INFO
| Name | Seb McLauchlan (he/him) |
| Born | 1992 |
| Country of Birth | Hong Kong |
| Place of Residence | London |
| Ethnicities | Pākehā, Filipino |
| Artform | Design |
| Decades Active | 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Seb McLauchlan is a London-based designer and educator who has created and contributed to a number of widely used typefaces. His typefaces are popular among designers for their confident use of weight, legibility, and expressive touches, and are used for a huge variety of applications including art publications, magazines, brand identities, websites, and product packaging. He is among a handful of contemporary type designers who hail from Pōneke Wellington and are largely self-trained, alongside Kris Sowersby and Fred Shallcrass.
McLauchlan was born in Hong Kong. His mother is Filipino while his father is from New Zealand, and McLauchlan spent his childhood living with his parents in cities around Asia until they moved to Aotearoa in 1995. In 2010 he began studying visual communications in Pōneke at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, becoming close friends with a handful of other students in his cohort, including Satellites’ designer, Son La Pham. Together this group were interested in exploring the potential of design beyond commercial work (service design), culminating in an off-campus exhibition called NO SERVICE, held on Tory Street, presented as their graduation project in their final year (2014). Along with the accompanying publication, NO SERVICE signalled the reflexive interests that many of the group have continued to pursue in their work since.
During university, McLauchlan came across Klim Type Foundry designer Kris Sowersby’s blog, which features in-depth descriptions of the inspirations and considerations that shape the foundry’s typefaces. This sparked an interest in type design, however Massey University did not offer training in this speciality. Learning that Sowersby was self-taught, McLauchlan began to draw his own typefaces, spending “many weekends and nights sitting by myself working on letters.” He looked outwards, beyond Aotearoa, seeking inspiration, guidance and training from designers he admired. This included reaching out to Noël Leu and Thierry Blancpain at the recently founded Grilli Type foundry in Switzerland, who he would send typefaces he was working on, for feedback. This led to an internship, with McLauchlan spending four months in Switzerland in 2014 before returning to Pōneke to finish his degree.
The reinterpretation of historical type styles to create new contemporary typefaces has been a feature of McLauchlan’s work since these early projects. He continued his work with Grilli following the internship, collaborating with them on GT America, which draws on both 19th century American Gothic and 20th century European Grotesk styles.
After graduating from university, McLauchlan briefly lived in Tokyo before moving to London in 2015, taking up a job at the design studio OK-RM. Of his time there, he has said:
Joining OK-RM was a conscious choice. I wanted to learn not only how to make typefaces but also how to use type well in graphic design. I think the experience fundamentally shaped the way I design fonts and approach projects today; I needed that connection between type and graphic design, and also to understand what designers are looking for in typography.
McLauchlan has maintained an independent design practice since 2019, working with a range of international studios and clients on both type and graphic design projects. Since 2018 he has published his typefaces with Dinamo Type Foundry, where his releases include Ginto, Ginto Rounded, Rom, and Marist. He has also created custom typefaces and wordmarks for The Royal Mint, Bottega Veneta, Goldwin Zero, Peter Do and Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery.
McLauchlan has also contributed both typefaces and writing to Counterforms, an Australasia-based platform for type designers. His contributions to Counterforms reflect his sensitivity to cultural context, stemming from his experiences of moving fluidly between a wide range of contexts throughout his life. His essay ‘Revivals’, which was published in 2023, is an autobiographical reflection on family, originality, design education, self-confidence, and mental health. Parts of ‘Revivals’ detail McLauchlan's experiences teaching type design courses at the Kingston School of Art, where he taught from 2019–2022. Of his approach to teaching, McLauchlan has said:
I decided in the first year to come up with a program that would allow them to make potentially anything, the inspirations weren’t forced on them, nor was requested deep academic background research. Anything that would tickle the interest from daily life to personal culture was a valid starting point. I suggested we’d make things and rationalise the work in the making. I guess this was taken a little from my own process of learning type design, but it was interesting for the course to present an alternative pathway that is not necessarily deeply rooted in academic history and builds out of personal interest and curiosity.
He continues to teach in self-initiated and informal settings, and as a guest lecturer. In 2024 he returned to Aotearoa to teach a four-day workshop for junior designers alongside Kelvin Soh. Proceeds of the workshop, which was supported by the Designers Institute of New Zealand, were donated to the Burnett Foundation in memory of Lee Jensen (1998–2021), who had taught McLauchlan at Massey University.
