Viktoria Usmanova
Summary
Vika Usmanova is a type designer and Type Director at Fontfabric. With a background in graphic design, branding, and identity, she brings together a passion for detail, experimental letterforms, and systematic thinking. At Fontfabric, she leads retail font development, designing custom typefaces, and manages the studio’s type design processes, combining creative vision with organizational leadership.
Background & Education
Born in a small town in the Ural Mountains, Russia — the natural border between Europe and Asia. Studied Graphic Design at St. Petersburg University and continued her education at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn.
She further specialized in typography and type design at TypeType School, and attended international workshops with Lucas de Groot, Jean François Porchez, and Rainer Scheichelbauer.
Special Studies
Deeply curious about world scripts, she has recently focused on Devanagari, completing the Practica Program led by Kimya Gandhi.
Teaching
Vika has also taught typography in the online design school GeekBrains and created a course for Controforma School.
Career Path
Began her career as a graphic designer in a branding agency, specializing in identity and brand systems. This experience shaped her sensitivity to detail and the systematic function of design. Moved into type design at TypeType, later working as a freelancer.
Fontfabric Journey:
Joined Fontfabric in 2022 as Type Director.
Her responsibilities now include overseeing retail font families, developing concepts and designs for custom projects, managing type design workflows, schedules, and team processes, as well as organizing workshops and inviting guest designers for inspiration.
Notable Projects & Contributions
Retail Projects
- Plush: playful and contemporary type family.
- Nexa Serif: a serif extension of the well-known Nexa family.
- Gonzaga: type system inspired by expressive calligraphic traditions.
- Ways: versatile and modern typeface family.
- Trixy (unreleased) – a super-condensed serif with sharp serifs and high contrast with peculiar letterforms, inspired by Soviet-era book covers and lettering of the mid–20th century.
Custom Projects
- Masimo: bespoke typeface for the global health technology and consumer electronics company.
Style & Passion
Vika’s design style balances experimentation with systematic thinking. She loves discovering peculiar details and unique letterforms, but always within the framework of type as a functional system.
Her curiosity extends beyond Latin and Cyrillic scripts, with a growing passion for exploring Devanagari. She is driven by a fascination with detail, structure, and the playful challenge of bringing “systematic craziness” into type design.
Outside of work, her passion for teaching, exploring different scripts, and engaging with the type community continues to fuel her creativity.
