After college I moved to Santa Monica and began working for a small design agency in the Entertainment Industry. This was incredibly exciting to be a part of an industry that touches the world, and creating key art that would be seen by everyone. Not unsurprisingly, my favorite part of the world was creating title treatments, and finding ways for type to interact with imagery. I started doing animation for home entertainment ads, learning after effects and cinema 4D, and exploring new ways to work with type.
This time was when Will was deploying annually, so I had a lot of time to myself, living alone in a city where I didn’t really know anyone. So I began creating fonts inspired by projects at work, or from signage I would see around Santa Monica. After Will was killed and I became more and more unhappy with my job, I spent nearly every waking hour creating fonts. I would get up early before work, work late into the night and spend entire weekends in front of my computer. Eventually, after a lot of hard work, even more time, and a few successful typefaces (lookin’ at you Lunchbox!) I was in a position to leave my day job and pursue a full time career as a type designer.
I built a desk for myself that fit in a small corner in the living room of my Santa Monica apartment, bought a iMac and have been working at that station (throughout 4 moves, 4 cities and two countries) ever since.
When Max and I found out that we would be able to move to London, I applied to get my Masters Degree in Typeface Design at the University of Reading. I commuted and hour and a half from London to Reading everyday for the 2017-2018 year.
Up until that point I had been completely self taught in designing type. I had bought books, watched tutorials and signed up for online seminars. Other than that I had always been a bit removed from the typeface community. This was not only my introduction into established principles in type, type history and cutting edge technology in type, but also into the people behind them! Spending time with my classmates was such an incredible experience.
My dissertation was on artistic printing in the late 19th century, a controversial era of typeface design that I found fascinating. Living in London and having access to 19th century specimen books gave me a profound insight into the history of display typography that I never would have had elsewhere. I’m so grateful for that experience and for what my learnings will give me in my future career!
Now I am back in the US, living in Seattle and on my own again, but with a wider knowledge of my industry, and connections that will hopefully last a lifetime!