Search Results: David Deasy Grand Cru Logo 2012

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.

Our July interviewee is the co-founder of Alias, a London design studio that made a name for itself producing cutting-edge designs for magazine publishers, music labels, fashion designers and more. To lend their designs an unmistakable personal touch, they make individualist fonts that MyFonts offers under two labels: Alias Collection and Alias. Most of the Alias typefaces were designed by the man whose offbeat headline font for the London 2012 Olympics will be on a billion TV screens as of this week. Meet Gareth Hague, not your average type designer.

The range of his work is stunning: from the corporate-yet-friendly logo for London’s Oyster card to exuberant script lettering and powerful handwriting fonts. His best sellers are versatile sans-serifs such as Houschka and Chevin, the latter of which is ubiquitous in the UK as Royal Mail’s corporate typeface. A recent series of sweeping updates has catapulted several of his fonts back onto our Hot New Fonts list. He has a soft spot for the letter ‘g’ — hence the name of his foundry, G-Type. From book covers dripping in blood to the most realistic script face on the market — here is the Nick Cooke story, told in his own words.

This month’s interviewee left Buenos Aires almost a decade ago to study type design in the Netherlands. He put down roots in Amsterdam and set up ReType, one of the country’s most productive and versatile type foundries. An avid reader of books on type history, he is equally inspired by ancient calligraphy, Dutch modernism and vernacular lettering. He has roamed the streets of Amsterdam to research letterforms that few Dutch designers ever paid serious attention to, and digitized some of them into beautifully made and wonderfully usable fonts. Meet Ramiro Espinoza, an Argentinian designer in the land of windmills.

We’ve seen a few meteoric careers on MyFonts before, but the dazzling feats accomplished by the one-woman foundry called Emily Lime has left us seriously in awe. Based in Greenville, SC, this brand new font company managed to score one best-seller after another these past six months. The energetic Southern Belle in charge of the operation has made fonts in a range of styles, but capricious scripts are what she does best. Her peacefully named Bombshell Pro is at the top of our Hot New Fonts list as we speak. And while her alphabets are nonchalant and untamed, the underlying font technology is smart and nifty. Meet Emily Conners, a newcomer with a punch.

Last year Daniel Hernández left his native Chile for Buenos Aires, Argentina — arguably the typographic capital of South America — to become a full-time type designer. His dedication has paid off. In the brief period since his first typefaces appeared on MyFonts, he has become a regular on our bestseller lists. His typefaces are also quite special, with that mixture of novelty, fun and craftsmanship that we have come to know as, somehow, typically “latino”. Having published his first fonts with Sudtipos, he is now part of LatinoType, a successful new Chilean foundry with international ambitions.

Based in Santiago, Chile, Latinotype has been one of the most successful foundries on MyFonts in recent years. Their type library is a rapidly growing collection of typefaces in a wide array of genres. They specialize in colorful display and script faces, but have recently focused on sophisticated text faces as well. The foundry is owned and managed by a trio of type designers, two of whom have the same family name but are unrelated: Miguel Hernández, Luciano Vergara and Daniel Hernández. Yet Latinotype has worked with about a dozen talented, young designers and hopes to welcome more. Meet three of the most productive type designers in Latin America.

Jim Parkinson has probably designed more magazine and newspaper nameplates than any other designer on earth. Some of his designs have become true icons, like the logos he made for Rolling Stone, the quintessential American rock magazine, and for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Drawing on techniques such as hand-lettering and signpainting, Parkinson’s typefaces often evoke past styles and shapes, subtly updated to fit present contexts. You can find most of his fonts at MyFonts, including the faces published by his own company Parkinson Type Design. Meet Jim Parkinson, an expert forger who likes fooling with time.

"Creative Characters September 2007"