Vincent Chan
(b. 1984, Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Vincent Chan is a type designer who works collaboratively under the moniker Matter of Sorts. For more than a decade, Chan has collaborated with studios, organisations and individuals to design custom typefaces for clients including Australia Post, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Melbourne Airport, Telstra and the Powerhouse Museum. He also worked as a type designer for Commercial Type in New York between 2012 and 2014.

An assortment of artefacts in Babel Bookcase shows the breadth of sectors to which Chan’s type design work can be applied, from small cultural enterprises to national brands. Chan’s AP Type, a font developed for a brand refresh of Australia Post in collaboration with Maud, is seen on a selection of the postal service’s packaging. The album artwork for Harvey Sutherland’s LP Boy, designed by TRiC, features Chan’s typeface Quadrant Text Mono, a contemporary interpretation of British ionics. Chan’s Preston and Syllabus typefaces, respectively a reconsideration of the influential Univers typeface through an Antipodean lens, and a book face channelling the spirit of Monotype Plantin, are seen on promotional materials for the Archibald Prize, designed by Mucho in collaboration with the Creative Studio at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. And, if you look closely, you’ll see Chan’s typefaces in several of the books in the exhibition, demonstrating his close connections and working relationships with many other practitioners in Melbourne’s typography and publishing communities.

Chan trained as a graphic designer at Monash University, where he is now the course coordinator of Typography 1 and Type Design at Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA). He also completed his PhD at Monash University in 2021. In 2019, Chan was named a Type Directors Club (TDC) Ascender – an international award honouring masterful typographers on the rise around the world.