Just saw that Gulliver linked this site under Designers. Well if you haven't seen this body of work, check it out.

> "I don't love type. Type is dull."

There is something to that. But only if:
1. You're not interested in aesthetics, and
2. You're not interested in functionality.
Maybe he'd be happier as an accountant?

Sure, simply making fonts for the market, without an appreciation for Shape and/or without an understanding of reading is indeed very boring - it's like being a grocery bag boy (and many of those fonts would indeed look smashing on grocery bags). I personally try to express the power of shapes, but am also very grateful for my innate curiosity of how things work deep down.

hhp

btw, on the site you can read the entire HOW magazine feature. That'll provide more context. I think this is a façade, in a way, to keep people from thinking that he is a complete freak like the rest of us!

but his talent and accomplishments are undeniable

I've had the pleasure of working with Dennis on custom type commissions during my ad agency days, and then during my tenure at Phil's Fonts, a distributor of his retail fonts. Dennis *is* a complete freak, but a wonderful, trippy guy with a great and twisted sense of humor... talk to him on the phone for 5 minutes, and you'll be in another world. His type treatments and logotypes for pubs are inspiring, and works of art in themselves; his layered typefaces are really fun to play with.

My only complaint about Dennis' work is his aversion to creating characters other than the basic alphanumerics for fonts that are to be sold commercially... I don't know if he's gotten past that, but it used to drive me nuts...

> his aversion to creating characters other than the basic alphanumerics

That's very strange, considering he's made Hebrew fonts.

hhp

Aversion probably isn't the right word - I don't know if it's conscious or not, or simply the result of being too busy, or getting distracted by another project, etc. Anyone who's done 600 well-drawn typefaces is probably going to take shortcuts to remain so prolific. I know nothing about the character sets in Dennis' Hebrew types - I only have experience with his Latin designs and revivals.

Commercial types in particular should have a full character set with basic punctuation, currency, etc., whether Latin or non-Latin. This is merely my humble opinion as a typographer, a graphic designer, and as someone who works with type designers in getting fonts prepped for market. It's a bummer to find the perfect typeface for a project, only to discover that it's missing the question mark or "curly quotes."