3 Jun 2025

Shower Thoughts: How do you create a font?

From Nights, 8:40 pm on 3 June 2025

Every Tuesday, we find an expert to answer a curious question about the world and how it works.

Tonight: fonts. We stare at them everyday. They are the mechanism through which we talk to loved ones, find our way around a strange place, and keep up with the news. But we may never give them a second thought.

Kris Sowersby is the founder of Klim Type Foundry in Wellington. Klim have designed fonts for The Financial Times, Paypal and National Geographic; and closer to home they're writ large for BNZ, TradeMe, and Kate Evans' definitive book about feijoas, Feijoa (which fittingly enough featured the Klim font, 'Feijoa').

Kris Sowersby joins Emile Donovan.

A blue art book with the name OFELIA RODRIGUEZ, in font designed by Klim.

Photo: Klim Type Foundry

Kris looks off into the distance. He is wearing a black blazer with a brooch.

Kris Sowersby founded Klim Type Foundry in Wellington in 2005. Photo: Klim Type Foundry