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ABOUT

Kevin Allan King

Kevin Allan King is from Toronto. He designed fonts for Canada Type from 2010 until 2017. In 2018, he graduated from the University of Reading's MATD program.

In 2010, he co-designed Robur and Wagner Grotesk, Slinger (an art nouveau face) and Sol Pro (a 20-style monoline sans family based on the classic Sol design by Marty Goldstein and C.B. Smith, published by VGC in 1973) with Patrick Griffin at Canada Type.

Still with Griffin at Canada Type, he revived a psychedelic / art nouveau typeface called Fortunata (1971, Karlo Wagner) and called it Spadina (2010). He also has a Facebook group on type crimes called TCI: Typographic Crime Investigators. Wagner Grotesk is the elaborate digital version of Edel Grotesque Bold Condensed (also known as Lessing, Reichgrotesk, and Wotan Bold Condensed), a 1914 typeface by Johannes Wagner, which was later adopted by pretty much every European type foundry, exported into the Americas, and used on war propaganda posters on either side of the Atlantic.

In 2011, he and Patrick Griffin published the refined Orpheus Pro family, which was based on the elegant Orpheus by Walter Tiemann (1926-1928, Klingspor), and its Italic which was called Euphorion (Walter Tiemann, 1936). Their enthusiastic description: The Orpheus Pro fonts started out as a straightforward revival of Tiemann's Orpheus and Euphorion. It was as simple as a work brief can be. But did we ever get carried away, and what should have been finished in a few weeks ended up consuming the best part of a year, countless jugs of coffee, and the merciless scrutiny of too many pairs of eyeballs. The great roman caps just screamed for plenty of extensions, alternates, swashes, ligatures, fusions from different times, and of course small caps. The roman lowercase wanted additional alternates and even a few ligatures. The italic needed to get the same treatment for its lowercase that Tiemann envisioned for the uppercase. So the lowercase went overboard plenty alternates and swashes and ligatures. Even the italic uppercase was augmented by maybe too many extra letters. Orpheus Pro has been a real ride. Images of Orpheus: i, ii, iii, iv, v.

In 2011, Griffin and King co-designed Walter Script, a calligraphic script that revives Troubadour (1926, Wagner&Schmidt).

Still in 2011, King and Griffin completed work on an exceptionally beautiful revival, Ratio Modern (the original by F.W. Kleukens is from 1923). This is a didone family with a refined humanist trait.

Still in 2011, he and Patrick Griffin created the 18-style sans family Recta, a considerable extension of Novarese's Recta. And they also completed Kumlien Pro, a revival and expansion of a beautiful transitional typeface designed in 1943 by Akke Kumlien. King Tut (2011) is a restoration and expansion of the original Egyptian Expanded, a single bold typeface cut in 1850 by Miller&Richard. Libertine (done with Patrick Griffin) is an angular calligraphic script inspired by the work of Dutchman Martin Meijer (1930s): This is the rebel yell, the adrenaline of scripts.

Paganini (with Patrick Griffin) is another jewel in Canada Type's drawers: Designed in 1928 by Alessandro Butti under the direction of Raffaello Bertieri for the Nebiolo foundry, Paganini defies standard categorization. While it definitely is a classic foundry text typeface with obvious roots in the oldstyle of the Italian renaissance, its contrast reveals a clear underlying modern influence. Patrick Griffin and Kevin Allan King did a revival called Paganini in 2011.

The year 2012 starts out with a bang. King and Patrick Griffin published Wonder Brush (partly based on a signage brush script called Poppl Stretto (1969) by Friedrich Poppl), Wagner Script (a revival of Troubadour (1926, Wagner&Schmidt)), Spade (a super-heavy slab face, done with Patrick Griffin; based on Farmer and Little's Antique No2 from 1867), and Louis (a faithful digital rendition and expansion of a design called Fanfare, originally drawn by Louis Oppenheim in 1927, and redrawn in 1993 by Rod McDonald as Stylus). King Wood (2012) is an octagonal flared wood type family with a set of dingbats, King Wood Extras. Monte Cristo (2012) is a grand type family with five styles and 1630 characters with many swashes and ways of connecting the calligraphic glyphs---it is the ultimate wedding font. The last joint project of King and Griffin in 2012 was Pipa, a pseudo-psychedelic groovy bellydancing font: Originally made for a health food store chain we cannot name, Pipa is the embodiment of organic display typography.

In 2013, Kevin Allan King and Patrick Griffin revived Georg Trump's transitional typeface Mauritius (1967, Weber).

In 2014, they designed the psychedelic typeface Jingo: This is the digital makeover and major expansion of a one-of-a-kind melting pot experiment done by VGC and released under the name Mardi Gras in the early 1960s. It is an unexpected jambalaya of Art Nouveau, Tuscan, wedge serifs, curlycues, ball endings, wood type spurs and swashes, geometry and ornamental elements that on the surface seem to be completely unrelated.

His graduatiuon type at MATD in 2018 was Mazina, a multi-script typeface system developed for complex literary texts. It supports Arabic, Latin, and several Canadian aboriginal scripts.

In 2022, he released eight fonts for Canadian Syllabics at Typotheque. At the same time, he published the extensive article Syllabics typographic guidelines.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Kevin Allan King
 [Designer info]
Monotype link
Behance page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type blogs ⦿ The Canadian type scene ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Art Nouveau typefaces ⦿ Psychedelic types ⦿ Wood Type ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Western fonts ⦿ Calligraphic typefaces ⦿ Curly typefaces ⦿ Native-American fonts ⦿ Typefaces and type design for Arabic ⦿ Tuscan fonts ⦿