Peter Biľak

Peter Biľak (born March 29, 1973) is a Slovak graphics and typeface designer based in The Hague, Netherlands. He works in the editorial, graphic, and type design fields.

Bil'ak teaches typeface design at the Royal Academy of Art. He created Typotheque in 1999, Indian Type Foundry in 2009, Works That Work magazine in 2012, and Fontstand in 2015. He also co-created Dot Dot Dot with Stuart Bailey in 2000. He is a member of AGI and lectures on his work internationally. He is a writer for numerous design magazines and contributes writing and designs to publications including Print, Emigre, Eye (magazine), Items, tipoGrafica, Idea (magazine), Abitare, and Page.

He designed several fonts including FF Eureka (published by Fontshop) and Fedra (published by his own type foundry Typotheque).

Early life
Biľak was born in Czechoslovakia on March 29, 1973. He initially studied at the Art Academy in Bratislava, then studied briefly in the United Kingdom and the United States. Later, he went to Atelier National de Création Typographique in Paris for his master's degree and Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands, for his postgraduate laureate.

Career
Biľak started his career with Studio Dumbar, an international design agency in The Hague. After working there from 1999 to 2001, he left Studio Dumbar and began to work independently.

In 2003 he designed a series of standard post stamps for the Dutch Royal Mail (TNT Post). Since 2004, Bil'ak has collaborated with the choreographer Lukáš Timulak on the concepts of dance performances. Together, they were the subject of an exhibition 'InLoop/EnTry' in Stroom, Centre for Art and Architecture.

In 2012, he was named as one of Metropolis' 12 Game Changers, due to his contribution to non-Latin typography. In 2014, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic awarded Biľak the Goodwill Envoy award for spreading the reputation of Slovakia.

In 2015, Peter Biľak, together with Andrej Krátky, co-founded Fontstand, a desktop app that allows users to try fonts for free or rent them per month. Fontstand has been included in the New Europe 100, a list of Central and Eastern Europe innovations that recognizes those with expertise in emerging technologies, unique skills, and social outreach which have had a global impact. In 2019 he was awarded the Gold Prize in the European Design Awards for his font "Ping," a typeface that supported hundreds of Latin-based languages, and 10 non-Latin languages.

Magazines
In 2013, after raising €30,000 in a crowdfunding campaign, Biľak founded Works That Work, a creativity-focused magazine, which was published twice a year by Typotheque. It was published in print and in a digital format.