Font of the Week #35: Electroface

   Hello! I am returning to this blog after a month hiatus. I want to thank you for hanging in with me during my absence. The Font of the Week feature should now resume normally.

Electroface

   This week’s featured font is “Electroface” and is part of the Jukebox collection available from Veer. This font is a digital revival of an old typeface from the 1970s. I was unable to find a great deal of information on the original font as it appeared in an old Dover book on typefaces.

   What drew me to this typeface was its interesting geometric forms that seem to suggest electrical circuitry and transistor boards. That is also what inspired its name.

   It also seems to have a certain 1970s “disco funk” look to it that I find appealing. As a small child growing up in the late 1970s, I can remember typefaces like this in use on signs and various commercial products, so for me it has that retro nostalgia to it as well. 

   While the cut through lines in the letters ares suggestive of electrical circuits, the rounded corners and counterspaces give the fot an organic feeling that keeps it from feeling too severe. 

   This font would be the perfect typeface for any design that needs a retro feeling suggestive of the 1970s or early 1980s as well as possibly even a “constructivist” aspect to it. 

   As a digital revival, I began by reproducing the letters that appeared in the old Dover book in Adobe Illustrator and then importing them into FontLab. I then filled in the needed characters to make a full font such as accented letters and such. It is always fun to be able to add my own flair into a typeface so it is personalized despite being a digital revival.

   Electroface is now available in OpenType from Veer.com.

Font of the Week #34: Eastern Star

   Hello and welcome back! For this week’s Font of the Week we will be taking a closer look at “Eastern Star” from the Jukebox library…

Eastern Star

   This font was designed in 2006 and was inspired by a handlettered sample in an older how-to book from the 1940s on hand lettering for graphic artists. That particular book, I special ordered from a bookseller in Britain.

   I enjoyed both the calligraphic and asian qualities that this font has. It seems as appropriate for a Christmas card as it does for a menu at a Chinese or Polynesian restaurant. That is due to its “eastern” design elements, hence the name I gave it.

   For me, the font seems to call up images of nomads crossing the desert on camels. Perhaps to head east to trade with spices Asia or west to the holy land? Either way, there is a lot of versatility in this typeface for use on themed designs…

   For me type has always had an emotional connection and Eastern Star is no exception. The design of a typeface must evoke a feeling that relates to it. That is one of the reasons I am more geared toward designing display or headline fonts. Therein lies the wealth of emotion that type can convey.

   The font was originally released as a PostScript font but has now been updated to OpenType format. Eastern Star is available from Veer.com
 

Font of the Week #33: Dulcimer

Hello and welcome back again! I hope you are having a good Wednesday so far. This week's font of the week feature will be taking a closer look at my typeface called “Dulcimer”.

Dulcimer

   This font was inspired by a small sample of lettering in a how to book on calligraphy. Since there were only a few letters in the original sample, I took on the challenge of designing a full typeface from them with a sense of excitement!

   What I like about the design of this font is the thin, almost wispy letterforms. It goes against the grain of most typical “calligraphy” style fonts but still retains that hand-drawn organic quality that they are known for. I particularly like the variety of the lowercase letters. Most are designed in a more typical printed way while some have a more scripty design to them like the lowercase r and s. Allowing this intermixing while still retaining a cohesive design gives the font a definite feeling that it was hand drawn. The way letters widen on many of the end strokes as well as the small spaces between parts of the letters, gives the font a vaguely Asian feel with out being too overt about it.

   These qualities make Dulcimer a very versatile font that can work in a number of different applications.

   A dulcimer is a musical instrument that can be plucked or played with a hammer. It has a very unique sound quality to it that is very distinctive and lovely. It seemed the perfect name for this font. I remember the first time I ever saw a real dulcimer as a child. We were on vacation in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and there was a man who hand made them. He had a small shop in town and we happend to walk past it. He was playing outide and it was an amazing sound! I began working on the Dulcimer font in January of 2005. It was released as part of the Jukebox library at Veer later that year and is now available in OpenType.

