Dawn Lewandowski

Dawn’s love of creating beautiful type began in grade school. It isn't often that students have the opportunity to be taught hand lettering at this early age, but she was fortunate to have a former monk as a teacher. In addition to standard blackletter and italic, he also had the class construct letters in various configurations on graph paper, using the blocks as a guide for uniformity. It became one of her favorite things to do and she practiced it extensively.

As an adult, she had the rare opportunity to work as a Senior Typeface Designer for Digital Typeface Corporation (DTC). While it didn't offer her the chance to create completely original fonts (DTC purchased raw data from URW and processed it), it did give her the software experience needed to produce quality type. Her position included quality control for the entire division, as it was sorely lacking in the development of DTC’s first font package. Her co-workers affectionately referred to her as “the stem witch”, as she was able to tell on the printouts whenever a horizontal or vertical stroke was off by a unit.

When DTC’s type division was eliminated, Dawn went to work as a graphic designer and production artist for some of the nation’s top printers. She continued to work as a freelancer during this period as well, and eventually went completely freelance in 2007, made possible in part by utilizing the internet marketplace to find new clients.

Through one of the online marketplaces, Dawn was hired by then-fledgling foundry Thinkdust in 2008, for which she has produced numerous fonts, both originals and the production of fonts for other designer’s original illustrations. She has produced type for other smaller foundries a freelancer as well.

As a designer, Dawn was often frustrated by not being able to find exactly what she was looking for font-wise for some of her design projects. With the launch of the Partnrz foundry in 2012, her primary focus will be to start producing some of those fonts.

Dawn’s love of creating beautiful type began in grade school. It isn't often that students have the opportunity to be taught hand lettering at this early age, but she was fortunate to have a former monk as a teacher. In addition to standard blackletter and italic, he also had the class construct letters in various configurations on graph paper, using the blocks as a guide for uniformity. It became one of her favorite things to do and she practiced it extensively.