As a present, my sister in law Christel Marseille-Hoksbergen created a hand-sewn alphabet which I liked so much, I decided to turn it into a font and this is the result. Probably a fun font to use in scrapbooks or magazines about handmade things. As an addition to the christelLine font, Christel Hoksbergen created another hand sewn alphabet which I turned into a font. This time with filled characters.

Back in 2013 I released an all caps font called Rum Doodle. Rum Doodle is a really nice, really weird font with angular glyphs and a unique look. I decided that it would be nice to tweak this font a bit and design a lower case for it. The result is Chew On This. I chose that name for no apparent reason - so don’t make a fuss about it…

Stateside is a bold condensed serif with a vintage feel. It has an urban and, I like to think, urbane character which puts me in mind of classic Thirties architecture like the Rockefeller Centre or the Empire State Building. I did consider calling it Rockefeller, but the family might think it a bit of a liberty, and I can’t afford to get into a copyright battle with them!

As with any attempt at a new typeface, you want to create something different. A difficult task as most legible fonts are based on something previous. Somatype isn't actually based on any particular font but it has unavoidable similarities to others. The important difference here being the distinctive quirk of the connection points going opposite to the norm; exemplified best by the lower case d & e. Once devised, the unique characteristic was applied wherever possible, keeping the rest of the characters in a sympathetic, rounded style. I first designed this in the light weight version, seeing it working best as a large open display font for magazines etc. but realized it would be too light for body copy at small scale, so, medium and bold weights were created to resolve that issue. Incidentally, the word ‘somatype’ literally means body-type.

Franko Luin, Odense's designer, on this typeface: With Odense I entered the field where Optima reigns in royal majesty. The first question I received was, in fact, why I designed another Optima. Look closely: Odense has as much in common with Optima as Garamond with Baskerville. Am I right? Odense Neon is a special variant that can be used for logos or single words. I had the idea for it when I noticed that the neon tubes in a sign over a store only partially followed the characters. The name comes from the Danish town Odense, the town of the famous storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, author of, e.g., 'The Little Mermaid.' Odense is also the place where the first book in the Nordic countries was printed, the 'Breviarium Ottoniense', in 1482.

Inspired by hand lettering on the 1950s packaging for E-Z Letter stencils, Stencil Merchandise JNL is a bold sans serif stencil, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.