JTD №7: A Summer Recap & A Hat
Hello everyone,
It’s been a while since I’ve written but as type design is such a slow process there are long periods where nothing appears to be happening on the outside. Beneath the surface, things are brewing.
Ultramega is still our newest release. Maybe Enfilade will be finished by the end of the year? For very boring reasons, I made that project way bigger than it needed to be and now it's slowly drowning me.
Summer Recap
Over the summer we had a new intern, KC, one of my students from last year's type design class at Moore College. I've never had an internship myself, my only reference point was my bespoke tailoring apprenticeship. Maybe that's a good thing? I hope, for KC's sake, that it made for a worthwhile learning experience. While I don't really know how to compare the two experiences, I basically just treated KC the way I was treated by my tailoring mentor.
When I was apprenticing as a tailor, I was basically a shadow of my mentor, Chris; we commuted together, ate together, and ran errands together. Every weekday (and the occasional weekend), from 7:30 am to about 9 pm, Chris and I were together. This meant that not only did I see how he worked but also how he thought about his work. Despite having decades of experience he was always trying to challenge is existing knowledge. Our commutes were brainstorms about different ways of drafting patterns. Trips for groceries were chances to observe different body types and postures and discuss how to adapt a suit to fit them. The learning was everywhere. In the first year I was allowed to do little more than hem trousers but by observing Chris drafting patterns, handle clients, and hand sew coats I was learning more than I could process.
I didn't expect KC to be at the office at 7am but I did want to keep some of that "lifestyle" experience in the internship. If I had to run an errand in the middle of the day, or go to a client meeting, KC came. I wasn't too concerned with how much "work" was getting done. Learning to drag lines around on a screen can happen any time but time spent with someone is a limited resource. I hoped that even if KC had no work to show for three months of interning, they (hopefully), got something out of learning about the process of working.
Some Fonts in Use
Parabolica was used for the new Linkin Park album, tour, and website. 14-year-old me would be thrilled.
Last year we made a custom version of Transducer for Cal Poly Pomona. It rolled out recently and it looks pretty good; see if you can spot what we changed from the standard version.
I’m a big F1 fan so it was cool to see F1 driver Pierre Gasly using Transducer for his personal website and merch.
Riot Games has been using Transducer for their Teamfight Tactics Esports Competitions (and a bunch of other places).
A Hat!
Over the course of the summer we made our first merch item in our 13-year history—a hat. Like I said above, I've long been a fan of F1 so we made our take on the traditional F1 podium hat that's worn by the top three drivers after each race. Normally, the front of the hat features the tire sponsor and the side the track name of league. We decided to make ours a take on a famous tire company and have our logo on the side.
If you're interested in one, they're $40 USD plus shipping (it wasn't cheap to make them this nice).
Since I'm not sure where replies to this newsletter go, you can always send me an email at info (at) JTDType.com if you'd like to buy one.
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