Jeremy Mickel on Type Design

The first one’s the hardest

by Jeremy Mickel

I just read the most amazing article on ILoveTypography about the birth of a typeface. It's called Router and there are several links to purchase the typeface in the article.

(Via i love typography, the typography and fonts blog.)

What was so amazing was seeing scans of the sketches and hearing Mickel talk about the arduous process of capturing the essence of the font while designing character sets with 1,000 glyphs.

I've always been into type design, but this article goes so far in depth and makes me realize how big the world of the craft really is. I don't know if I could ever do it.

The other benefit is that it helps you to understand how much work goes into the process, which should make you think twice before paying a meagre $30-$50 for a single application font.

All things considered, when you think about the fact that this typeface, Router, sells for $199 for a 12 font family which includes

OpenType fonts containing Small Caps, extra Latin accents, multiple numeral sets, and useful geometric shapes and arrows

it's a total steal. And it makes you want to fire up PayPal and donate some extra money to this guy.

I mean, it's beautiful, but the OpenType collection of the FF Meta family is $458 for 8 fonts. Puts it into perspective, huh?

Ever designed a font, shelled out a huge amount for a font family, gotten a whole family at a great price from a cool designer like Jeremy Mickel, or grumbled about breaking the bank on a typeface? Sound off in the comments.