 

Font of the Week #32: Debonair

   Hello and welcome to the first Font of the Week feature for November! This week we will take a closer look at “Debonair”—one of the earliest Jukebox fonts.

Debonair

   Debonair is a digital revival, meaning the Jukebox version is a recreation of an old typeface that was previously only available as a photo-typositing font. Once photo lettering went the way of the Dodo when computers and PostScript came along many of these older fonts were forgotten or fell out of use. Designers weren’t able to use them because photo lettering was gone and they hadn’t been converted into digital fonts for the computer.

   It has been something of a fun task for us digital typeface designers to bring these old fonts back to life again and make them available to designers of today. Debonair is a digital revival of an old script typeface called “Diane” which was originally designed by Roger Excoffon for the Olive Type Foundry in 1956. I created the digital version of this previously unavailable font in 2001 as part of the original JAW Fonts library which was later rebranded as Jukebox in 2003.

   What captured me about this interesting script font is the angular elements in the lowercase letters. Usually script fonts are meant to imitate the free-flowing forms of handwritten lettering, but in the case of Debonair, the lower case letter’s downward curves are angled off at a point…this gives the font a slightly edgy feel that is unique among formal scripts.

   Working from samples in an old type catalog, I traced each letter in Illustrator and then imported them into Fontographer to build the font up.

   Debonair is a Copperplate (or Spencerian) script as they are sometimes called. These elegant script fonts are based on lettering from the 18th Century and have always been associated with formality and refinement. They are perfect for wedding invitations and anything that needs a classy and elegant feel.

   As the Jukebox library was completely converted to OpenType in 2013, Debonair is now available as an OpenType font from Veer. 

Font of the Week #31: Dandelion

   Hello again! It’s time for another Font of the Week. This time we are zooming back to the 1960s and early 1970s with Dandelion!

Dandelion

   This font is a digital revival of an old photo-lettering typeface from the late 1960s. The sample I used to create Dandelion for Jukebox was found in an old Dover book.

   What I loved about this typeface was its 1960s and early 1970s feeling which reminded me of classic old TV shows, Kool-Aid and Jiffy Pop and all those fun things I remember as a kid that had fonts like these on them. The softer rounded forms of the lettering with its slight italic slant give the font a playful and innocent feeling.

   The shapes of the letters flare out at the bottom suggestive of bell-bottom pants. Those were a popular fashion at the time of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Display fonts like these are always the most fun to design because they contain such vitality and life. When something connects in a personal way it always carries much more weight.

   I also like the rounded bottoms that appear on some of the letterforms…like an overinflated tire which gives this typeface a cartoony and happy-go-lucky feeling. I can almost hear the letters giggling while riding on their Big Wheel.

   I decided to name it Dandelion since the sunny yellow flowers always remind me of my childhood and innocent times when blowing on the dandelion seeds was the best thing in the world.

   Dandelion was created in 2005 as part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer. The font is now available in OpenType format.

 

Jukebox Font Sighting! Adage Script

   Hello! Another fun Jukebox font sighting to report! I just receved this email advertisement from Lulu which is a print-on-demand company.

   Here they are using Adage Script to promote their Oktoberfest sale.

   Adage Script can be purchased from Veer. If you are curious to learn more about this font, please read my previous blog post on the typeface. Enjoy!

Font of the Week #30: Cynthia June

   Good morning and Happy Tuesday! Time again for a new Font of the Week. Today the featured font is Cynthia June, an elegant script typeface…

Cynthia June

   Cynthia June is an formal script typeface that falls into the font style category known as “Spencerian Script”. This refers to the Platt Rogers Spencer, the man who set this style of writing as the American standard in the 19th century. This style of script face is a direct extension of old fashioned quill pen writing and was considered to be a sign of refinement and class. You will also sometimes see this style referred to as Copperplate Script, since the original books that taught children to write this way, were printed from engraved copper plates.

