Peter Bil'ak: Designing for dance, typefaces and marginalised alphabets

Netherlands-based designer, Peter Bil'ak feeds his multi-disciplinary appetite for design by looking beyond the surface of things.

Peter Bil’ak is a Netherlands-based designer who is immersed in multiple disciplines such as typefaces, design, texts, photography, performance and publishing. The Czechoslovakian designer kicked off his career with international design agency, Studio Dumbar before he went on to start his own practice in The Hague, which is focussed on editorial, graphic and type design.

Aside from founding his own studio, Bil’ak also established the type foundry Typotheque in 1999, the art and design journal DOT DOT DOT in 2000, and the Indian Type Foundry in 2009. As a part-time lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and a writer for numerous design magazines, Bil’ak’s interest in each discipline extends beyond the practise of design to the inquisitive exploration of it.

A lot of our work is looking at this different way – logistics problems rather than just the surface of things, says Bil’ak.

In this interview, the designer talks about various design projects and unpacks his love for typefaces.