Font of the Week #41: Fenway Park

   Hello and welcome back to the Font of the Week posts! For this week's feature we come to one of the most popular fonts from the Jukebox library…

Fenway Park

   Designed in 2001, Fenway Park was one of my earlier typeface designs. It was originally part of the JAW Fonts library sold through MyFonts.com that later became Jukebox in 2003 when I partnered with Veer.

   At the time I designed Fenway Park, I had already done another “athletic style” script called Varsity Script (still part of the Jukepox library as well). I wanted to do a design that was a little more refined and more reminiscent of the commonly used script seen in professional baseball team logos and associated with American athletics as far back as the 19th Century. Fenway Park was the result.

   The design inspiration was an amalgam of elements from existing team logos such as the Dodgers and Yankees as well as embroidery designs from companies that make sport jerseys. These all got combined into one cohesive original design that is Fenway Park. Named for the famed baseball stadium in Boston, it just seemed to be the perfect fit for the design.

   Fenway Park has proven to be one of the bestselling fonts in the Jukebox library, second only to Stephanie Marie. It was the first font I ever saw out in the world in a commercial application and I have since seen it on countless products, billboards, commercials, print media and many others. It is a true honor to have created something that has had such a far reach.

   The first known commercial use of Fenway Park was by the Southern Comfort whisky company. I saw one of their billboards on Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles in November of 2002 and there was my font looking back at me! The company continued to use the font in various ways through the late 2000s. 

   Disneyland has been another heavy user of Fenway Park, having employed the font on much of its merchandise, especially clothing. 

   Fenway Park has also appeared in many TV shows and even film. It is seen on The Food Network in the opening title logo of “Sandwich King” which is chef Jeff Mauro’s show. Mauro was the season seven winner of “The Next Food Network Star”. Fenway Park was also use in the opening credits of the 2006 film “Thank You For Smoking” starring Aaron Eckhart and directed by Jason Reitman.

   This was a really fun font to design! I remember being very excited by the process at the time. I always love working on a new typeface of course, but this was one of those ones that just seemed to be “in the zone” for me. 

  Interestingly the original design contained a swooping “tail” element that could be added on to the end of a word similar to the ones you sometimes see on team logotypes. It never really worked however, because of the limitations of font technology—it couldn't be customized to fit varying word lengths. The swash element was removed when the library was relaunched as Jukebox in 2003. If you have a version with that swash, it is the original JAW Fonts version! 

   As with all of the other fonts in the Jukebox library, Fenway Park is available from Veer in OpenType format.

   

Font of the Week #40: Fanfare

   Good morning! I'm glad to see you back here again. This week’s featured font is “Fanfare” from the Jukebox collection.

Fanfare

   Fanfare is a digital revival that I created in 2004, making it one of the earlier Jukebox fonts. The original from which Fanfare was created was an old photo-typositing face called Phoenix that appeared in one of those old Dover type books.

   I was immediately drawn to this font because of its classic 1950s/1960 retro appearance. I thought it would make an excellent addition to the Jukebox collection and has been well received over the years. The modulated baseline adds to its charm and gives the font a childlike look which makes it perfect for any lighthearted subject or use.

   The endstrokes of the letters in Fanfare terminate in a pointed flared serif that give this typeface a vaguely Latin feel making it perfect for the menu of a Mexican restaurant or something similar.

   It also has other typically retro design features like the lower curve of the “S” being smaller than the top curve…the opposite of a more typical classical typeface. Similarly, the crossbars on the “E” and “F” are below the vertical midpoint of the letter, rather than above it.

   These kinds of fonts remind me of my childhood. Although I grew up as a small child in the 1970s, there was still a lot of carryover, especially in urban graphic design, from the late 50s and 60s. Fanfare is very similar to the lettering on the old Denny’s signs I remember as a kid. They have all gone the way of the Dodo much to my dismay. Today’s version seems to pale by comparison.

   As with the all the other fonts in the Jukebox library this was rereleased in 2012 in OpenType format and is available exclusively from Veer. This is a great choice for adding some playfulness to your designs!

Font of the Week #39: Fairy Tale

Hello again! After a necessary hiatus due to family medical issues I am finally back with Font of the Week Feature! This week we will take a look at one of the oldest Jukebox fonts…

Fairy Tale

   Fairy Tale was designed in early 2001 and was originally part of the JAW Fonts library that came before Jukebox. Based on the hand-lettered titles from the lobby posters of an old animated feature film, this font captures both the whimsy and fun of a fairy tale with the influences of old Blackletter fonts.

   It makes use of its Blackletter roots, while still being easily readable. In addition, the design is versatile enough to be either light and upbeat or more serious depending on the context in which it is used.

   Because this is one of my earlier fonts when I was still getting my bearings with the mechanics of typeface design, this font has some idiosyncrasies that add some warmth to the design. Its naiveté makes it more accessible and more flexible.

   Fairy Tale has been a fairly strong seller for Jukebox over the years and I have seen its use on many different venues. Perhaps the most exciting and close to my heart is that Fairy Tale has been the official font used for many years now for all the signage and promotional material for the “Mickey’s Halloween Party” event held during the months of September and October at Disneyland in CA.

