Finally! "Dear Rae, Love Dad" is done!

This is my favorite font! And I have made quite a few of them. "Dear Rae, Love Dad" is a modern calligraphy font drawn by hand, using ink, and a folded nib dip pen on rough watercolour paper.

Best used in Open Type apps, it has automatically changing alternates. To use the open type features you will need an open type friendly application like InDesign or Illustrator where you can access the glyphs palette. But I have tried my best to make the font work nicely even if you don't use those apps.

It is upright, dramatic, and personal.

It is named Dear "Rae, Love Dad" because who wouldn't like to get a letter signed, "Love Dad"?

A BIG thank you to Dathan who answered my Glyph software questions.

And to Laurie who added the "Love Dad" to the "Dear Rae".

To buy this this fab new font, it can be found on myfonts at 30% off. 

Sneak Peek at what is next... "Dear Rae, Love Mom"

penmanship, calligraphy & lettering

This weekend I had serious fun attending Crystal Kluge's modern penmanship class in St. Paul. You can see her fonts here. I also enjoyed the rare chance to talk shop with another type designer!

This is Crystal's lettering. Oh how I love those flourishes.

And here are my hen scratchings. But in my defense I didn't take the class to be a bad version of Crystal but a better version of myself.

I learned a lot. Very beginning things like how to hold the pen and not to go so fast. I was easily the worst in class. Everyone else put their nib in their holder and started doing beautiful calligraphy. But then it was a talented bunch.

I got to do a lot of thinking in class and ponder a possible 4 new alphabet fonts. I would really like to make a font that looks like my new logo. I used a folded nib to get the above lettering.

A really great class for both beginners and professionals alike. And as you can see from the first photo she has another class coming up in March. If you are in the area I think you would enjoy it.

Since this was a lettering kind of weekend my friend Laurie, who I look the class with, gave me this oh-so beautiful real sable brush pen for my birthday. So now I have another tool that I don't know how to use. But it makes me happy just to hold it. This is a Kuretake Japanese pen.

(Thanks again Laurie! For the fun, drinks and the PEN!)

new! flourishes & ornaments

  New! Flourishes & Ornaments... 50 hand-drawn fresh, contemporary flourishes and ornaments that work with all the Outside the Line alphabet and doodle fonts. Add a bit of pretty adornment to cards, invitations and gift tags.

beer label, best regardz & holiday doodles too

 

font sighting here.... the birthday candles and swirls are from Holiday Doodles Too and Birthday Bedlam is Best Regardz! Nothing charms me more than to see fonts I have made used really well by someone. This someone is my friend Carrie from Scherpelz.com just in case you need something designed. And she can do more than beer labels.

new font, farm doodles!

F arm Doodles is finished and for sale everywhere. Whew. Each new font always feels like such an accomplishment.

It is the perfect collection of illustrations to be used for everything from the farm to table movement to the current weddings on a farm trend. 30 illustrations of farm animals... beehive, fish, bunny, chickens, cows, goat, sheep, pig and horse. Farm buildings, weather vane, windmill, tractor, milk can, hay bale, trees. And food... tomato, carrots, peas, spinach, apples, beets.

If you want to buy this font I suggest going to my etsy store where you will get an immediate download. My new friend David is working on a real shopping cart for this site. Next project is to rework about 90 pages. But then if you buy here you can get the 3 or $49 deal. Whatever works for you.

hamilton still needs our help

Hamilton Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin still needs our help. Neenah Paper, also in Wisconsin is taking donations and matching them for Hamilton. You can make a $5, $25 or $75 and get a letterpress poster.

Last Summer we visited the Hamilton Type Museum and had a great time. If you are able please help them with their move and to keep this wood type museum open. This piece of typography history is really worth saving.

codex: The Journal of Letterforms, Fall 2012

Each year I subscribe to one nice art magazine. This is mine for this year. I missed the first issue but could get it as a download to my iPad for only $8.

Issue #2 sets the bar even higher: More pages (180), more great content, and a complete redesign. Read about the iconic Pirelli Publicity of the 50s & 60s by such luminaries as Massimo Vignelli, Bob Noorda, and Alan Fletcher; discover the work of Czech type designer, Oldřich Menhart, in addition to book reviews and previews, the challenges of multi-lingual type design by creator of Skolar, David Březina; graphic design in the mechanical age — or how it was done before the advent of the PC, and much more.

This is a limited run and they go fast so I you want a subscription act now. John Boardley the founder of Codex also writes an interesting popular type blog ilovetypography.com.

Can't wait for an afternoon when I can just sit with my new magazine and a cup of tea.

the hamilton type museum needs our help now!

last Summer we took a little trip to the Hamilton Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. You can read all about our lovely day here. This glorious place needs our help and needs it NOW.

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum is the only museum dedicated to the preservation, study, production and printing of wood type. With over 1.5 million pieces of wood type and historical equipment in their collection.

This is the time of the year that people tend to think about giving. Plz consider giving to them as they are in the process of raising $250,000 for the move and a building of their own.

From the Hamilton website: Help! Hamilton is being forced to move mid-February. The owners of our building, Thermo Fisher Scientific, have given us 90 days to pack and vacate the building. We have little or no money to do this and no place to move to. We are attempting to raise $250,000 in short order to get 30,000 sq. feet of printing history packed up and ready for a new home, wherever that may be. PLEASE consider a donation today. If you're in the creative field let your employer know we need them as well. They can contact artistic director Bill Moran at Bill@woodtype.org to learn more. You can download a donation form here or click here to give online.

When we were there on one of the hottest days of the Summer I could only think how amazed I was that this place even existed. And without our help they might not. Please do whatever you can.

Please share this post on Facebook. This is important to all of us in the graphics field.