Gillen versus Jami

November 5, 2000

Background, players: Jami is the dedicated person who has been running True Type Resource for years as a service to the type community. Jeff Gillen is the principal at Mindcandy Design. Mindcandy sells fonts for several typographers. In addition, Jeff has designed some of his own fonts. Jami asked Jeff one day what description he would like for Mindcandy on his links page.

Here is Jeff's reply, as reported by Jami: looks like a bunch of 'KNOCK-OFF" - stolen typefaces, or just cheap, fly-by-night typedesigners................DONT WANT TO BE ANY PART OF THAT S**T...........Those are exactly the type of f**kers that are destroying this business. and YOU are not doing ANYONE ANY FAVORS by advertising this s**t!!! pissOFF. A bit later, the following message was sent by Jeff to Jami: HeHE.....like i give a f**k what you think....let's see what you've designed - you loser! i remember your s**t - it stinks like my kitty's butthole....hasta lavista - Hack.....

As this was reported on comp.fonts on November 4, 2000, several people picked up on it. Why would a soft-spoken guy like Jami even make this such a public affair? So, always the supporter of the underdog, Apostrophe replied:

Hmmm. Well, Jeff Gillen has some nerve saying all that stuff. Almost each and every single one of the fonts that he made (and is now retailing at $39 a font) is basically a bad modification of a not only existing, but very familiar type.

• Blind Faith is a shattered thick Univers.
• Blue Line is an outlined version of City with a few circles sprinkled here and there.
• Bureaucracy is a melted Helvetica.
• Faith is a jittered Univers.
• Groovy is a filled in version of an ITC font (can't remember name now).
• The Krustofsky fonts are photoshopped Frutiger.
• Jobless is a shaken Times.
• Joker and Riddler are cut-ups of Jackson.
• Missing Link is a cut up Courier Bold.
• Sibley Potato is another filtered Times.

He continues, responding to Jeff's first statement with the two four-letter words: Now there's a guy who really has a pulse on the state of the "business". First he filters every font that comes with his machine, claims the filtered version as his own, then sells them at $39 per font, then he claims on his web site that Texas Hero was designed by Denis Dulude (!!!), then he just all out slags what happens to be a free font hobbyist heaven. Go figure. Also go figure why TypeRight knights like Chris MacGregor, Don Synstelien and Brian Willson are actually distributing their stuff through a knockoff artist like Gillen. This guy seems very messed up. He reads like a sociopath actually.

Yummy adds to this on November 5, 2000 on comp.fonts: Why would anyone want to buy *anything* from Mindcandy? It's a novelty type, kinda like those exotically flavoured condoms outfits, providing fonts of a very average quality (about the level you can find in tons of some of the better freeware *originals*). At some point I've downloaded their entire catalog, looked, then deleted them all. Too boring and unoriginal. It's funny when a guy who tries to sell typographic bubble gum for a price of top-notch quality fonts complains about freeware designers destroying his business.

Report by Luc Devroye