EP. 02 – Aeiou Tools

First flatmates and then colleagues, Andrea Biggio and César Bourgeois share – besides their passion for ramen – Aeiou Tools: a type design practice founded in 2023.

Aeiou Tools’ overall presence spontaneously conveys everything that is part of their attitude. In their Aeiou.log on Substack, César and Andrea collect recipes, stories about their lives and side projects, as well as updates on their typefaces, thus creating a direct channel with their audience and fellow type designers.

A type design playground based in our heartland, offering retail and bespoke typefaces, research, consultancy, and ramens.

The key strength of their design approach is undoubtedly their ability to create imagery around their publications, narratives that go far beyond the context of typeface design.

All the typefaces in the catalogue embody this narrative power: starting with Untimes, an open-source typeface designed for the second issue of Raw Zine; moving on to Zetal, a geometric sans serif inspired by the lettering found on American water tanks.

And if we talk about imagery, we cannot fail to mention Shinka, the latest typeface released by Aeiou Tools. Designed with Caterina Santullo, Shinka tries to capture the look of a font used on the info screens of the Shinkansen, Japan’s high-speed trains. Going beyond the initial inspiration, Shinka takes shape as a playful serif font, with particularly round serifs and a very consistent italic.

Originally designed and released as a monospaced font – which maybe is still its most interesting variation – a proportional version was added to Shinka family last October, announced with a release party that perfectly embodies the foundry’s communication style mentioned so far. A karaoke night at Superness to pay tribute to Japanese pop culture, with popcorn, beers, stickers and, above all, the Shinka specimen printed by Atelier Tatanka.