After a long, unintentional pause in creating things as Etcetera Type Co, I finally dove back in. What does that mean? Well, I hadn’t touched the site much since I open-sourced Sono FOUR YEARS AGO. Holy frig, that’s a long time. There are a few reasons for that, which I won’t get into now, but I’m happy to say there are enough updates to warrant this blog post.
I didn’t hate the site I had for ETC, but the new one feels a little more me (at this moment, at least). The site is funny because I’m not as active in making type as I used to be, and I have eight open source fonts on there. It’s not like I’m selling anything. Oh wait. Look what I found growing in this non-native/invasive plant 100 feet from my house!
I know, kind of ridiculous. To be honest, I just wanted to replace the hat that I made in (checks notes) 2019! But I couldn’t decide on a “logo” so then I abandoned any idea of a logo and just went with various levels of readability.
I’ve been wearing the green one almost every day (backwards, because I’m an idiot). It’s comfy. But I didn’t just like…redo the website to sell a few hats. But I did migrate it all to Shopify to do that, and honestly, I don’t hate it. I also had a new font to introduce to the world, too (that is over at Public Type Works) which honestly is for sale. But that’s more of my crowdfunding thing, so it’s separate from the ETC site for now.
Am I going to go into hibernation for a few years? Not if there’s still an appetite for type. More people than ever are in the font game these days and that’s not a bad thing. But it’s crowded and I definitely feel like I’m hovering on the line of being completely out of it. I love type. Making letters is addictive. I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and I still get excited as a font goes from shitty sketches to something I can print out and hold. But damn, it’s like making music. There’s no guarantee that 1) anyone even wants it and 2) I’ll ever see a financial benefit to doing it. I do it because I love it, but I love lots of other things too, which is why I disappear for a few years on end.
But I’m inspired and hope that lasts. There are more ways than ever to make, well, anything right now. But diving into Glyphs and obsessing over angles scratches an itch unlike anything else. While I was putting the finishing touches on Tynoceros here I recreated it on paper and my daughter practically yelled at me “WHAT IS THAT?!” And because her reading and writing is taking off at the moment, I was happy to show her how these letters are made, and why. She immediately understood the rules and physicality of the letterforms based on the simple marker I was using and mimicked it very quickly. Not quite to the extent of this kid. But for her to see that what happens on paper can also go on screen, and back to paper again, was pretty cool. Guess I’ll keep going. Thanks for the reminder, kiddo! 👍
