The Birth of Ụdị Foundry
Joboson’s type design journey stemmed from both curiosity and necessity. While designing brand identities for African businesses, he often found a lack of typefaces that resonated with Africa—either requiring extensive modification to accommodate African diacritics or missing cultural depth. This led to a pivotal question: What would typefaces rooted in African identity look like?
In 2023, he presented a talk at the UDC conference on the future of African design, urging designers to rethink how they approached African visual storytelling. Soon after, he saw typography as an underdeveloped yet powerful tool to document Africa’s history and shape its future. Ụdị Foundry was born from this vision, a space where African culture and type design intersect. “Africa’s typographic scene is evolving, and Ụdị Foundry has a role to play in shaping it,” he says. “The mission is to raise awareness of contemporary African type design through the typefaces I create.”
Designing Type for Africa
At Ụdị Foundry, type design is a meticulous process, starting with conventional letterforms before infusing them with African character. “I usually begin with familiar shapes,” Joboson explains, “then explore ways to make them distinctly African.” It’s a slow, iterative process that can take months or even years—but one he enjoys.
For Joboson, type design is both artistic and cultural. Each typeface is inspired by a story, object, or tradition—sometimes reflected in the name, other times in the letterforms themselves. Oja Display, the foundry’s latest typeface release, for example, draws inspiration from the traditional Oja flute of Eastern Nigeria, with counterforms shaped like the flute’s finger holes and tapered stems that balance heritage with modernity.
Beyond aesthetics, Joboson sees typography as a form of storytelling, shaped by two key principles: inspiration and inclusion. While Africa’s diversity is vast and undeniable, shared traditions connect its people. “There are so many things that unite us,” he explains. With each typeface, he aims to capture these shared narratives. This thinking influenced Ojuju, a typeface named after the Nigerian term for masquerade, blending references from Dogon masks of Mali and the title of a 1968 Senegalese film. The result is a typeface that speaks to a broader African identity.
Inclusion is just as critical. Many African languages rely on the Latin script but are often unsupported in mainstream typefaces. Joboson is committed to changing that. “I want my typefaces to support as many African languages as possible,” he says. However, he also acknowledges the need to extend beyond Latin scripts. “Indigenous writing systems deserve just as much attention. I see my work now as just the beginning.”
