Handcrafted Digital Typefaces

Independent type design studio based in Warsaw run by Maciej Piotr Połczyński.

The four dots

In Polish laic is laik and it is commonly used to describe an amateur.

The word is also commonly used to describe non-religious activity. For example “laicka szkoła” would stand for “secular, non-religious schooling”.

The use of “ï” and “:” is purely decorative. It felt like a branding solution to have the “c:” as smile and so this became the logotype.

Good Type Foundry was very much of an inspiration. The rest was just visual exploration and many hours spent in the font editing softwares, occasionally sketching.

Starts here

It all started during a week-long workshop. I studied New Media Arts in English on the course of Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technologies in Warsaw. The programme was designed and maintained by Ewa Satalecka. With my no prior knowledge in type design I was a participant of double-pencil workshop of Martin Majoor.

That felt interesting. I used a pirate-version of some type design software and over-night digitalised my first letters into a typeface. The spark of type design rumbled into my bachelor diploma of “Ayka” typeface for a book designed by Natalia Łajszczak, my graphic design partner at that time.

After graduation in 2016 I focused mainly on developing my skills in type design. In 2018, following the many incredible designers and type foundries I designed the branding of the foundry and registered a company.

Once some of the designs were “ready” to be published, I started the never-ending adventure of looking for the right name. It was constantly becoming somewhat around “naive”.

All typefaces are designed using Glyphs.
Web development by 8080.studio.

Motto

Marketing is not what I studied. Neither is type design.

The starting motto was “Between East and West” referring to the location of Poland in Europe. The phrase used somewhere on a exhibition I’ve visited.

Later on it became “Overthinking Words and Letterforms” but things changed. Obsession is never a good thing.

In recent years the growing conversation on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies led me to label the Foundry with a motto of “Handcrafted Digital Typefaces”.

2018

Back in 2018 Le Laïc: Type Foundry was among few contemporary Polish type foundries, such as Capitalics and Threedotstype. What was visible at that time was Łukasz Dziedzic, Fontarte and Dada Studio. Tekio and Type & Roll appeared there too.

You can explore Polish type design scene at Typoteka.pl.

The typefaces

All typefaces are designed from a point of zero. No typeface was ever designed by editing anyone work. Some are based on historical references. The typefaces are named using words describing “types of human behaviour” and it began with Cyrulik, back in 2016.

Not interested in any forms of external inspiration, in any form of consumption.

Internships

2021 – Helene Krieger
2023 – Pola Małaczewska

Curerently not available to take interns, although it is fantastic to receive those e-mails.

Thanks for watching.
Personal website, click here: https://polczynski.info