Method
Parameters first, then the hand.
Cast Iron Type is David Berube's foundry. Letterforms are specified in a purpose-built parametric language, then finished by hand. The catalog stays small on purpose: a family ships when the construction, the axes, and the scripts are ready to test.
Who
David Berube designs the typefaces, writes the parametric language they are specified in, and builds the editing software used to finish them. Cast Iron Type is a one-person foundry. That is not a temporary state while a studio is assembled — it is the working method.
Geometric and mathematical first principles
Every letterform starts as output from a parametric design language. Parameters set proportion, stroke contrast, and construction. Artistic judgment takes over from there, adjusting curves and spacing until the shape reads right at text size.
What that gives a buyer
A family that behaves like a system: weight, condensity, oblique, and optical size are axes of the same construction, not separate drawings taped together. Multi-script coverage expands from the same geometry instead of being grafted on later as an afterthought.
The catalog is small because unfinished work does not ship. More typefaces are in development. Each one gets a page when it can be tested.
Remembering the past
Historical type movements inform the design brief as philosophy. It is the height of intellectual arrogance to pretend that the basis for the avant-garde of today is anything other than the combined work of those who came before. As designers and fontmakers, all that we have comes from that which came before.
The Bauhaus's geometric construction of letterforms, and construction-by-grid type design more broadly, were themselves early instances of parametric, math-first type design — long before anyone had a word for "parametric."
Purpose-built tools
The foundry writes its own tools rather than working entirely in off-the-shelf font editors: a custom design language for specifying letterforms parametrically, and custom-built editing software to work in it. Building the tools takes longer than learning existing ones would. It's also the only way to keep proportion and construction consistent across an entire typeface family, rather than eyeballed glyph by glyph.