   

 Designed in 2010, Cynthia June was inspired by a hand lettered alphabet found in an old 1930s book on lettering for the commercial arts, and was actually created from an amalgam of three different samples. There are two faces in the Cynthia June family, Cynthia June One and Two. The “Two” font has more elaborate capital letters with flowing swashes and looped acsenders on some of the lower-case letters.

   I have always loved fonts like these because they invoke feelings of such elegance and refinement. I can always picture them being used on the invitation to a royal ball. These typefaces are of course perfect for just that purpose, and can be used on wedding invitations and other formal occasions. While all script fonts are by their nature warmer and more inviting, Spencerian script fonts are the most formal kind…They give the air of a formal party rather than a casual get together.

   Cynthia June is named after a dear friend of mine who I met through the fun hobby of vintage Halloween collectibles. She is as classy and beautiful as the font, so she was the perfect namesake for this typeface.

   Cynthia June is available from my website in OpenType format and is part of the Jukebox library.

Font of the Week #29: Cousin Beth

   Good day to you! I hope you had a nice Columbus Day holiday and a terrific weekend. This week’s font feature is “Cousin Beth”.

Cousin Beth

   This is a fun and light hearted font that was inspired by a hand lettered album cover from the 1950s. While browsing in an antique store one day a few years ago, I ran across an old LP for sale of Hawaiian Music. The classic Mid-Century Modern cover had lettering which I used as the springboard to create my Cousin Beth font.

   As with many of my Jukebox fonts, I named this one after someone who is special in my life. I have a real cousin on my mom’s side named Beth and being born only seven months apart we have always been close friends since we were small children.

   When I choose to name a font after a real person, I always try to select a design that seems to fit with their personality. My cousin is feminine and sensitive, but fun, outspoken and has a fantastic sense of humor. The design of the “Cousin Beth” font seems to capture those same qualities.

   The design of this typeface has some unique elements to it. I like the curly stroke endings on some of the descenders and ascenders as well as the unusual diamond shaped crossbars on the F, H and capital O. The ending strokes on most of the letters split at the end and flare off in two points. This gives the font an organic feeling suggestive of plants and vines. This is especially apropos since my cousin works in the field of plant genetics. 

   I have seen this font in use a number of times out in the real world. Most notably on some promotional material from holiday folk artist Johanna Parker, but I also saw it once as far away as New Jersey, near where I grew up. While visiting there on vacation one summer I ran across a sign for corn at Sun High Orchards that used Cousin Beth as the font. It is also used by the Calico Cake Shop in Buena Park CA on some of their signs.

 Johanna Parker’s website

Sign at Sun High Orchards

   Cousin Beth is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer in OpenType format.

Font of the Week #28: Corner Store

Hello! I hope you’ve been having a nice Autumn so far. After a hiatus, I am resuming this blog and starting up again with the Font of the Week feature. This week’s font is “Corner Store”.

Corner Store

   Inspired by a hand-lettered alphabet in a book on sign painting, this font is one of my favorites in the Jukebox library and has been a popular seller. I really  enjoyed creating this one. The design of the font seems to capture all those nostalgic hand-painted windows in old fashioned soda fountains. Hence the name Corner Store.

   Corner Store has several alternate letters included which can add to the variety available for a more hand-lettered look. There are also four ligatures to insure a smooth flow between certain letters. In the newest updated version of the font, these can be substituted automatically with OpenType features.

   There is an alternate lowercase “e”, shown below, that drops below the baseline. When substituted for the regular e, it lends a slightly different look to the font. This is particularly useful for large words or headline style type. I always enjoy creating typefaces that have some variety to them and allow the user to get the most design possibilities they can from it.

   I have seen several fun and interesting uses of Corner Store out in the world. It is one of the Jukebox fonts licensed by VistaPrint and can be used via their website to create products. Recently it was used on Dean McDermott’s website, “The Gourmet Dad”. McDermott is husband to Tori Spelling and his website is devoted to his family and cooking with his kids. I discovered this use of the font last year when the website was shown on The Food Network.

