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September’s Font of the Month: Job French Clarendon

https://djr.com/notes/job-french-clarendon-font-of-the-month

Published: October 1, 2024 01:54

The horizontal-stress slab serif was my entry point into type design, and I can’t seem to stop myself from going back to this particular well every year or two. It’s not a bestselling genre, but for me it perfectly embodies the central struggle of type…

Forma DJR Mono

https://djr.com/notes/forma-djr-mono-release

Published: September 19, 2024 21:22

Love Forma DJR but hate all the kerning? Then Forma DJR Mono is for you! In Forma DJR Mono, Italian designer Ruggero Magrì has taken my revival and brought it in harmony with the limitations of the monospaced grid. On its own, it excels at conveying…

New: DJR Typesetter

https://djr.com/notes/new-djr-typesetter

Published: September 11, 2024 18:16

Today I’d like to share the new DJR Typesetter, a new tool for exploring my fonts, especially my variable fonts. It was expertly developed by Miniware. So you might be thinking, aren’t there already a ton of great variable font testers out there? There…

August’s Font of the Month: Megabase v3

https://djr.com/notes/megabase-v3-font-of-the-month

Published: September 2, 2024 13:54

Megabase is my personal favorite of the Megafonts, even if is not as widely used as Megazoid and Megascope. I am a sucker for horizontal stress (as you might know) and I appreciate its space-age funkiness and the playful up-and-down of its vertical…

July’s Font of the Month: Roslindale Compressed

https://djr.com/notes/roslindale-compressed-bold-font-of-the-month

Published: August 1, 2024 02:51

Memory is an imperfect thing, and it can sometimes be jarring when my mental picture of a typeface doesn’t align with the real thing. I’ll never not be shocked by how different Times’s Bold is from its Regular, or how much narrower Helvetica’s f, j, and t…

June’s Font of the Month: Ottavio

https://djr.com/notes/ottavio-font-of-the-month

Published: July 1, 2024 04:26

Last year I was approached by Caterina Piatti with an unusual request: she wanted me to design a typeface in honor of her great-grandfather. My type families rarely have anything to do with actual families, so I was intrigued! Then she told me why: in…

May’s Font of the Month: Nickel Stencils

https://djr.com/notes/mays-font-of-the-month-nickel-stencils

Published: May 31, 2024 16:06

For several years, my wife Emily worked in a makerspace—a creative lab complete with 3D printers, a laser cutter, woodworking tools, etc. (She even fabricated our trail signs there, typeset in Zenith DJR.) During that time, she visited and toured a lot of…

April’s Font of the Month: Job Clarendon Text

https://djr.com/notes/job-clarendon-text-font-of-the-month

Published: May 2, 2024 05:21

While assisting the production of Font Bureau’s Reading Edge Series, I was taught to think of Optical Size as a kind of funnel. In a typeface’s display sizes, there’s almost infinite room for variety and detail. But as the size gets smaller, the…

March’s font of the Month: Indoor Kid

https://djr.com/notes/indoor-kid-font-of-the-month

Published: April 1, 2024 03:30

Comic books were not a big part of my childhood, but they certainly were for Ellis Bojar. After his first encounter with an issue of X-Men at the age of 10, he quickly fell in love with the iconography, the stories, the bright colors, and—you guessed…

February’s Font of the Month: More Daily Special

https://djr.com/notes/februarys-font-of-the-month-more-daily-special

Published: March 5, 2024 21:24

A letterboard in Greenfield, Massachusetts, with my reflection in the glass. After I sent out Daily Special last month, I heard from several club members (including my own spouse!) who suggested that the font could do more to simulate the imperfections…