I have loved fonts ever since I first sat down at a computer as an elementary school student. Dad wouldn't let me play with them much, though, because anything beyond the standard font overwhelmed the poor machine's memory and made printing (dot matrix, mind you) take fooorrrrreeevvvveeeerrrr.
Then Windows arrived, and not too long after that came the Internet. A split-second later, I was off to college, and my font-downloading really began.
The laptop I'm typing on is my third or fourth computer, and each has seen its share of fonts arrive in the fonts folder, usually to languish there unused, waiting for the day when that One Particular Project that needs a font Just Like That will call upon them. Ah well. I still download them. (& I've also paid for my share of "real" fonts for official graphic design projects, for the record.)
The impetus for this post, though, was an newsletter in my e-mail inbox from MyFonts, the site I mostly use for my font purchases. The newsletter caught my attention because it features handwriting fonts - chief among my font loves (and surprisingly useful, to boot). The newsletter is an interview with the font designer Ellinor Maria Rapp - a Swedish mom and biomedical scientist who plays with fonts in her free time. (Free time?!)
Yes, it’s actually three jobs... I have a hard time finding the time to manage everything. The kids take up most of the time and they should! But often the fonting gets behind, so I have a bunch to do when I get to it. Then I sit up all night and work – it’s the time when I am most likely to get something done. It’s rather cozy sitting up all alone in the dark making fonts drinking tea and listening to some good music.
She started not as a font designer, though, but a collector, and unlike my dusty laptop-bound collection, her collection of found free fonts is online, living at www.FontGarden.com. Poor me. More beautiful dingbats and display fonts to download . . . (Enjoy, Mom!)
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