   Corner Store is part of the Jukebox library at Veer. It is now in available in OpenType format

Font of the Week #27: Confectioner

   Hello! I usually post my font of the week feature on Tuesdays, so it’s time for another one! This week’s typeface in the spotlight is Confectioner.

Confectioner

   This is a very interesting font that is a digital revival of an older photo-lettering face. The original typeface that I used to create Confectioner appeared in an old Dover sample book. I was moved to turn it into a modern digital font when I saw its unusual appearance. The letterforms in this typeface are quite unique and that’s what grabbed me.

   I am often influenced by retro design and I love the 1960s “Mod” feeling of this typeface! It seems to capture that design trend very well to me.

   For some reason the design of the letterforms in Confectioner made me think of candy and Willy Wonka so I gave it its sweet name. The italicized slant to the letters also gives the font a kind of energy and movement that makes it very dynamic. It certainly isn’t a script face by any stretch of the imagination, yet somehow seems to have the same qualities as a script font.

   One of the most interesting aspects of creating this font was figuring out how to do some of the extra characters like certain diacritics (accented letters) and punctuation to stay harmonious with the unusual design. In many of the letters, the strokes terminate in a pointed wave-like curve that leads into a small circle at the end. I used this same design theme to create many of the extra glyphs for the font. This repeated motif is the same one that also gives it that mod 60s look.

   The font also contains alternate versions of the capital C as well as lowercase h, n, s and u. Confectioner is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer in OpenType format.

 

Font of the Week #26: Concrete Salsa

   Hello and welcome to another Font of the Week posting! For this first FOW of August, I though we would take a closer look at Concrete Salsa.

Concrete Salsa

   The two Concrete Salsa fonts were inspired by a hand-lettered Film Noir poster from the 1950s from a movie called “Coup Manqué” which was the French version of “The Killing”. It was one of the earliest films in which Stanley Kubrick was a young producer. The original poster was designed with the typical dynamic and energetic graphics from the 1950s Film Noir genre with strong contrast and dramatic compositions.

   As with all my typeface designs that were inpsired by hand-lettering, I started by recreating the letters that appear in the words Coup Manqué and then designed the rest of the font to match. I loved the chunky design of the letterforms enhanced by the little notches cut out in them that resemble rough hewn stone. This is what inspired the name “Concrete Salsa”…it had both the feeling of an industrial quarry look mixed with some South of the Border flair.

   I love typefaces that can straddle two or more design genres like that…it makes them more versatile and they have less of a tendency to become overused in a specific style.

   In this fun example below, I utilized the typeface for a mock ad for a Mexican restaurant. It seems to fit as perfectly here as it does in the movie poster of a murder mystery. 

   There are actually two faces to Concrete Salsa, labeled One and Two. The difference between them lies in the placement of the cutout notches in the letters. This allows a designer to intermix them for a more organic feel…more like the way hand drawn letters would be.

   Designed in 2008, Concrete Salsa is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer…now in OpenType format. 

Font of the Week #25: Cinnamon Roll

   Helloo and Happy Wednesday! As usual I am presenting a new font of the week and this time it’s “Cinnamon Roll”

Cinnamon Roll

   Cinnamon Roll comes in two weights or variants. Frosted and Plain. The Plain version is the basic font used for setting display type when legibility is required. The “Frosted” variant however is the where the fun begins!

   The Frosted weight includes swash caps and a number of alternates that give this playful font a fun and story-book feel to it.

   This font is partially based on a hand-lettered or phototypositing face from the pre-digital era. I’m not sure which. I have seen partial samples of it used in a few different sources, but never the full typeface or the original name, so this isn’t a true digital revival, nor is it a completely original design.

