David Quay

For the next seven years he worked in various leading London design companies as a packaging and graphic designer. In 1975 he became a freelance designer specializing in lettering and logotypes. In 1983 he formed with Paul Gray, Quay & Gray.

In 1987 he formed his own company David Quay Design to concentrate on graphic and typographic design. He also began to design his first text typefaces which were subsequently released by The International Typeface Corporation in New York and H Berthold ag in Germany.

Since 1989 he has worked closely with Freda Sack on a broad range of type projects. In 1990 they co-founded The Foundry, to design, manufacture and market their own exclusive typefaces designed by the partners to designers and businesses internationally. The Foundry also developed custom typefaces, marks and logotypes for companies internationally those included: a special typeface to be readable at very small sizes for Yellow pages, corporate fonts for BG plc (British Gas) NatWest Bank and signage typefaces for both RailTrack in the UK and the Lisbon Metro system in Portugal. Yellow Pages typeface received a D&AD Silver Award.

He was elected a Fellow of the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) in 1992 and was joint chair of the ISTD from 1994–99. He is involved as an accessor on the ISTD yearly student assessment scheme and was on twice on the panel of international judges of the ISTD TypoGraphic Awards 92.

David Quay lectures extensively in typography and type design both in the UK and internationally. He has had a long association with the London School of Printing and has been a visiting lecturer at the Danmarks Designskole in Copenhagen, Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach and for 3 years Professor of typography and book design at the Fachhochschule Mainz. In 2000 he moved to Wiesbaden and in 2001 to Amsterdam. Recently he taught typography and design at the Academie St. Joost, Hogeschool Brabant.

David Quay now works as an independent type designer and graphic designer for clients internationally and designs new typefaces for The Foundry in London. He lives and works happily from his studio in Amsterdam.