensions of Latin, but as part of one big, organic system that incorporates everything from the first wave of globalisation. These different cultures, wanting to be part of a global economic community, had to find their own unique voice within this shared stylistic paradigm. For instance, Japanese Hiragana feels very flowy and animated to me. When you have to reduce it down to fit modernist ideals, how does that look?

Modernism can feel like an erasure – a bulldozing of individuality for the sake of a universal standard. It’s like Esperanto; there’s a darkness to it, a loss of beauty, individuality, and artistic expression. But even in that leveling process, life still seeps through, like weeds growing up between the cracks in the concrete. The spark of individuality and culture will always persist, no matter how much you try to standardise or bulldoze. That interplay – between destruction and growth, dark and light – is inevitable. It defines the reality we live in, and you can never ever fully extinguish it.