   My main source of inspiration to draw on was the titles of an old Rankin-Bass Christmas TV special. I grew up on those delightful programs and still watch them today every holiday season. Of course that titles sequence did not conatin all caps and lowercase so I had to fill in the gaps with glyphs of my own design to match. Expert typeface designer Alejandro Paul did something similar with his “Mobley” typeface which is a partial revival of Neil Bold, but also partially his own design.

   What I love about the letterforms of Cinnamon Roll is the flared vertical strokes on the letters that are suggestive of uncial typefaces. But, being a modern and playful version of that is where the fairy-tale  like feel comes from for this font. I also like the tightly curled scrolls of the swash terminals which is what inspired the name Cinnamon Roll.

   They say often you can tell typefaces apart by the lowercase g which is ripe with different design possibilities. This is certainly true of Cinnamon Roll which has a unique design to the lowercase g.

   Cinnamon Roll is part of the Jukebox type library available from Veer and is now also in OpenType format.

Font of the Week #24: Charade

   Good morning and Happy Tuesday! It’s time for another Font of the Week and this time it’s the light and fun‘Charade’.

Charade

   This is one of the older fonts in the Jukebox library going all the way back to when I used to be JAW Fonts at MyFonts.com. Designed in 2001, this font was inspired by some hand lettering and I loved the playful and joyous nature of the letterforms!

   It certainly had a childlike innocence without being too saccharine or cutesy. It’s a great font for anything that needs a boisterous and fun feeling to it. Charade has been a relatively strong seller for Jukebox over the years.

   A notable use of Charade on a commercial product was on the cover of this Betty Crocker magazine for “Recipes from the Soul”. It was sold in stores as a point of sale display at the cash register area. I was delighted to find this while I was out grocery shopping one day!

   One of the cool design elements in this font is the closed lower loop of the lowercase s. It definitely implies a fast drawn hand lettering and adds to the excited feeling that the font gives. Like a child hurriedly writing because they are too excited to sit still.

   In addition to this, there are some other small idiosyncrasies in the lowercase that add to the font’s unique design. The f and t are slightly more roughly shaped thatn the other letters, but still work well within the design. These subtle differences are what gives the font its carefree feel.

It was a lot of fun designing this font as I got to play around with letterforms and have the same kind of exuberance with creating it that the font itself displays. Those are the best creative efforts. As part of the Jukebox library, Charade is available from Veer in OpenType format.

Font of the Week #23: Cavetto Roman and Italic

Good morning! This week’s font of the week features the Cavetto family from the Jukebox type library.

Cavetto

   Originally designed in 2001-2002, Cavetto is the result of my desire to create a true text face based on the old Bodoni and Didot type from the late 18th Century. The name ‘Cavetto’ comes from an architectural term that refers to a molding that has a quarter circle profile.

   

   Designing a text face is no small task and requires a different set of skills than a display typeface. Text faces must be much more exacting in terms of spacing and I learned so much valuable information from designing Cavetto in those early days.

   The knowledge I gained from working on this font gave me skills that I later used to design my “Empyrean” family which was a more mature text face. Later I used this same skill set for the “Eloquent” Family which is a digital revival of Pistilli Roman and is a cross-over between text and display type.

   

   The Italic Alternate face that accompanies the Cavetto family is based loosely on an old photo-lettering face called Torino. I later ended up adding a full and true digital revival of that face to the Jukebox library. At the time of designing Cavetto however, it served as an inspiration for how a swash italic might look for a Bodoni style font. The original Bodoni fonts (as far as I know) never had swash italic variants, unlike their Garamond and Caslon predecessors.

   Bodoni and Didot were late 18th Century type designers whose designs became known as “Modern” Typefaces despite being so long ago. For the time, they were considered modern due to the more machined look that the letterforms had over previous designs from the 17th and early 18th centuries. Modern typefaces are recognized by their thin serifs and heavy contrast between thick and thin strokes, as well as vertical stress axis on letters like e or o. Cavetto follows in this tradition and is available from Veer as part of the Jukebox library.

Font of the Week #22: Cathexis

Good morning and welcome back! It’s Tuesday and that means it’s time for Font of the Week. This week, let’s take a closer look at Cathexis.

