Peter Biľak

Peter Biľak (born 1973 in Czechoslovakia) is a Slovakian graphic and typeface designer, based in The Hague, The Netherlands. He works in the field of editorial, graphic, and type design, teaches typeface design at the postgraduate course Type&Media at the KABK, Royal Academy of Art (The Hague),. He started Typotheque in 1999, Dot Dot Dot in 2000, Indian Type Foundry in 2009, Works That Work magazine in 2012, and Fontstand, in 2015. He is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale.) and lectures on his work internationally. He is a writer for numerous design magazines and frequently contributes writing and design to books and publications that include Print, Emigre, Eye (magazine), Items, tipoGrafica, Idea (magazine), Abitare and Page.

He has designed several fonts including FF Eureka (published by Fontshop) and Fedra (published by his own type foundry Typotheque). Presently, he is working on a broad range of cultural and commercial projects.

Bil’ak’s interest in each discipline extends beyond the practise of design to the inquisitive exploration of it.

Biľak’s biggest influences were the places he has lived. He was born in Czechoslovakia, where the regime changed when he turned sixteen. He learned that many things he was taught in school turned out to be half-truths, and that it was easy is to manipulate information. He started art at the Art Academy in Bratislava, then studied briefly in the UK and US. Later, he went to Atelier National de Création Typographique in Paris to get his Masters, and Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Netherlands for his postgraduate laureate. Those places made him question what he already knew. Travelling during that time made him more independent and allowed him to see things from multiple perspectives.

As a student in Czechoslovakia, Biľak was often frustrated by the fact that his language wasn’t supported by most typefaces. Even though it’s a Latin-based script, “all the accents weren’t available for Czech or Slovak,” he said. “I had to make my own fonts to be able to design books.” He went on to develop typefaces for Russian and Greek, but the real breakthrough came with Arabic—a language he knew nothing about. This became the roots of his type-designing career.

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