After an internship with Neville Brody’s studio in London, Cornel Windlin (*1964) completed his studies under Hans-Rudolf Lutz at Schule für Gestaltung Lucerne in 1988. He then returned to work for Brody and became art editor at The Face magazine in 1990, after which he set up his own practice in London.

Upon moving to Zurich in 1993, he founded Lineto with Stephan Müller, a long-time friend and early collaborator on type design projects. Five years later, he developed Lineto into a platform for the distribution of fonts. All of Cornel’s designs were primarily produced for use in his own work, including LL Alpha Headline and LL Lutz Headline (1992), LL Gravur Condensed and LL Thermo (1996), LL Mono (1997/98), LL Autoscape (1998), LL Vectrex and LL supermax (1999).

In 1999, Cornel created the identity for Schauspielhaus Zürich under Christoph Marthaler. From 2004 to 2008 he defined the look for the Vitra Home Collection, and he edited and designed the Project Vitra book (2007). With Bice Curiger, he conceived TATE ETC. magazine and designed 21 issues from 2004 to 2010. From 2008 to 2011, he served on the Swiss Federal Design Commission and presided the jury of the ‘Most Beautiful Swiss Books’ competition.

After a much-lauded second spell at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Cornel moved his studio to Berlin in 2011, increasingly focusing on the development of Lineto, and on setting up Alphabet, the type engineering company, with Stephan Müller and Andreas Eigendorf. Since 2016, he is based in Zürich where he is running his own studio.