“The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing. And writing of some kind the bulk of the designs seemed certainly to be; though my memory, despite much familiarity with the papers and collections of my uncle, failed in any way to identify this particular species, or even to hint ...

We have received complaints from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Letters about the previous post, A Typical Day at the Office, depicting a member of Font Bureau’s design staff threatening a letter with a whip. Font Bureau would like to assure everyone that no letters are harmed in the creation of any Font Bureau typefaces. Font Bureau strongly condemns the mistreatment of any glyph. We apologize to anyone who may have been offended.

Creating typefaces isn’t as easy as you might think...

I will do a presentation at the HOW conference in Atlanta on Monday, June 11. This is what it will look like. You don’t want to miss that now, do you?

A drawing from a sketchbook, exploring the possibilities of the phonetic alphabet...

Pelle Anderson invited me to Stockholm to give a presentation about my work. It will happen this Friday, April 20 at the Royal Library. Come check it out if you are in the neighborhood!

Here is more information in English and Swedish.

Steven Heller, art director/author/co-author/editor/etc, asked me some interesting questions about type design. I mumbled some responses. Somehow he was able to edit it all into a coherent interview for the online publication Voice: AIGA Journal of Design. Check it out!

One of the things I have struggled with as a type designer is explaining what I do for a living. This was especially true when I was starting out. I might be at a party with my girlfriend, now my wife, and we would be meeting some new people for the first time. At some point, one of these people would ask, “So Cyrus, what is your job?” I lived in particular fear of this question. I knew it would involve a lot of explanation about what a typeface is, how drawing them really is my job, and that it ...