Jim Lyles

TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:44:43 EST 2024

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Jim Lyles Type designer (b. 1955, Indiana) who lives in Michigan City, IN. While living in NYC, he began working for Mergenthaler Linotype, learning the craft of letter drawing and typeface design. For the next 32 years, Jim worked in the Type group at both Linotype and Bitstream. When Monotype acquired Bitstream early 2011, Jim chose to go solo by founding Stiggy & Sands together with Brian Bonislawsky. He is also a partner at BluHead Studio, where he digitizes old photo fonts by Joseph Churchward. Jim is also active in Stuart Sandler's Filmotype project, where he has resurrected several typefaces, including Filmotype Reef and Filmotype Jade. At Bitstream, he did in-house work, and had his signature on Candy Bits (1996, an M&M simulation font), Prima Sans (1998), Prima Serif (1998), Prima Sans Monospace (Bitstream, with Sue Zafarana, 1998) and Bitstream Vera (2003). According to Lyles, Bitstream Vera is actually a detuned Bitstream Prima. Gnome asked that we modify some of the characters in the monospace, particularly for coding legibility. We added a center dot to the zero and modified the lcase l to distinquish it from the figure one. Although I designed Vera (Prima), it was actually Sue Zafarana who adapted it to a mono version, at times a very challenging task. The Vera fonts are also here. Vera Sans is at the basis of Menlo (2009), a Snow Leopard system font, about which Apple writes: Apple's Menlo is based upon the Open Source font Bitstream Vera and the public domain font Deja Vu. He revived some Filmotype fonts from the 1950s: Filmotype Jade (2012, based on an original connected script typeface from 1955), Filmotype Reef (2011), Filmotype MacBeth (2007), and Filmotype Austin (2009, brush face). In 2012, he created a gracious upright script face, Stalemate, which can be downloaded from Google Web Fonts. The upright connected script Grand Hotel (2012, Google Web Fonts, with Brian Bonislawsky for Astigmatic) finds its inspiration from the title screen of the 1937 film "Cafe Metropole" starring Tyrone Power. The free Rum Raisin was published at Astigmatic One Eye. Stiggy & Sands is the American type foundry of Brian Bonislawsky and Jim Lyles, est. 2013. Their first commercial typefaces, all jointly designed, are Luckiest Guy Pro (a fat comic book font based on vintage 1950s ads) and Marcellus Pro (a flared roman inscriptional typeface with both upper and lower case, originally published in 2012 by Astigmatic; CTAN link). At Hamilton Wood Type, he designed HWT Roman Extended Fatface (2014), which is based on 19th century didone wood styles. In 2016, Brian J. Bonislawasky and Jim Lyles published the rugged octagonal mega typeface family Tradesman and the techno typeface Offroad at Grype. In 2018, he published the connected script typeface Michiana Pro at BluHead Studio. Another MyFonts link. Klingspor link. P22 link.	EXTERNAL LINKS Jim Lyles [Designer info] Monotype link Klingspor Museum page MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿ Type scene in Indiana ⦿ Brush script typefaces ⦿ Open source fonts ⦿ Ronde (Rondo, Rundschrift): Upright scripts ⦿ Movie fonts ⦿ Signage typefaces ⦿ Comic/cartoon fonts ⦿ Typefaces inspired by the Trajan column in Rome ⦿ Lapidary typefaces ⦿ Wood Type ⦿