   The font even appears on some of the floats that are used for the special Halloween parade that is shown on the nights of the event. To have my font chosen for such a widespread use by a company such as Disney is truly an honor. As a lover of both Disney and Halloween, I was quite excited the first time I saw the signs and brochures a few years ago!

   Fairy Tale is part of the Jukebox library sold exclusively through Veer. It is available in OpenType format.

Font of the Week #38: Event Horizon

   Hello! I hope you’ve had a great week and enjoyed your work holiday yesterday. This week’s font of the week is a fun one! So grab your astronaut helmet and let’s go!

Event Horizon

   The featured font for this week is a playful and retro Space Age design called “Event Horizon”. The font was inspired by a hand lettered advertisement from the 1960s. I took the few letters that appeared in the original sample and designed a full typeface from it.

   

   The font evokes the fun and innocent view that decades past had about the space age and the excitement surrounding it. With its “yesterday’s version of tomorrow” feeling it has more of Flash Gordon about it than Nasa. But that is exactly why I loved designing this font! As I’m sure you can tell, I’m a big fan of retro design. 

   The name comes from the theoretical horizon that forms around a black hole. Technically, it is the point where the escape velocity of the gravitional pull of the black hole becomes greater than the speed of light. It is the point of no return…the edge of the cliff so to speak. It’s not an actual physical surface, merely a point at which we can no longer see past. Once anything goes past that point it is forever cut off from our Universe. 

   The font was designed natively in OpenType in 2011, and includes an entire set of letters that have “speed lines” cut into them, under the Stylistic Alternates feature. This offers the user a fun and playful increase in functionality for the typeface. It gives that perfect high speed look!

   These speed lines are designed to alternately line up or not line up between letters which gives them a more dynamic appearance. As though the characters are speeding past a beam of light! This is also enhanced by the forward slant of the letters.

   Event Horizon is part of the Jukebox library sold exclusively through Veer. 

Font of the Week #37: Empyrean

  Hello again! It's always nice to see you back. Once again it's time for the font of the week and this time I am featuring my text family called “Empyrean”…

Empyrean

   The Empyrean font family represents the one and only time I set out to design an actual text face that could be used for printing books and or long passges of text. Most of the typefaces I design are meant for headline and display use, but I wanted to challenge myself to take on a text family which is a whole different animal.

   Empyrean is loosely based on the original hand-drawings for the “Romain du Roi” (French for ‘King’s Roman’) done in 1695 by Louis Simmoneau. King Louis XIV had ordered the design of a new royal typeface, and those original drawings came out of that process.

   I began working on Empyrean in early 2003. Originally the font had a different working name but I finally settled on calling it “Empyrean” just before releasing it commercially through Veer. The word Empyrean means “deriving from or related to heaven”…a seemingly appropriate name for a typeface based on a font made for the “Sun King”

   There are four weights in the Empyrean family…Roman, Bold, Italic and Swash Italic. The challenge in designing a text face like this is getting all of the four faces to work together harmoniously as well as tackle the specific needs of a typeface intended for text use. Designing fonts for display use is much more fun and free as the designer has more leeway into what can be done with the letters. Text faces must be designed and spaced very precisely. As any artist is never able to see his or her own work objectively (try as they might) I cannot judge if Empyrean is a success or not, but I was pleased with the end result and customers seem to like it. It was a fun challenge that I enjoyed! As to whether I would do a text family again? We’ll see…

   Each of the four weights in the Empyrean family can be purchased separately or the whole typeface family can be purchased at a lower price than 4 x the individual price. Empyrean is available in OpenType format from Veer.

   

   

Font of the Week #36: Eloquent Pro

   Hello! It's great to have you back again. This is a special week for two reasons. First, this is my first “Font of the Week” post for 2015 and second, this week’s font feature is very special. We will take a closer look at my font family called “Eloquent”.

Eloquent

  Back in late 2008 I received an email from Grant Hutchinson at Veer. Through the years, Grant and I had conferred many times on which font would make good additions to the Jukebox library. In this particular email, Grant suggestied that I take a look at and old photo-typositing face from the Photo Lettering Inc. library called “Pistilli Roman”. He sent me some samples along with the email.

   This beautiful did one style font had heavy contrast between thick and thin strokes and the thin strokes were like hairlines. The original Pistilli font had never been converted into digital format. Grant and I decided to recreate it and add it to the Jukebox library.

   I began work on this digital revival in early 2009 and it was finished later that same year. The original Pistilli Roman font was one roman face and despite much research I could never find an accompanying italic. As far as I know Pistilli never published one, so I set about designing one that would match to make a complete family set. I expanded the family to also include a small caps for both roman and italic and added a full set of swashes to each typeface.

   Eloquent has been a very popular seller for Jukebox and is one of my top 5 most successful typefaces. About a year after Eloquent was released to the public, I was contacted by Italian Vanity Fair to design a custom “caption” version for use at small print sizes. All versions are available from Veer.

   In addition to this, I was honored to have “Eloquent” chosen as one of the 25 winners of Communication Arts magazine ‘Best in Typeface Design’ for their 2011 Typography Annual. 

   Unlike some of the older Jukebox fonts which were later converted to OpenType, Eloquent was designed natively in this format. I made use of many of the special features of OT typefaces. Eloquent is part of the Jukebox library and is available from Veer. 

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.