We are in the middle of yet another big type design boom, one to rival the post-Industrial Revolution explosion of typefaces that festooned nineteenth century playbills and posters. New tech breeds new type. In the 1980s, the first blush of desktop publishing plus the introduction of major type-creating software, predominantly Fontographer, brought about a boom. The advent of OpenType, with its extended palettes of over 65,000 glyphs per font brought yet another in the 1990s. OpenType’s ability to include multiple swashes and letterform options for any given character gives type designers a lot of room in which to play and experiment. Even more recently, the new typographic freedom brought about by webfonts has increased both the profile and demand for new styles and new revivals in type.

Type designer Tal Leming points to popular culture as another contributing factor in the current type craze. “There have been films, magazine articles,” he says. “Webfonts have been a trending topic on Twitter. Matthew Carter got a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010 and Hoefler & Frere-Jones were the first type designers recognized by the White House, with a National Design Award in 2009 and another two years later. There are new and friendlier apps for making typefaces—specifically RoboFont and Glyphs—that have helped eliminate some of the technical hurdles associated with making type. That has probably resulted in people sticking with it longer. Plus, as a culture, we are very interested in design details right now and few things are more detail-oriented than the elements of a typeface.”

Type is global, and not just because a single OpenType font can hold additional characters for multiple accents and non-Latin alphabets. Type is global because the web makes our visual world global. Noted writer, teacher and type designer Paul Shaw notes that, for a type designer today, where you were born matters less than where you found your inspiration or education. “Many people are trained at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom or the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK), and there is more influence from those schools than from the countries those students come from. For those who are not trained, the influences are from everywhere due to the Internet. Thus we have Alejandro Paul and Maximiliano Sproviero from Argentina both designing script typefaces based on American handwriting styles and Panos Vassiliou from Greece designing PF Champion Pro based on an English style of handwriting.”

The type world may be “one world,” but in the spirit of “buying local,” we turn the spotlight on four accomplished and acclaimed yet relatively young American type designers—Tal Leming, Jackson Cavanaugh, Laura Worthington and Jesse Ragan: Were they hatched or cultivated? Are their type design skills a product of nature or nurture? How did they get their start and what’s on their horizon?

TAL LEMING
Although still young, Tal Leming (typesupply.com) is more veteran than newbie. After starting as a graphic designer, he got a job at House Industries in 2001. He is especially skilled in the coding magic that makes OpenType fonts into “smart fonts,” useful when, for example, swapping glyph variants on the fly for the random look of handlettering. He also co-authored the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) specification—critical work behind the CSS3 feature @font-face—helping web design to be as typographically expressive as print. He recently launched a new website and released Balto, an American Gothic in sixteen styles, with weights from thin to ultra.

HOW DID YOU START DRAWING LETTERFORMS?
I’ve always had an unusual fascination with the shapes of letters and the way they are used. One of my earliest memories, probably from when I was five, is of noticing funny mistakes on changeable roadside signs. I remember being particularly amused when I caught that someone had flipped a W and used it as an M. In the second grade I got in trouble for adding too many curlicues to the top of my script 7. I distinctly recall thinking, “It looks better with the extra curl!” I was probably ten or so when I had my first personal logo. I spent a lot of that summer sitting in my room drawing business cards for myself. I have no idea why I thought I needed business cards.

I made my first font during my freshman year of college. I worked as a designer in one of the communications offices at my university, and we had no budget for new fonts. I noticed that one of the older computers had a piece of software called Fontographer on it. From there it seemed natural: we needed fonts, that computer had some software that would let me make fonts, so…. The first one I made was called Fun Chicken. If my memory is correct, it was incredibly awful.

Type design becoming my job just sort of happened. I was a graphic designer and I was primarily interested in typography and lettering. Over the course of my career, my day-to-day work has gradually shifted to being entirely focused on the thing that I love the most. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear that this is what I would end up doing.

WHO HELPED YOU GET ON YOUR FEET PROFESSIONALLY?
I am self-taught, but I have a lot of friends who have helped me become a better type designer. Christian Schwartz, Erik van Blokland, Ken Barber and Jonathan Hoefler have given me really great advice about drawing, and everything else.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
My next typeface is kind of hard to explain. It started as an experiment to see if it would be possible to make something that was halfway between handwriting and classical old-style faces. It has taken some unexpected twists and turns along the way but I think the drawing process is nearing the end. I’m looking forward to seeing what people do with it.

JACKSON CAVANAUGH
Letterer and type designer Jackson Cavanaugh (okaytype.com) has won multiple awards for his first two typeface families: Alright Sans was a 2011 Communication Arts Typeface Design selection and the Harriet Series received that same recognition in 2013, in addition to being a Type Directors Club winner in 2012.

HOW DID YOU START DRAWING LETTERFORMS?
I had a notebook in high school where I would fill pages with letters, trying to reprogram my handwriting to make the cool two-story a and g, or swashy y and f. I ended up completely ruining my handwriting. (I didn’t know about Gunnlaugur SE Briem’s fantastic Handwriting Repair.)

