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ABOUT

Rod McDonald

Born outside Pince Albert, Saskatchewan, Rod McDonald is perhaps the greatest Canadian type designer ever. First based in Toronto and later in Lake Echo, Nova Scotia, he designed the great Cartier Book family in 2000 based on the work of Carl Dair, who had started Cartier in the sixties, but died in 1968 with his Cartier unfinished. He won an award at the TDC2 2003 competition for his text family Laurentian---a typeface commissioned by Macleans magazine as part of a design project to refresh the 96-year-old publication. McDonald began as a lettering artist in the 1960s, and was a freelance type designer for most of his life, contributing custom creations to Mclean's Magazine, General Motors and Toronto Life magazine. He runs Smashing Type, and Rod McDonald Typographic Design, and he used to run Stylus Lettering&Typography Inc, 131 Bogert St, North York, ON. He was professor of typography at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, ON, and also taught at NSCAD University in Halifax.

The Stylus fonts included Bodoni Open Condensed (Rod McDonald, 1993), Fanfare Recu (Louis Oppenheim, 1927, revival by Rod McDonald, 1993; reworked in 2012 by Canada Type as Louis; see also here), Goudy Globe Gothic (revival by Rod McDonald, 1993), Loyalist Condensed (Rod McDonald, 1993), Regency Gothic (Rod McDonald, 1992: in the movie credit genre). He designed ITC Handel Gothic at ITC. In 2004, he designed Smart Sans, a bold, compressed, sans serif design in three weights, suited for setting headlines and display copy) as a tribute to the late Sam Smart, a Canadian type designer (d. 1998) who helped establish the first Type Directors Club in Toronto.

In 2007, he became a Design Fellow for Monotype Imaging where he creates new and revived typefaces.

In 2006, he created Slate (an 18-style sans family) and in 2008, Egyptian Slate. Both typefaces were released by Monotype. Slate became quite popular and was used in the Blackberry. In 2011, Slate was reissued and given a second life, but now as Gibson, with the help of Patrick Griffin and Kevin King at Canada Type. The Gibson typeface family sells for less than one style of Monotype's Slate. For other digital brothers of Egyptian Slate, we refer to Rockwell, Stafford Serial (Softmaker), Rambault (Softmaker), Roctus (URW), Slate (Bitstream) and Geometric Slabserif 712 (Bitstream).

Rod McDonald created the 14-style Classic Grotesque (2011, Linotype) which is based on the older German grotesks, Ideal Grotesk and Venus (1907), and is related to the Monotype Grotesques, ca. 1926 that gave rise to Arial. In 2016, Monotype published the vastly expanded 54-style Classic Grotesque. Metronews Canada tells the story of Classic Grotesque. At a TDC meeting in New York, Patrick Griffin said: One thing he's not saying, because this guy doesn't like to toot his own horn: it's the biggest thing to ever be released by a Canadian. It's the largest and the longest, just in terms of how much time it took. It's the biggest thing to ever come out of Canada in terms of type design.

In 2013, Rod McDonald launched Goluska, named to honor the late Canadian typographer Glenn Goluska, whose letterpress collection was acquired by Gaspereau Press in 2012. Glenn Goluska admired Dwiggins's work, and so Goluska was influenced to some extent by Dwiggins's Caledonia. The Goluska typeface was finished in 2021 with production assistance of Patrick Griffin at Canada Type.

In 2021, he published Louis at Canada Type. Louis is a faithful digital rendition and expansion of a design called Fanfare, originally drawn by Louis Oppenheim in 1927. It was also expanded into three variations, including a soft-cornered style, and a rough woodcut one.

Author of A Glossary of Typographic Terms (2013).

Keynote speaker at ATypI 2017 Montreal. Youtube video of that talk entitled "Type Night In Canada".

FontShop link. Linotype link. Agfa-Monotype link. Klingspor link. View Rod McDonald's typefaces.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Rod McDonald
 [Designer info]
Monotype link
Behance page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ The Canadian type scene ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Frederic William Goudy ⦿ Letterpress ⦿