Conferences & Cristoforo »

Wow, it has just been a crazy time lately. I wrote most of this yesterday at 36,000 feet, on my way home from a quick tour of Europe for work: Barcelona, Paris, Hamburg and Munich. This included numerous customer meetings and three speaking engagements:

• Typo Week in Barcelona: I talked about some of my Font Detective work
• WebVisions Barcelona: CSS 3 OpenType support, the new web typography frontier
• Typographische Gesellschaft München (Munich): Fonts for eBooks

Now I have a break for a couple of weeks before my next conference, TypeCon in Milwaukee (Aug 1–5), where I’ll host a panel to talk about Kickstarter as a means of funding new type design. I’ll also be doing a talk on the same subject at ATypI in Hong Kong (October 11-15).

In the meantime, I have been hard at work in my off-​hours on my Kickstarter-​backed typeface, Cristoforo, with help from my fabulous intern, Andrea Harrison. The full details are available to my backers in an update on Kickstarter, but for public consumption, I’ll just say that work continues on the upright face, and has started on the italic, and I am predictably enough wishing that I hadn’t promised to add so much language coverage (central European, Greek, Cyrillic). But it’s coming along, and the extended language support offers some greater design challenges than just digitizing an old typeface.

My day job has kept me pretty busy, and has presented me with some one-​sided decisions. Gee, I have exactly one day free in Paris: work on Cristoforo, or visit the Louvre? Okay, so I’m probably not going to collect a lot of sympathy votes here. But after spending less than 48 hours in each of Paris, Hamburg and Munich, then flying back to Portland, I am pretty beat.

Finally, I need to thank my backers for Cristoforo! Without them I would not have tackled the typeface, or would have done something much less ambitious and done it more slowly. Here is the backer listing (and yes, some of these are pseudonyms, it’s whatever they use on Kickstarter).

Cristoforo Backers »

As I’ve been posting about lately, Cristoforo is a family of three fonts I am developing, reviving Columbus & Columbus Initials (Ihlenberg, 1892) and American Italic and American Italic Initials (Ihlenberg, 1902) as well as adding a symbol font. I am the lead designer, with the assistance of my new intern, Andrea Harrison.

I funded the development of Cristoforo through a Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $10,000 from backers. Woot!

Current ETA on finished fonts? February 2013. However, limited pre-​release versions will be available to appropriate levels of backers starting in mid-July.

Here are my awesome backers, in tiers by their level of support.

Elder Gods

Gerry Leonidas
“Hanover Fiste”
Laura Worthington
Lanny Maude
Michael Grzesina

Great Old Ones

Daphne Pfister
Andrew Leman
Adam Crossingham
Andy Watson
Harbs
Dorian Henao
Christian Mayland
Philip M. Payes
Sean Stewart
Mark Simonson
Eric Menninga

Greater Servitors

Steve Burnett
Owlglass
Shaun Huston
Robin Layfield
Alan Shutko
M Sean Molley
John Butler
Juris L. Purins
Ned Holbrook
John Bragg
Jens Kutilek
Ed Hurtley
Dean EngelHardt
Shaun Huston
Jens Kutilek

Unspeakable Horrors

H James Lucas
Rachael Stevens
Katherine Schroeder
anarch
Sarah E Canzoneri
Tom Orzechowski
Atarun
Alexander Y. Hawson, M.D.
jshallri
Adam Jury
Matt Goczalk
Eric Schild
Michael Mellinger
Genghis Kern
Tom Carlson
Josh Rensch
Justin Hernandez
Joerg Sterner
Kimlin
Emrys Hopkins
Jonathan Biddle
Bobn Gorski
trit
Bret Kramer
David Marshall
Melissa Bube
Christopher
Trampas Johnson
John Velonis
Alan Ackerman
Bruce
Jonathan Harnum
Brendan Sheehan
Val Lucas
Shelby Cinca
Solarom
Damon Loren Baker
Gene Breshears
Shabier Raffee
Battlefield Press, Inc.
James Hannum
Adrian Rector
Stephen Kick
Eric Havir
Trevor Stamper
Open Design
Marc Teppo
Ben Levy
Jim Ramsay
Luke Ovitz
Rick Ernst
Seth Godin
Reed Savory
Frédéric Gaudet
Skye
Steven Scherbinski
Ed Possing
Simon Rogers
Rob Kaughan
Filipe
Steve Huntsberry
Bugmaster
Christine Doyle
Gerald Saul
Raymond Michaud
Peter Miller
Fred Hicks /​ Evil Hat Productions
Brett Bozeman
Bryant Durrell
Mike
Mark Ho-Kane
Derek M. Koch
James Todd
Bill Walsh
chris
Mark L Pappin
Chris Huning
Michael Jacob
Dan Reynolds
Rod McDonald
Gerolf Nikolay
David Wolske
John Hawkinson
Galahad de Corbenic
Justin Unsworth
Rob Pinkerton
Tom Conder
Eric Nielsen
Terry McKelvey
David Occhino Design
Jean-​Claude Tremblay
Randy
Chris Jarocha-Ernst
Jason Williams
Kate Eakman
Richard Kegler
Yukihiro Terada
Robert “Rev. Bob” Hood

Lesser Servitors

Zachstar2014
Jonathan Krell
Alex Kim
Torrain
Scott Dorward
Brien Croteau
Brian Schoner
Hans de Wolf
Jon Michaels
Andreas Welch
Jessica Kozaki
Benjamin Bangsberg
Gerald Kowarski
Blaine Horrocks
Rob
Knighthawk 2112
Angela Patel
Candace White
Thomas Taimre
Jeff
Darin DuMez
Antoine Bertier
Jed McClure
Stacey Van Keuren
Maika
Threemoons
Jon N
Rork
Haakon Sjursen
Tobias Svalås
Andrew Lee
James Allenspach
Akma
Rt Andrez Mora
“Rambo”
Curt Miyashiro
Elliott C. Bäck
Adam Hunter Peck
Munchezuma
Scott Morrison
THomas W. Holt Jr.
Dave Borne
David Barton
Nathan Clarenburg
Mike Hurd
Kathleen TInkel
arfunk
Candace Carpenter
Brian Moe
Micah Wright
rampantbicycle
Lila Symons
Gem Newman
Nikola Skopec
Brandon Holfeltz
Marcos Nogas
Phil Vance
Don Hosek
Eric Eslinger
Victor Hammersley
Dennis Wilkinson
Edward Iglesias
Jeremy Tavan
Adrian Rector
_Zed_
Christopher Harris
Jorg Rødsjø
Jeanette
AH
Mike Nutt
Mitchell Olson
Patrick Heagany
Sean Molley
Juan M. Escribano
Wayne A Arthurton
Brian Platt
Steph McW
Glenn Fleishmann
Laura
Ann Voelkel
Jesse Garrison
Michael Bowman
H. James Lucas
Raphael Solomon
Marty Barnett
Stephanie Schorr
Pablo Impallari
Dennis Kelley
Tieg Zaharia
Ernst Tedeschi
Dougal Campbell
Lorenz Thor
Halstead York
Ian Lovecraft
Richard Simon
Rebecca Evans

Byakhee

Ezra Claverie
Samuel Velasco
Daniel Steinbock
Lori

Ghouls

Missa
Justin Marsten
Michael Gerber
Steven Zeck
Alisha
Josh M
Caleb Stokes
Nicholas
Karen Babyak
Alex
Jenny Franck
Julian F
James Turnbull