Meet Nikolas Wrobel | Designer & type foundry owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nikolas Wrobel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nikolas, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think, at some point, not taking any risks, might be the biggest risk. Especially when you work for yourself and your vision. Doing what feels right always came and comes with a big portion of risk, even discomfort, because often, you have to chase your vision beyond the easy answers in order to achieve a dream. And you know that: you know you can never mute down your inner voice. You always have to be true to yourself and true to the vision. It’s easier said than done. I firmly believe that one trick can be to take those risks with a smile, and even dare to put them in quotation marks. Because what’s really a risk as a creative, as an artist for you as a person? You are not really risking your life or someone’s else by making an unconventional decision. No one’s going to die. So risks in the fields of creativity, might be even an illusion, a joke, and the safe play is the actual, real risk. And looking back: the conventional, safe way, never paid out for me. The important takeaway is, that this risk has to really feel great and BOLD inside yourself and nourish that part inside you, that loves to explore, dream and discover. It should resonate, with your daring, playful, childlike side, it should make you smile and feel and free, even when it shocks you a bit, that’s good! It should feel like this beautiful, refreshing jump into the water on a hot day. It shocks you, and afterwards, you smile, you feel alive and full of joy. Or just so cool.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
There are a countless stories that could be told, and they all would have led to creating my type foundry nikolas type, that is crafting extraordinary lettershapes and fonts. It wasn’t easy at all, dramatically beautiful even and took me over a decade of love, blood, sweat and tears of working as a freelance designer and later creative director in various roles for various companies, studios, and various genres, until I finally realised: That’s it for me! The Idea of creating own fonts, and sell them through an own company, was somehting that I was not daring to dream for a long time, I had so much respect to this, for me, almost holy craft. Creating a system where others can express themselves with. This was for me god-like, untouchable. Yet, I was obsessed with Design. Always. My first thought in the morning, my last thought before sleep: Design. I had a certain vision of my career. But it developed an own life. My freelance role more and more automatically turned into a director role, helping big companies to digitally transform. I loved talking and working with so many people. Many stake-holders, very business approached, excellent paid, lots of talk, almost no play, and most importantly too little hands on design for me. I was happy with my life, the check cleared, but something felt wrong…somehting was missing. The magical spark, the true fire of design that can not flourish so well in big coorperatons. I was an ambassador for that and booked for that… but I was not able to let it live enough… When I designed for myself on the weekends or after work, this shift felt like a extreme rollercoaster. I took some time off, and really focused on creating somehting I truly, deeply love for myself and is extremely personal. So I was collecting and imagining all those beautiful, serene memories of my life, and crafted those into lettershapes. I was then, making a font out of it, that others can use to “own” this set of emotional shapes and to express themselves with it. Seriously, I just wanted to have this body of work in my portfolio, so I can shift more away from this business driven design to another approach… but then, when I put it online it became an overnight hit! Designer that I desired so much my whole life, were buying my font and creating with it! I was mindblowed. I just was the most happy person on planet earth. I couldnt believe my luck! So much not so, that I agreed to another high paid freelance job as a design director. I just let this huge success fall and didnt build up on this, can you believe? So that Job that I took got insanely heated and stressful — eventually, I got a sudden hearing loss. I was in hospital and like: that’s it! From now on, I am just going to do what I love. And that, became even a bigger success. Even financially. Beyond my dreams. Now I am honored to call companies like Nike and Walt Disney to my clients, among countless wonderful people, brands and ventures that are licensing my fonts, and using them as their typographic voice. For my foundry launch, I was making a little collection of ready to wear that I was shooting with professional models, and I created a font called “Grand Slang” that is boldly discovering and reshaping the essence of the beautiful mid-20th century American calligraphy. And that was really my break-through. I was building a little world around the font-software, with visuals, faces, sound and of course type. I expressed who I am and gave allowed this side in me to fully flourish. A lot of love, a lot of dreams and fantasy. It’s been said, you can not pour from an empty cup, but in this case, the cup was overflowing for a long time, so it was a release to manifest this what was inside. And I am so happy, fortunate and insanely grateful that this ressonated with so many people from all around the globe, from all different backgrounds even though. Even today I am stunned by the variety that is using one and the same font, for a complete different purpose and mood. And it is always unqiue and mindblowing. That is, a true gift. It’s magical.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’ll show some secret places, that only I go and that might be suprinsingly unpopular or very mundane or hard to reach. Others, might be extremly beautiful and epic, while some would be like “really?” But what really counts is the quality time between us and that would be definetly home. I am also a huge fan of pools and the sun, and to just lie down and talk.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
It’s the so many wonderful, unseen, almost invisible people that truly deserve a huge credit. We are one human family, and the way we treat each other, even if it’s just a very little thing, makes such a huge difference. It accumulates, to one big love, peace and well-beeing. The one stranger that smiled to me today without any reason: credit! I owe the success of my typefoundry Nikolas Type to the thousands of customers that purchase one single font, and I owe them in the same great amount and with the same gratidude than a major client that spends a little fortune for a custom font.

Website: nikolastype.com

Instagram: @nikolastype

Twitter: @nikolastype

Other: email: ciao@nikolastype.com