Typo-Matic was established in 1996 by Uk based graphic designer Ian Swift. Swift graduated from Manchester School of Art in 1986 and joined The Face magazine and later Neville Brody's Studio in 1988. Early Fonts such as Block Bold and Bayer Bitmap were drawn in Fontastic, a bitmap font generator, and later using the program Swift contributed to Issue 1 of FUSE, an experimental publication and font package pioneered by Neville Brody and Font Shop. In 1990 Swift started his own graphic design practice Swifty-Grafix opening a studio in Coronet St, Hoxton Sq, London. Custom and bespoke typefaces were drawn in Aldus Freehand, a vector based program widely used before Illustrator was developed by Adobe. Swift's first foray into independent font publishing came in the form of Command Z, (1993) a pocket-sized printed book containing a floppy disc with 2 Postscript Type 1 fonts (Dolce Vita and Miles Ahead). More fonts followed which Swift used for his own use extensively in Straight No Chaser magazine including Coltrane, Gunshot, Bad Eggs Bold, Sci-Fi Classic, Cut It Out and Positive Ident. Eventually full character sets were designed and the fonts were published and sold under Swift's new font foundry Typo-Matic up until about 2008.
Swift is now re-drawing and re-issuing his font collection again in the latest available formats (OpenType® and TrueType) for use by a new generation of designers and font enthusiasts, with the launch of Coltrane set for Spring 2022.
Left: Fontastic Plus Software circa 1988 Middle: Block Bold 1988 Right: Bayer Bitmap 1989
Left: Coltrane Sample from Fontographer 1995 Middle: Screen grab from Gunshot 1996 Right: Cut It Out Fontographer sampler 1997
Left: Command Z Font and fanzine package 1993. Right: Fuse No 1 with Maze Font