Come for the Music—Go Home with a T-Shirt

One of my favorite projects of late has been designing the 12 signs of the Jewish Zodiac™. Seth Front, who is the mastermind behind this project recently alerted me to the fact that the Hollywood Bowl has gone zoinks for his zodiac—devoting an entire window display to it. If you can’t make it to the Bowl this summer, you can always check out the designs on my website, or purchase the merch on the Jewzo site itself.

Letter Cult Interview

For those of you who are interested, an extensive interview with me can be found on Letter Cult.

Charles White III Studio Sale

Mark Sunday June 7th on your calendars: my mentor, the great Charles White III, is opening the doors of Olio to the public, and putting some classic work up for sale. He will be making available paintings:

…sculptures, like bits and pieces of the fantastical work he did for “Treasure Island” and the “Atlantis” hotels:

…and various and sundry prints and other choice tidbits:

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and not to be missed! Check out more on Charlie’s blog. Please RSVP by email or by calling Lynn at 818.789.5613 by May 29th.

Free Parking:

Deliscript Released on Font Bros.

At long last, thanks to some savvy assistance and excellent technical OpenType encoding from Patrick Griffin of Canada Type, Deliscript Upright and Deliscript Slant have finally been released. Currently they can be found exclusively on the FontBros. website. Check out the User Manual to get an idea of how the different features are accessed.

Thank you one and all for your suggestions. I do plan on adding lighter weights to this family, as well as versions with Eastern European accented characters, and one for those who only have OpenType incompatible applications. Any comments would still be appreciated!

Another Accolade for Metroscript

In addition to being named “MyFonts’ Brush Script Font of the Year” and before that being named as a “Rising Star“, Metroscript has now been named as #5 in Smashing Magazine’s “30 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design“—which they call “a great reference for professional designers looking for some fresh, beautiful typefaces for their corporate projects.” They go on to say “With Metroscript, …lettering artist Michael Doret has adapted his trademark hand-lettering style to the computer, creating one of the most sophisticated suites of script fonts on the market.”

…and coming soon to a type distributor near you: Alphabet Soup’s newest release—Deliscript! Over six months in the making, this font is in the final stages of its OpenType encoding (which has been entrusted to master fontmeister Patrick Griffin of Canada Type). Done in the same spirit as Metroscript, and unlike many “vintage” fonts currently in release, this is not a rehash of an historic font design or showcard lettering that had been unearthed, but a completely new creation. It does have something of the look and feel of a vintage style, but is also fresh and contemporary. Check back here soon for more info, and for the release announcement!

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

I haven’t yet repeated a posting on a particular project, but I felt I needed to do it just this once. I wanted to show off the actual cover that I designed for “America Swings“. I designed it to be an actual tin-lithograph like the toys that were produced by companies like Chein and Marx back in the 20th Century. I was absolutely thrilled with the job that Taschen publishing did with fabricating and putting together this cover from the quality of the tin-lithography to the American flag background fabric. Click on the bottom image below for an even better view.

“Deliscript” Font Preview: Followup

A huge Thank You to those who took the time to take a look at my preliminary ideas for “Deliscript”. A few of you confirmed some thoughts that had already entered my mind about how to approach this font:

The biggest stumbling block for me was that with the large caps that I initially conceived this font as having, there was a problem if one chose not to set an underscore (such as when setting more than one word): the caps would then appear too large. José and Marcus both suggested reducing the cap size to align with the baseline. Initially I thought that might make the caps too small. But when I tried it out it seemed to work fine—admittedly it took some getting used to after seeing the cap so grandiose at the beginning of the word:

And it seems to work fine if one chooses not to set the underscore:

Or even without the extended crossbars on the “t”:

I think that doing it this way will give the font more flexibility. Perhaps I could still include a set of the larger caps as an extra for more dramatic effect. I haven’t yet figured out what I’ll do about the lighter weight. I’m not that crazy about it, so I was kinda surprised to see both Norman and Marcus commenting that they were partial to it. I’ll have to think on that, but any more comments on any of this would really be welcome!

“Deliscript” Font Preview: Your Feedback, Please!

I’m not the most prolific of font designers—perhaps I come up with one a year—but when I do one I try to do a design that’s not only uncompromising, but also one that is usable by people with a wide variety of tastes. For the last several months I’ve been working on a new design that was loosely inspired by one of the signs at Canter’s Deli here in Los Angeles. I’ve been vacillating on several points with regard to the design of this font, and also how many fonts should go into this package. So I thought I’d put it out there to you, my friends and fans, to take a look, read my remarks, and give me your considered opinions via the comments section below.

Above is my original concept for this font which I’m calling “Deliscript”. It started out as a straight up and down script, but then I decided to also include a variation that was italicized. In the same fashion as my highly successful Metroscript I thought that having underscore “tails” that would emanate from either certain cap letters or from the last letter of the word in lowercase would be a nice idea.

As you can see above, I immediately ran into a problem: if one choses not to set copy with an underscore (a very likely occurrence), then the caps end up looking much too large for the lowercase.

The solution, of course, was to reduce the size of the caps (above). But then the question arises, do I create two sets of fonts—one with larger caps and underscores (Deliscript Special and Deliscript Special Oblique), and another with smaller caps and no underscores (Deliscript and Deliscript Oblique)? Or do I eliminate the Deliscript Special fonts altogether and just have the more normal versions?

Another question that arises is whether or not it’s worth it to have features like the extensions on the “t”s. Part of me likes things like that, but another part says it may not be worth the trouble. It looks perfectly fine without (above). Opinions, anyone?

Finally, I had originally conceived this design as having a lighter weight as well, but I’m not sure it will be worth it. Aesthetically I much prefer the chunkier, heavier versions, and I don’t want to go to the trouble of doing this weight just to create a larger font family. So feedback on this question would also be appreciated! Comments?

Barack Obama & JFK

Today is history. I cannot remember ever feeling this thrilled or so hopeful about a new president. The closest thing I can associate with this was the tenor of the nation during the years before the Kennedy assasination. The country was unified behind him and he was beloved by almost everyone. When he was shot I was in school, and I remember students were either stunned or openly weeping. My daughter Wenonah reminded me this morning that once many years ago I spoke to her about the Kennedy years, about how he was loved, how everyone was so positive about—and supportive of—our government. She had told me that she just couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way, or even relate to that experience. After the inauguration this morning she told me that now she understood what I meant.

After November 22nd, 1963, our country entered a long dark era, from which only now it may be emerging. I never thought a day like this would be possible in my lifetime. After all the US has been through I never imagined that we could again elect a person of such intellect and potential as Barack Obama. I believe he is capable of being one of the greatest leaders this nation has ever had. We will all need to re-evaluate what is truly important in our lives, and he and his administration will need the support of all of us to tackle the monumental challenges that lie ahead.

MyFonts Names Metroscript “Brush Script Font of the Year”

The lead item in the January ‘09 issue of MyFonts News is reproduced below. I have been thrilled that this font has been accepted so readily by the design community (and beyond), and would like to thank Stuart Sandler of Font Bros and Mr Retro for his assistance in helping me realize this design.