Cathexis

   Cathexis is an OpenType font from the Jukebox library and was inspired by hand lettered posters done by a sign lettering artist named Mike Stevens. Back in 2010, I created a small set of fonts based on his work for posters drawn in the 1960s and 1970s. “Cathexis” was the second of these fonts after “Raceway”. It was followed by “Vanilla Shake” and “Sunset Strip”.

   Cathexis was one of the earlier fonts created for Jukebox that was designed natively as an OpenType face right from the start (the rest of the library has since been converted). I added a full set of “Display Caps” as well as Small Caps and alternates for some of the letters including a, e, g, m, n, s and y. The typeface has full Eastern European language support.

   I love the sleek, thin design of this typeface. The letters are tightly spaced which reflects their somewhat thin and compressed design. Mixing and matching the alternate letters gives an interest interplay of upper and lowercase forms. That gives the font a somewhat more organic feel than sans-serif designs like these would normally have.

   This is also enhanced by some subtle design features on the ending strokes of the letters where they curve and flare out slightly. Such as on the legs of the R, K, m and n. These attributes may not be obvious, but they add some life to the letterforms and prevent type set in the font from feeling too rigid.

   The name comes from a psychology term meaning a focus of one’s mental energy on a single idea or person. Such as me and fonts! As with the design of the forms, the name suggests something that is tightly focused.

   Cathexis is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer.

Font of the Week #21: Candy Apple

   Hello and Happy Tuesday! This week’s font of the week is Candy Apple—a retro style font that is fun and happy–go–lucky!

Candy Apple

   Candy Apple is a fun and cartoony font that was inspired by a hand-lettered Halloween candy advertisement from the 1950s or 1960s. The original poster had a fantastic retro-style design to both the graphics and the lettering. Unfortunately the original photo of the poster has been lost, but I do remember those classic mid-century graphics.

   Two of my favorite things are retro style designs and Halloween (vintage Halloween in particular). It was only fitting that an ad poster having both qualities should inspire a font from me!

   Candy Apple is at first glance an all caps font, but this isn’t entirely so. A few of the lowercase letters have differing designs as you can see in this sample. However, I created the font so that the lowercase and caps were all the same height, allowing for intermixing within single words.

   Candy Apple is an inline font meaning there is a small interior line that follows the letterform. This gives the design an interesting 3D effect that makes the words appear to rise off the page…mostly because the inline is not centered, but positioned more to the left, suggesting perpective.

    Designed in 2009, Candy Apple is part of the Jukebox collection available from Veer and is available in OpenType format.

Font of the Week #20: Swashington — New from CounterPoint!

   Good day! I hope you are having a nice week so far. This week’s font of the week features the brand new, just released design from CounterPoint Type…my new “Swashington” font.

   This font was inspired by a hand drawn logo that contained about six letters. While nothing is known about the original designer, I believe the lettering to be from the 1970s. The rendering of the original logotype is inconsistent across differing uses, so I am unsure as to how it was reproduced.

   I was moved to develop this into a full typeface after cleaning up the letterforms a bit. I find the combination of 1970s design with its Art Nouveau undertones to be an interesting mix.

   This was one of those typefaces that was just pure fun to design! I am passionate about type design which gives me joy no matter what font I am working on, but I love doing these kinds of fonts. I love swashes and this was a great ride to create! I started by redrawing two of the swash characters and one ligature from the original logotype. Next came developing the regular non-swash letters that are the base of the typeface. Once this was done I moved onto the really fun part which was all the swashes and alternate ligatures!

   The font contains both individual swash alternates for all the letters as well as over 270 alternate ligatures that combine two or more letters together. The letters in the ligatures differ from the plain swash variants and are specifically design to interlock in a pleasing way. This way the user can mix and match different combinations for a wide variety of possibilities. 

   This available variation makes the font quite versatile and you can get a lot of mileage out of it in different applications. Besides it’s loads of fun just to play around with the different combinations until you find the one that is your favorite!

