TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:45:09 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Ben Kiel

Graduate of the type design program at the University of Reading, who joined House Industries (Wilmington, DE) in 2006 to work as a typeface designer, director, and developer. He also worked with Ken Botnick at emdash. He runs Typefounding, a typeface design and production studio in St. Louis, Missouri. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and the Type@Cooper certificate program at Cooper Union, and has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the University of Delaware. He is a partner at XYZ Type with Jesse Ragan.

He designed Katje and Cimarron (2005, University of Reading, a serif family with support for Latin and Greek). Speaker at ATypI 2006 in Lisbon on Python scripts for FontLab and RoboFab. Image.

In 2011, Vincent Pacella, Ben Kiel and Adam Cruz created the fat slab serif face Goliath, based on Film No. 6206 in the PhotoLettering archive. West Barnum Ultra, designed by Dave West and digitized by Ben Kiel&Adam Cruz in 2011, was film no. 5494 in the original Photo-Lettering archive.

At House Industries, he redesigned the iconic Rea Irvin lettering for The New Yorker in September 2013. The typefaces are named New Yorker Irvin and New Yorker Neutraface. In 2012 at House Industries he revived the Photo Lettering Inc font Worthe Numerals, which pushed fat didone to its limits.

Still at House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Mitja Miklavcic and Ben Kiel co-developed Yorklyn Stencil.

Cortado Script (2014) was designed by Jesse Ragan and Ben Kiel. It was inspired by Swedish illustrator's Cecilia Carlstedt's hand-painted lettering. It follows one year after a similar signage script typeface, Carlstedt Script (2013), also co-designed by Jesse Ragan and Ben Kiel---it was a custom signage typeface for Aldo Shoes.

In 2015, Mark van Bronkhorst set up TypoBrand LLC in Berkeley, CA. As part of TypoBrand, he published several typefaces that are modern digital reinterpretations of ATF typefaces. The collection is published by TypoBrand LLC under the names ATF Type or American Type Founders Collection. Ben Kiel co-designed, sometimes with others, classics such as ATF Alternate Gothic (2015), ATF Brush (2015), ATF Egyptian Antique (an expansion of Schraubstadter's Rockwell Antique by Mark van Bronkhorst, Igino Marini, and Ben Kiel), ATF Railroad Gothic (2016), ATF Garamond (2015), ATF Headline Gothic (2015), ATF Livermore Script (by Mark van Bronkhorst, Igino Marini, and Ben Kiel), ATF Poster Gothic (2015) and ATF Wedding Gothic (2015).

At XYZ Type, Ben Kiel co-designed Cortado Script in 2013 with Jesse Ragan and designed the sans typeface Grep (2017).

In 2019, Ben Kiel participated in the development of ATF Franklin Gothic (Mark van Bronkhorst, Igino Marini, and Ben Kiel). A broad and multi-weight interpretation of Morris Fuller Benton's classic from 1905, Franklin Gothic, which only had bolder weights. For the lighter styles, the designers were inspired by Benton's Monotone Gothic.

Girard Sky (2019) is based on Alexander Girard's original typeface for his redesign of Braniff Airways. Working with the original drawings for the photoset typeface found in the Girard archive, the design was revived as part of the Alexander Girard collection. Followed by Girard Slab (2019).

Typefaces from 2020: Ballast (Future Fonts: a condensed slab serif).

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