Unlike most of our interviewees, Crystal Kluge never dreamt of working OpenType magic or getting the most out of FontLab software. Pens, pencils and brushes are her tools of choice. She’d already found her own enchanting style of lettering and illustration when she was approached by Font Diner’s Stuart Sandler, who had spotted her work when shopping for wedding invitations in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. In 2006 the twosome started the Tart Workshop. It’s a dream team: Kluge draws cheerful, sassy letterforms and pictograms, Sandler makes them into smart and usable fonts with a catchy swing. And the beat, as they say, goes on.
This month’s Rising Stars are a diverse little gang, but they have one thing in common: they are all convincing examples of the sophistication of today’s typographic technology. Whether it is the virtuosity of connecting scripts such as Maestro and Liza, the fantasy of Mussica or the versatility of multi-weight fonts such as Organic or Geogrotesque Stencil: today’s typefaces often unite aesthetic appeal with functional cleverness.