That is sweet. I will get PP Zero. It will look good on a baby card. Thank You :-)

That is very kind of you to release this into the wild. It's a fun face!

Yes, it is -- I was pleased to be a beta tester for Pyke's Peak and used it in a book that was tied for "best original entry" at its inaugural show.

Pix of it are here.

Congratulations James! This looks like a lot of fun.

ChrisL

Nicely done Chris!

You know what I wish now? Wish I'd made the capital I with serifs. Wish I had 3 heads too.

You've got some choices going there Chris, which I would have qualms about using. The EL - ED combination in TRAVELLED could have had more grace, and the opposing F's in DIFFERENCE redefine "awkward". That's typical, I give you the keys to a Pyke's Peak racer with a 1000 Horsepower motor in it and you go tearing up the mountain and leave behind a big mess (;^) There's an art to driving this machine, and a zen to it as well.

Thanks Linda and Russell and Ray for beta testing old Pykie. Its "casual wierdness" works in a good way for How to Make a Peacock Fly – a strange kind of erm, object in a box!. There are two kinds of comments I would dearly appreciate hearing about:

1) How useful is the zero cost license, does that and the PP Zero font help address the looming spectre of web fugly?

2) What would you use Pyke's Peak for (both the full retail version and PP Zero)?

And the third thing*, how many web designers are you going to pass a copy of PP Zero on to? I will send a prize, a pair of uber-cool mirror aviator sunglasses like the unit being modeled here by Plush Jimi, to the person who gets PP Zero into the hands of three big-time kick-arse web designers.

* I know I said two things, I lied

j a m e s

James has done something special here with this type design. Instead of filling a well-known and well populated type market sector with yet another version of a known quantity, he has opened a road to a place yet reached. That is why I chose Frost's verse as a sample to show his work. Someone has to take those first bold steps into the unknown and mark a path yet traveled. Here is a place where it can be celebrated to be dyslexic, not as a handicap but as a venue to read again in a new way. James has married the softness and warmth of written hand with crisp, defined anatomy of constructed type and in a playful way. Users can be children at heart with a naive smile and a tickle from a feather. It is fun again to put away the seriousness we all deal with daily and have a good therapeutic play session!
I am not saying Pyke's Peak is a finishing stroke and a completed journey. It is one small step taken in a new direction without fear and without a guided tour. Thanks, James! for giving us a peek at your yet to be defined path!

ChrisL

Chris, well put! But do you mean literally dyslexic? Or are you just referring to the reversed forms?

"do you mean literally dyslexic?"

No, figuratively, as in turning a handicap into an advantage, celebrating what appears to be a negative by making it into a positive.

ChrisL

Aha! That makes sense.

Cheers Eben. Cheers Chris, you have a succinct way of describing these things. Turning a negative into a positive is very much part of what I set out to do with Pyke's Peak.

@Chris: No, figuratively, as in turning a handicap into an advantage, celebrating what appears to be a negative by making it into a positive.

"Figurative" is the key word. Type is sculpture. It's all about carving up whitespace with figures and the task of on-going figuration. "It helps that" turning some letters around permits combinations heretofor-inconcievable.

The mirror ligs concept is a trouble maker—a device that multiplies possibilities. A backwards R is still an R and still functions as an R, with new semantic range.

j a m e s

Its “casual wierdness” works in a good way for How to Make a Peacock Fly – a strange kind of erm, object in a box!

It's a box
It's a book
It's fishing tackle
It's a felt liner
It's How to Make a Peacock Fly

I like the "casual wierdness" (sic) bit....

:-)

“casual wierdness” (sic)

Aww, I'm just casual about spelling when circumstances allow it. I know how to spell "weird" but prefer to spell it wierd. You know what I means. I love me the non-conformity.

j a m e s

Great work James—you’re really pushing letterforms and Opentype in great directions with this one!

And Linda, that book is fab!

Geez, Jimi, if I was a conformity kind of girl, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing!

Thanks, James: I should probably take a picture of the text that the codex side of the book is done as well -- it's Vince's Magpie, which looks very kewl with Pyke's Peak....

Yes do that, post pics of the text on your flickr photostream. Magpie is underexposed.

j a m e s

Too dark (it's raining here) to take good pix of the flip of Peacock, but here is a shot of Magpie in action in What I Felt (the pre-covered text block version).

Mew! Thanks. Artist's word of the decade -- "lovely"

j a m e s

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for being so appreciative. Thanks James Puckett, thanks Eben, thanks Chris, thanks Joe Pemberton and Punchcut for hosting the international typo community. I owe my whole type design career to Americans and Canadians.

Sorry if I seem ungrateful at times. I forget myself, I forget myself.

(bump, bumpity-bump)

j a m e s