About
The Studio
Darden Studio is a collective of individuals who like working together, some of the time. Studio membership signifies an affinity for the brand started by Joshua Darden and continued by Joyce Ketterer. Most members have multiple projects in multiples places but regard the studio as a kind of second home. We pursue typography that is the result of earnest inquiry, suited to contemporary technical and design expectations, and rooted in the values and practices of five centuries of typefounding. Founded by Joshua Darden, we publish work that we want to experience in the hands of others and to use ourselves. Good typography withstands the whims of fashion. It is aware of its time and place but functioning far into the future. To begin a conversation, please get in touch with us and tell us what you’d like your type to say about you.
Staff
Joyce Ketterer
—Principal and Chief Executive Officer
Joyce contains multitudes. Among her many contradictions, she is a dyslexic who has trouble recognizing fonts, and a childless mother of two children by egg donation. She joined the studio in 2008, became COO in 2013, CEO in 2016, and agreed to take over ownership in 2019. Over the years, she has become a frequent speaker and respected authority on the topic of font licensing. If she told you more about her life you’d think she was making it up.
Eben Sorkin
—Chief Designer
Eben is often approached by strangers for directions in foreign cities where he doesn’t speak the language nor looks like the local population. He first visited the studio while on a layover as he traveled to the University of Reading Masters in Type Design program; he joined the team soon after completing the program. Founder of Sorkin Type Co., he applies this ability to fit in anywhere in his work with the studio as a consultant and design collaborator.
Quinn Keaveney
—Chief of Design Technology
The first thing we loved about Quinn is that he has a life-size cutout of The Rock watching his back at all times. He is a teacher, designer and full stack developer. Quinn has a long history of building user-focused software for the type industry under QuiteType – which is not how he got his start at the Studio but possibly how he will find his end.
Joshua Darden
—Founder and Designer Emeritus
Joshua Darden would be one of the smartest and most interesting people you’d ever met — if you ever met him. Though he has received much critical acclaim, he’s been variously called, “a silent hunter”, “a hermit”, and “mythic”. He founded this studio in 2004, establishing a strong brand of critically acclaimed retail font families.
Viktoriya Grabowska
—Designer
After quitting on her dream of being an astronaut at the age of four, Vika started to look for a new mission. These days she dedicates herself to different projects, both type design and research. She collaborates with many international font foundries and teaches type design at the University of Arts in Poznań and at the School of Form. Based in Poland, she cares to the diacritics and keeps a special place in her heart for her native Cyrillic script, on which she often designs or consults. Vika to her friends, she only agreed to join the Studio officially after making sure we would never admit a member of her lifelong enemy species, the swan. Fortunately, she gets on just fine with cats.
Florian Hardwig
—Portfolio Curator
Florian grew up in Bavaria playing on the sandy banks of the Amper river — four decades later, he still keeps himself busy with ampersands. Some people claim he can identify any font by this character alone, which he says “is greatly exaggerated, and also, it’s ‘typeface’ and ‘glyph.’” A book designer by trade, a teacher by passion, and a researcher out of curiosity, Florian provides a variety of type-related services from his studio in Berlin. He found his way to us through his work as Managing Editor of Fonts In Use and helps us with documenting in-use examples of our fonts.
Robert Esmay
—Special Projects
After winning his fourth grade kite-building contest, Rob became a syndicated and New Yorker cartoonist, a painter of nudes, and an art show curator. He joined our team in 2008 as a full-time member of the studio, he remains in an ad hoc capacity to consult on brand decisions.Client List
Consumer Goods
Colgate-Palmolive Company
Crayola LLC
General Mills
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Huggies
KeepCup
Kobo Inc.
Mars, Inc.
Mattel Inc.
Crayola LLC
General Mills
GlaxoSmithKline plc
Huggies
KeepCup
Kobo Inc.
Mars, Inc.
Mattel Inc.
Nestea
Perrigo Co.
Pfizer, Inc.
Saint-Gobain Corporation
Sanofi
SC Johnson
The Clorox Company
The Lego Group
Perrigo Co.
Pfizer, Inc.
Saint-Gobain Corporation
Sanofi
SC Johnson
The Clorox Company
The Lego Group
Media & Publishing
Bauer Media Group
British Sky Broadcasting Ltd
Cartoon Network Enterprise
CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
Discovery Networks EMEA
Grupo Godó
Hearst Corporation
British Sky Broadcasting Ltd
Cartoon Network Enterprise
CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
Discovery Networks EMEA
Grupo Godó
Hearst Corporation
HGTV
LexisNexis
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Penguin Random House
Scholastic Corporation
Time Warner Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
LexisNexis
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Penguin Random House
Scholastic Corporation
Time Warner Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.