Typophile

3 hour 4 minutes

Tomi from Suomi

I claim to have a world record in type design in speed.

When House Industries guys went about their Font Sprint in Vancouver, I promised I would trump their attempt of producing a working font in under 4 hours. They failed miserabily; they had upper and lower case letters, and most of the numerals.

I promised that if ATypI ever came to Helsinki, I would make a whole font in that time.

ATypI did come to Helsinki, so I had to put my money where my mouth was, and since I was one of the organizers, I could. This is the result:


It is ugly as hell, but it's a working Open Type font with 122 kerning pairs.

I made a RoboFog-file with pre-demernied x-height, ascenders and descenders beforehand, but that was it. Everything else was made on site. From start to this pdf, it took me 3 hours 4 minutes.

Challenge?

AttachmentSize
Marathon Sample.indd_.pdf21.98 KB
James Edmondson

Truly impressive. A testament to technology and craft. With that said, I'm not a fan of bashing House, or showing off. But with a skill like type design speed, where else could you do it but here?

Florian Hardwig

From start to pdf: 3 hours 4 minutes.
From pdf (ATypI Helsinki) to presentation (here): 4 years 3 months.

;-)

Tomi from Suomi

Hi, James-

I was not bashing House; I know them, and consider them friends of mine. But Ken, Christian and Tal did admit that they did not manage the task in time. And so, with help of some amount of red wine, I promised them that if ATypI ever came to Helsinki, I would try to make a whole Latin 1 font in 4 hours.

And look what happened.

And I quess I was showing off. Sorry about that.

But then again, I made a full font in 3 hours and 4 minutes :·)

David Berlow

Great! Now, for Bold, Italic and Bold Italic please.

Cheers!

Hrant H Papazian

The thing is Tomi, a font is never really finished.

hhp

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