Ferdinand Ulrich is a typographer and a design researcher. He studied visual communication at Berlin University of the Arts and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (US); he holds a PhD from the University of Reading (UK).

Since 2012 he has been designing research publications and art catalogues for cultural institutions such as the Bauhaus Archive, the Berlin Academy of the Arts or the Kyoto Goethe Institute. He is regularly invited to speak at international conferences and symposiums, he frequently writes for Eye Magazine as well as other journals. His ongoing collaboration with Toshiya Izumo in multi-script typography has received several design awards, including from the New York Art Directors Club, from the International Society of Typographic Designers and from Communication Arts.

Ferdinand Ulrich began his academic career as an associate lecturer at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in 2012, before joining Reading’s Department of Typography as a PhD candidate. His research focus circulates around transitional periods of technology change in type and typography from the beginning of the 20th century onwards; his dissertation on the discourse in early digital type design technologies, supervised by Gerry Leonidas and Sue Walker, earned him a PhD in 2023. The following summer, he continued his research as the recipient of the 2024 Cary Research Fellowship at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ferdinand Ulrich has previously taught typography and graphic design at FH Salzburg, at UdK Berlin and elsewhere. In the summer of 2026, he was appointed Professor of Typography and Visual Language at the Würzburg Design Department.