   I chose the name for this font because it is a fun play on the name Washington. It came to me one evening and seemed to be perfect for the design.

   Swashington is available from MyFonts.com and FontHaus as well as directly from myself at an introductory price of only $29.25.

   In addition to this, all fonts from Counterpoint Type studio are currently on sale at 35% off now through July 31st. It’s my Summer Savings special!

Jukebox font sighting! Stephanie Marie

   The other day I was in Barnes and Noble and happed to run across this romance novel with Stephanie Marie on the cover!

   As always, it is so much fun to see my font designs out in the world! Stephanie Marie has been one of my most popular designs over the last ten years. It was named after a dear friend of mine.

“Stephanie Marie” sample from Veer.com

Font of the Week #19: Cabernet Regular and Italic

   Good morning! Here we are at another Tuesday so it’s time for the Font of the Week. This week’s font is the “Cabernet” family from Jukebox…one of my favorite digital revivals that I have created.

Cabernet Regular and Italic

   The Cabernet family from Jukebox consists of two “pro” OpenType fonts that were adapted from an original set of four PostScript fonts. The swash variants that used to be in separate font files are now included in the OpenType versions, making the fonts much easier to use.

http://marketplace.veer.com/font/Cabernet-Complete-JBT0001090

   Cabernet is a digital revival of an old photo-typositing face based on heavy weight supposedly Caslon-style type. However, this font has a lot of Modern attributes to it…the heavy contrast between the thick and thin strokes as well as the vertical stroke axis. It does however retain the bracketed serifs of Caslon (Transitional) types.

   These types of font are fantastic for display usage and they were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s giving them a look that seems to fit with that era. Particularly when the Swash variants are used. There is nothing more fun than designing swash letters to go with a font. They add vigor and liveliness to a typeface, and the Cabernet fonts are no exception.

   These fonts were created in the spring of 2003 and released commercially from Veer as part of the Jukebox library that summer. They can be seen in the September 2003 catalog where they were used extensively. Veer used to send out beautifully printed catalogs each month which unfortunately are no longer produced.

   The Cabernet fonts are widely recognizable, as the original photo-typositing fonts they were based on were used for the posters for the 1974 film “Foxy Brown” (among many others!). These types of serif swash fonts are among my favorites as they connect me with my first memories of admiring typefaces when I was a child.

   Cabernet Regular and Italic are part of the Jukebox library and are available from Veer.com

 

Font of the Week #18: Buena Park

Hello again! I hope everyone had a really great Memorial Day and has a good week ahead. This week's font feature is Buena Park.

Buena Park

   Named after a Southern California town in north Orange County, “Buena Park” was inspired by the hand lettered logo of a popular tourist attraction in that area. I adapted the letter designs—of which there were only 5 to start with—into a form that was workable as a full typeface.

   Buena Park has some really interesting features to it that make it a unique design. At first glance it seems to be a typeface in the Clarendon tradition with heavy bracketed serifs and a distinctly late 19th Century feel to it.

   Since the original five hand lettered glyphs conatined no ‘e’, I added and e with an angled crossbar which give the typeface some extra flair. Also, a number of the letterforms end with a small flourish like the c, e, and s

   The font has the lower contrast between the thick and thin strokes, typical of a Clarendon style face. This makes Buena Park function well at a range of point sizes, although its primary intent is for use as a display face.

   

   The curved crossbar on the H and the angled serifs on some of the capital letters, give the typeface a warm old fashioned feeling that makes it welcoming and comfortable. It has that “Barbershop Quartet” charm to it that makes it perfect for many applications.

   This was one of my earlier fonts that was part of the original JAW Fonts library on MyFonts.com. Designed in 2001, Buena Park was a lot of fun to work on and I think that definitely comes through in the design.

   

   Over the years, Buena Park had proved to be a popular seller for Jukebox. It was used in 2009 and 2010 for all the month names in Disneyland’s and Walt Disney World’s official wall calendars sold at the theme parks. 

