TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 05:30:50 EDT 2024

FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

Guy Jeffrey Nelson

New Yorker who did custom work for Font Bureau. He made these typefaces:

• FF Providence (1993). A children's hand.
• Interstate Pi (1994). Four fonts with US highway signs, done at Font Bureau.
• Tasse (1994, Font Bureau). This is a revival of Paul Renner's steile Futura (1952).

Guy shared the following story with me from his days at Font Bureau (reprinted here with his permission): I was one of the kids who pushed points around developing Font Chameleon. I worked for the Font Bureau at the time, under the great David Berlow. Tobias Frere-Jones was there with me along with Elizabeth Holzman and Kelly Ehrgot Milligan, working obscene hours to get hundreds of fonts hinted. Never eating, barely sleeping, we lived in the studio at 18 Tremont at the time. At one point we picked up some gag "old lady" tourist sunglasses to shield our burning eyes from the glare of the old CRT monitors. Our "conference room" was empty beyond eight folding beach chairs, and at least one of us would be getting a tight 30 minutes of sleep in there through the days. But through it all there was time for meeting girls in the hall (I married the one I met. She is beside me now 28 years later.) smoking cigarettes and eating Junior Mints, dropping 60 pound monitors down the stairs, playing practical jokes on David, Sam Berlow and Harry Parker (I left and cut my hair for the first time in years and returned as my twin brother) and just general insanity in the Golden Age of digital font foundries. What fun it was to have Eric Spiekerman, Neville Brody, Matthew Carter, Roger Black and other design greats come by in the fog of war during the Font Chameleon project and others.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Guy Jeffrey Nelson
 [Designer info]
Monotype link
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type scene in New York ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Map/Travel dingbats ⦿ Children's handwriting fonts ⦿