typography

Well, some of it is, anyway. I always wondered what would happen when my open source ETC typefaces finally made it to Google Fonts. Aside from knowing that they are used on over 100,000 websites and getting served up millions of times each week through the API, it’s hard to tell, honestly. Those are numbers. … My work is now on Adobe Fonts

After a year of making music instead of fonts, I’m excited to dive back into type design (and maybe chill out on the songs for a while). It felt right to tidy up some loose ends, so this post was actually a long time coming. I finally got not one but two typefaces finished that … New Faces Around Here

Choosing what to call a typeface is tricky. I’ve never had to rename one of mine until now. Technically I don’t have to change it, but I’m happy to avoid confusion between what I made and what someone else made (and for a very similar typeface, at that). I’m talking about Default Sans. I had … FKA Default Sans

Two years ago I had an idea to bundle a few single styles of my various fonts into affordable packages and release them somewhat randomly. Well, the idea hasn’t changed much since then, but I finally got around to making it. Behold: FBOMBS. Why did I do this? Well, I don’t like selling individual fonts. … Dropping FBOMBS

This is new, all of it. The URL. The code. The–dare I say…strategy? Even this font I’m typing in. For a long time my website served as a portfolio, or as a blog, and at some point it was a shop. Now it’s all of those things at the same time, which seems ambitious but … What I’m Doing With Fonts Now

At the end of 2019 I launched a web platform called Public Type Works. The goal was simple: get more open source fonts in the world, and pay type designers to do it. I kept it pretty simple, crowdfunding for what would be free fonts. Version 1 wasn’t successful for a few reasons, which is … Public Type Works Round 2

Once a month I’ll inevitably get an email from Paypal saying that “a nice dafont visitor” threw a couple bucks my way. Almost always $5. It’s awesome and absolutely unnecessary (because everything I have on dafont is 100% free or open source). It’s also inspiring. I ultimately end up visiting DaFont and get lost in … DaFont Food Court

I’ve been working on revisions to seven ETC typefaces for almost eight months now. Before that, I had high hopes for a little project called Public Type Works (PTW – currently hibernating) which was an attempt to crowdfund open source fonts. It was a nice idea, and everything “worked” properly, but it failed. The numbers … Sono – Something New

I’m writing this on a Monday, but the title comes from the fact that I spent many hours yesterday finalizing on improvements made to League Mono and League Spartan. The latter is something I’ve been updating on and off for the past year (since forking a version to make variable in 2018). League Mono has … Open Source Sunday

This is a quick (relatively, it’s 18 minutes long) video tutorial on converting an existing single style font to a multiple master/variable compatible font in Glyphs. It’s not a perfect tutorial, but it should be enough for you to get started if you’re on a mac. As mentioned in the video, this is all possible … Making a Variable Font in Glyphs

I’m writing this on a bus to New York City. A last minute getaway with my wife. After admiring the winter scene that also distracts me when I’m behind the wheel, I realize that I can make something, right now. With my laptop actually on top of my lap, the options aren’t quite endless, but … Type on Type

I was late to join my local (Upstate NY) AIGA chapter, and even later to hop on the chapter’s Slack list. Deplorable, I know, but I tried to make up for it by proposing a collaboration: a group mashup typeface. Over 30 people contributed at least one letter, number, or symbol. I have never met … Upstate NY Font

If only everyone had paid 50¢ per download.It feels like not too long ago I wrote a similar blog post about hitting 1,000,000 free font downloads. A lot has happened since that was published in October of 2013. The number of documented downloads of my fonts (compiled from Font Squirrel, DaFont, and The League of … Strength in Numbers

I’ve used Southpaw quite a bit since Allison and I brought it to life earlier this year. Almost every day, at the Beer co. actually. In fact, it is already on two beer bottles, among many other things. Which is interesting. I have a tendency to only use one of my typefaces for a single … Southpaw Revisited

That’s right, I made these three pixel fonts in 2007. Flash was a big thing that I seemed to spend a bit of time with, and tiny text was huge (lol). Transparent PNGs were just beginning to hit the web, and if you didn’t want to use one of about 20 browser friendly fonts, you … Pixel County Classics