Font of the Week #17: Bronson Gothic

   Good afternoon readers! It’s time again for the font of the week! Today we’ll take a look at one of the less well known Jukebox fonts: Bronson Gothic.

Bronson Gothic

   Bronson Gothic was designed in 2002 and is based on a hand-lettered alphabet I found in an old 1940s book on calligraphy and lettering design for advertising.

   What drew me to the design of this typeface was the cool industrial look that the letters have. To me they seem to have an almost 1930s and 1940s feel that makes me think of Depression design and WWII era posters mixed with some Russian Constructivist design elements as well. Russian Constructivism was an art movement around that same time period.

   Some of the design details of this typeface are what I think makes it so unique. The lowercase ‘r’ is a good example…I like how the arm of the r is just a block rotated sideways rather than the typical curved stem. This plays well off of the curves of some of the other letters like the lowercase ‘w’ or ‘e’. 

   The notch in the lowercase ‘o’ is almost suggestive of a tube of metal bent around to form the letter. This gives the font a sturdy and masculine feel that is so reminiscent of the 1930s/1940s industrial design.

   The font was named after a friend of mine who works in the investment business. It somehow seemed to fit with his practical and even-minded personality.

   Bronson Gothic is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer.

Font Of The Week #16: Domani from CounterPoint

   Hello! This week I thought we'd take a closer look at one fof the fonts from my newest CounterPoint font foundry…Domani CP

DOMANI

   Domani is a digital revival of an old photo-typositing face called ITC Didi. The font was brought to my attention this past September by Washington DC based designer Rob King.

   Rob King requested that I make a digital version of the Didi font, so this font began its life as smaller scale custom digitization. Once King’s version was complete, I further adapted the font for commercial sale as part of the CounterPoint font library.

   The original ITC Didi was designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase. For some reason it didn’t make the transition to digital type in the 1990s.

   This font immediately captured me with its 1970s high contrast Didone style and large x-height…typical of ITC fonts from that time period. It has some unique design details that set it apart from other didone style typefaces. I worked on the digital version for a number of weeks and it was finally released for commercial sale in October of 2013.

   Thanks in part to King who provided printed samples of the original Didi for me to work with, I believe I have created a version worthy of such genius type designers as Lubalin and Carnase. It is my hope that they would be proud and pleased with Domani.

   “Domani” is the Italian word for “tomorrow”. The name was suggested by Rob King, and I felt it was perfect for this revitalized design. My professional quality digital version is both faithful to the original design while expanding the character set to make use of OpenType features.

   I added a full set of swash capitals and several swash lowercase as well as support for Latin-based and Eastern European languages. Designing swash characters for a font is always fun because you can create so many different varieties!

   As part of the CounterPoint library, Domani is available directly from me or at several online font vendors including Monotype (Fonts.com), MyFonts.com, and FontHaus.

Font of the Week #15: Boxer Script

   Hello again! This week’s font feature is Boxer Script.

Boxer Script

   This font was inspired by the metal car lettering that is sometimes seen on older antique cars. Strongly reminiscent of the 1930s and 1940s automobile design, this font was a lot of fun to create! I wanted to capture that nostalgic feeling of Art Deco car culture.

   Designed and released in 2002, I liked the idea of having the organic looking capital letters paired with the more “machined” design of the lower case. The connector line that runs between the lowercase letters mimics the design of words cut from a single piece of metal.

   Several years ago I was contacted by company called Planet Granite in the Sacramento area who wished to use this font in their logo. The company owner used the font to create lettering for his antique vehicle.  

   The photo below shows the truck and it turned out absolutely beautiful! I was honored to have my typeface chosen for this purpose and it is the perfect car for the design.

   Boxer Script has also been recently used on several holiday candy products sold by Target stores during the Christmas season. It can be seen here in the word “Gourmet”.

Boxer Script is part os the Jukebox library and is available from Veer.