I decided a while back that I wanted to separate my typeface designs onto their own site. They’ve always lived alongside my blog and other creative projects, but they needed a home of their own, especially since I plan to expand the offerings in the near future. I’ve been noodling around with options, but today, I’m finally ready to release SbBFonts.com out into the world with a design inspired by two-color printing.

The Inspiration

When I became a designer in the mid-1990s, the web was just becoming a thing, and printed documents were the primary job of a designer. Two-color projects used only two spot ink colors — say green and black — for the entire job. (You also had a “third” color with the paper, which was usually just white.) Four-color printing or full-color printing was reserved...

I love pixel fonts, so I was absolutely delighted with this presentation from Marcin Wichary. Enjoy!

Here’s the other one I’m finishing up: SbB Directorate. Inspired by scifi bureaucracy and named after the government in Buck Rogers. Weight, width and slant axes.

I’ve been working on a couple of variable typeface designs lately. This one is SbB Departure Mono, based on a old Fontstruct design of mine. Two axes: Weight and Slant.

Working on a typeface design tonight and I’m really grateful for the comprehensive documentation available for Glyphs 3. Good user manuals are a lost art, and sometimes, you just need a reference guide to look something up.

I realized this morning that I’ve been using Fontstruct for 15 years. Fontstruct is an online tool for building modular typefaces. My first typeface design — Big Thursday — debuted on May 26, 2009. Since then, I’ve publicly released 49 fonts on Fontstruct and 19 have been selected as “Staff Picks.”

The original version didn’t have a lot of flexibility,¹ but over time developer Rob Meek has added new brick types, construction methods, kerning, support for color fonts and other features to Fontstruct to make it more powerful. My work tends to be a little brutalist, but if you want to understand the flexibility of the tool, check out the gallery to see what amazing creations people can craft with this online tool.

I don’t use the most complicated features, but I sometimes use Fontstruct to prototype an idea for a new typeface. One of Fontstruct’s...

Spent my morning working on some typeface designs in Glyphs. I really enjoy working with fonts, and I have several designs that I’ve started and not finished. I need to prioritize creative time – not just writing, but also sketching and type design.

Finally got around to adding a fonts page to my Micro.Blog site.