About
Formist is a publisher, a type foundry and a design studio. Driven by the belief that communication is as much about feeling as it is about clarity, Formist utilise their unique cultural experience to develop rigorous solutions that unify content, concept and design. Every Formist project exhibits a commitment to research, detail and quality.
Formist Foundry is a commercial outlet for unique and expressive typefaces; Formist Editions is the publishing arm committed to creating high quality books, prints and artworks for lovers of art and design; and Formist Studio, is design practice that develops bespoke solutions for organisations and institutions.
Formist has over 25 years experience as an industry leader specialising in design for leading cultural and commercial organisations including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Candalepas Associates, Seoul Museum of Art, Entertainment One, Hopscotch Films, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, JCDecaux, Sydney Opera House, Warp Records, Powerhouse Museum, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney Film Festival, Universal Music, Artspace Sydney, University of Technology Sydney and the Venice Art Biennale.
Formist provides conceptual advice, as well as publishing and design services to institutions and enterprises with a like-minded approach to culture.
Enquiries are welcome.
If you would like to keep up to date with our upcoming projects, please sign up for our occasional emails so you're the first to know the latest. You can follow our story on Instagram via
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@formist_foundry.
Formist Foundry
Formist Foundry strive to be progressive and inventive by challenging expectations of what type design can be. While we are concerned with the integrity of typographic communications, we understand that creativity, personality and abstraction are equally as important as style, clarity and legibility. We employ our intuition and rigour to produce typography that we hope you will find useful and meaningful.
Mark Gowing
Publisher and Creative Director
Mark Gowing is an artist, designer and publisher working in Gadigal/Wangal country, Sydney, Australia. He is the director of Formist, a publisher, type foundry and design studio, which specialises in books, typefaces and cultural commissions. Gowing is also co-founder of the groundbreaking music arts organisation Longform Editions. With a practice spanning more than 35 years, Gowing has produced projects for leading organisations and institutions with a passionate focus on visual art and language, design, film and music. In 2018 Gowing’s work was featured in the publication The History of Graphic Design. Vol. 2. 1960–Today and his poster design is surveyed in the publication Mark Gowing: Inside the Oblong. He has been honoured with solo exhibitions at the 22nd International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, Poland, the Divieto d’Affissione in Turin, Italy, and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Gowing is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and his work is held in numerous institutional collections including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, USA.