Honestly, the idea of drawing letters for a living didn’t really occur to me as a possibility until after I was well on my way to doing it. I was learning type design in my spare time and my career as a graphic designer just sort of gradually evolved. At some point I realized most of the work I was doing was type-based.

WHO HELPED YOU GET ON YOUR FEET PROFESSIONALLY?
My graphic design instructors at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit were really patient with me the last two years of school. I would turn every assignment into some kind of type design or letter-drawing project. Professor Sue LaPorte was amazingly helpful, bringing in references and books and totally working with my obsession. She was even patient enough to oversee an independent study I put together to focus more on type design. I was also fortunate because the department head, Doug Kisor, brought in some amazing type designers to do workshops, including Underware and Peter Bi?ak. Meeting them was very inspiring.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
I’ve been trying to finish one of my very first projects, a reimagining of Gill Sans Kayo. If you read Eric Gill’s writing, it’s clear he hated the very idea of bold typefaces. But the regular Gill Sans was a hit and Monotype wanted a really bold version. They basically forced Gill to draw one and the result is totally stupid, it’s obvious he was mocking the assignment. Personally, I like really heavy designs, and I love Gill Sans, so I’ve been trying to imagine what Kayo would look like if Eric Gill took the project seriously. The results are actually pretty nice so far.

LAURA WORTHINGTON
The newest of the four to professional type design, Laura Worthington (lauraworthingtontype.com) gained quick praise for her first release in 2010, the calligraphic Recherché. A letterer in addition to type designer, she specializes in scripts and decorative/ornamental faces, the latest of which, Charcuterie, is “an homage to the inventiveness, passion and care of peasants who proudly handed down recipes through generations.”

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF DRAWING LETTERFORMS?
I have vague memories of learning to write letters, but when I was nine years old, I was fortunate to have a teacher who was passionate about penmanship and taught us an italic printing hand. I was immediately hooked when I saw my teacher draw an italic a on the chalkboard and describe its form. I saw the correlation of the italic we were learning to the Chancerian letters my mother was drawing in her calligraphy class. I saw that handwriting and calligraphy could, in some cases, essentially be the same thing, but with different tools.

I wanted to be a calligrapher and, in junior high through high school, I spent a lot of time lettering certificates, addressing envelopes and so on. However, I realized that it would be difficult to make a living and I wasn’t crazy about the thought of lettering hundreds of certificates or envelopes every day. When it came time to think about college, I couldn’t figure out what to do with what I considered to be “the most useless talent ever” (famous last words!). My father suggested graphic design and that’s what I pursued, thinking that it would bring me opportunities in lettering. It did, but it was never enough and I wanted to create designs that were entirely mine, and that is what drew me to designing type.

WHO HELPED YOU GET ON YOUR FEET PROFESSIONALLY?
I’m self-taught, which isn’t to say that I haven’t had help and encouragement along the way. My design professor Gary Nelson introduced me to commercial lettering. (I named a typeface after him.) Later on, I developed a friendship with Charles Borges de Oliveira, who had designed a few typefaces and encouraged me to design my own. I’ve also received feedback and support through Type Tuesday in Seattle, a group of those interested in type, who gather once a month at a pub.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
A script typeface based on pointed brush lettering. It’s nice to get back to that after the long and intense project that was Charcuterie.

JESSE RAGAN
Young veteran Jesse Ragan (jesseragan.com) is both a letterer and typeface designer. In addition to designing type since 1999 with notables like Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Darden Studios and House Industries, as well as under his own shingle, Ragan teaches at Type@Cooper, a typeface design certificate program he co-founded at Cooper Union.

HOW DID YOU START DRAWING LETTERFORMS?
I remember being very excited when I first learned to make the complex (two-story) version of the letter a. I ran home to tell my mother after school. I think that was the moment when I became aware of drawing letters, rather than writing them.

WHO HELPED YOU GET ON YOUR FEET PROFESSIONALLY?
Cyrus Highsmith was extremely generous, patient and supportive when I was his student at RISD and then his intern at Font Bureau. He also connected me with the opportunity to work at Hoefler & Frere-Jones right out of college, and of course I learned a ton from Jonathan and Tobias.

I’ve been teaching typeface design myself for seven years now. My students at Type@Cooper are all adults and independent workers, so it often feels more like mentoring than teaching a class. When I’m explaining typeface design principles to students, I often find myself echoing things Cyrus told me over a decade ago. He still has a strong influence on how I think about typefaces.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
I just finished my first script typeface, for Aldo shoes. That project also gave me the opportunity to collaborate with Ben Kiel [of typefounding.com, another House Industries alum].

I always have a lot of little lettering and logotype projects going for clients. And when I get a moment to catch my breath, I’m putting the finishing touches on a big type family that will be my first retail release. It’s a tribute to a popular style of serif typeface from the late nineteenth century, synthesized into a system of 30 styles. ca