TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:42:50 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Type Supply [Tal Leming]

Tal Leming is a graphic designer, type designer and letterer who lived in Wilmington, DE, but moved his stakes to Baltimore, MD. He graduated from Louisiana State University in 1997. As a Python scripting guru, he worked with Letterror and House Industries on projects using FontLab and Robofab. An avid RoboFog scripter, he joined Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum to initiate the RoboFab project in 2003. After graduation in 1997 from the Louisiana State University Graphic Design program, he worked as a designer at two agencies in south Louisiana. In September of 2001, Tal joined the House Industries staff as a designer in the Type Development, Product Promotions and Python Systems Implementation Department. He worked on the Ed Benguiat collection, for example.

In 2005, he left House and started his own company eventually called Type Supply. Type Supply designs typefaces for corporations and publications. Their typefaces:

• Baxter. An informal typeface used as a casual typeface in MyPublisher's BookMaker software. Commissioned by Christian Schwartz.
• Bullet (House). Bullet is based on a bit of lettering drawn by Ken Barber for the House Industries Pop Art package.
• Burbank (2006-2007, House Industries), a bouncy signage, animation, and package lettering family, about which Christian Schwartz writes: Well-drawn one-off display typefaces are easy to find, especially bouncy sans serifs. Complete suites of typefaces in this genre, however, are nearly impossible to find, especially families that are crafted with as much care as Burbank. I really appreciate seeing the attention to detail that usually goes into serious text family put into a family primarily intended for display use.
• House Gothic 23. Tal Leming writes: The family was originally designed by Allen Mercer for use on the company's commissions, most notably the legendary promotions for Custom Papers Group. In 1995, House released the family to the public with modest success, but it was largely relegated to the back of House's catalogs. House went through a bit of a sans serif obsession in the early 2000s and decided that it was time to give House Gothic its time in the spotlight. Rich Roat asked me to polish up House Gothic and make it a bit more usable. I completely reworked Allen's original drawings, making the letterforms work better in headlines, added accented glyphs, reorganized the styles and more. Once that was done, I added completely new Extended and Text styles. The family more than doubled its size into 23 total fonts and was rechristened House Gothic 23.
• Marigny (2014). He writes about this pleasant casual roundish typeface: Marigny, designed by Tal Leming, is a casual typeface that was drawn with serious typography in mind. It has the same basic proportions as classical oldstyle typefaces (think of Garamond and friends) and these give it a similar typographic rhythm to one that we have known for several hundred years. The hand-rendered forms transform this familiar texture into something very warm and pleasant. In a way, dipping into a block of text set in Marigny is like putting on your favorite pair of comfortable slippers.
• Mission and Control. An athletic lettering family commissioned by Reebok for their 2008 NFL Sideline and NHL Center Ice collections.
• Ohm (2009). A neon type family.
• Queue and Queue Mono (2021). A sans typeface family.
• Runway (House). Runway is an ode to House's sans serif obsession of the early 2000s.
• Shag Lounge. a signage family: When I was working at House Industries, we decided that we should develop a font kit inspired by the work of Josh "Shag" Agle. Josh hadn't done much lettering work so we asked him to send us samples of lettering that he liked. Many of the things he sent featured whimsical, hand-cut lettering from the 1960s. We were really into this as well, so that formed the starting point for Shag Lounge. The typeface evolved into an amalgamation of a neo-grotesque style sans serif and hand-cut lettering.
• Timonium (2012) can be bought from Type Supply.
• Torque. An octagonal family with a great inline style. Torque (2009) began its life as an amalgamation of an American athletic lettering style and classic space lettering styles. There were also references to the video games, laser games and 1980s pre-teen sci-fi action movies of my youth.
• United Ark. A military stencil face: Clint Schultz hired me to create a custom version of United for use on props in a Paramount feature film. The main goal of the project was to perfectly match stenciled lettering seen in a film released 27 years earlier. How exciting was it to make a typeface for a sequel to a classic film that I grew up with? Very, very, very, very exciting. This font is not, and will never be, available for relicensing, so please don't ask.
• United. House industries commissioned me to develop the United family as an homage to stereotypical U.S. Military lettering styles. [...] United has become quite popular since its release and it has been seen just about everywhere from NFL coverage on FOX to the New York Times editorial page.
• Balto (2007-2014) is a large American Gothic family.
• In 2016, Tal Leming created 90 Minutes, a typeface that is exclusive licensed to the United States Soccer Federation in perpetuity. He writes: I wanted to introduce some more American typographic and lettering influences. We have a rich history from Morris Fuller Benton's iconic work to the impactful lettering on Works Progress Administration posters to the bluntness of wood type on letterpressed event posters. I wanted to subtly reference these to make the typeface as distinctively American as possible. The typeface her 37 unique styles partitioned over three families, 90 Minutes Display, 90 Minutes Kit (a set of styles developed exclusively for use on uniforms, taking into account FIFA regulations), and 90 Minutes Text (drawn specifically for use in small sizes, paragraphs and tables of statistics).
• Stoneleigh. A fashion mag Caslon revival done for Martha Stewart Living. Stoneleigh is licensed exclusively to Martha Stewart Living through October 2019.
• Smoosh (2015-2020). A super-compressed high-contrast typeface with thorny serifs designed to work in very big sizes.
• Iota (2021). A geometric sans family that he made only because of his fear of not being innovative. And not because every other foundry is making its own geometric sans. But he could not resist throwing in some distractions that make Iota a geometric with a tantrum.
• Epoxy (2022). An experimental sans with odd shapes.

At ATypI 2008 in St. Petersburg, his talk (shared with Ken Barber) was entitled Pac-Man fever, quantum mechanics and the design of digital type.

Tal Leming's personal web site. Village link. Author of Letters.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type scene in Louisiana ⦿ Type scene in Maryland ⦿ Signage typefaces ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿ Athletic lettering faces ⦿ Popart typefaces ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Soccer typefaces ⦿ Military typefaces ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Type scene in Delaware ⦿ Neon tube or faux neon typefaces ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Fashion mag typefaces ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