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.
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