Trigomy is a proportional pixel font designed on a 5 pixel grid. It is intended for either very small text or as huge display font for posters and the like. To get a crisp look this font should be used at 10 pt or multiples of 10 pt. (A tip for Adobe Creative Suite applications is to change the standard anti-aliasing method from “sharp” to “crisp” and to align the text to whole pixels. Also avoid centered text.) To get started with type design I thought it was best to start with a pixel font because you don't have to focus much on the design itself, but rather have to focus on how kerning and spacing works and the various features you can implement with OpenType. And of course I wanted to have a pixel font that had all that I was missing from other pixel fonts. We were learning trigonometry at the time I started designing Trigomy, and most of the time I misspoke it “trigometry”. So, when I had to come up with a name for my first font I thought: "Why not go with Trigomy?"

In 1972, VGC released two typefaces by designer friends Dick Jensen and Harry Villhardt. Jensen’s was called Serpentine, and Villhardt’s was called Venture. Even though both faces had the same elements and a somewhat similar construct, one of them became very popular and chased the other away from the spotlight. Serpentine went on to become the James Bond font, the Pepsi and every other soda pop font, the everything font, all the way through the glories of digital lala-land where it was hacked, imitated and overused by hundreds of designers. But the only advantage it really had over Venture was being a 4-style family, including the bold italic that made it all the rage, as opposed to Venture’s lone upright style. One must wonder how differently things would have played if a Venture Italic was around back then. Chopper is Canada Type’s revival of Venture, that underdog of 1972. This time around it comes with a roman, an italic, and corresponding biform styles to make it a much more attractive and refreshing alternative to Serpentine. Chopper comes in all popular formats, boasts extended language support, and contains a ton of alternate characters sprinkled throughout the character map.

Italian type design master Aldo Novarese was not famous for making calligraphic designs, nor had he any interest in them. He is much better known for his text faces, and quite innovative sans serif and decorative designs which became the definition of what we now know as techno and modern. But in 1968, Novarese surprised everyone with a fantastic flowing deco script entitled Elite. Novarese's formula of simple soft curves and toned-down swashes makes for one of the most unique alphabets ever seen, not to mention one of the best flowing and most legible scripts. This is now its digital incarnation, named Fontella. Fontella's applications are virtually limitless. This is the sort of script that can feel at home pretty much anywhere; a sign, a fridge magnet, a bumper sticker, a greeting card, a movie poster, a book cover, music artwork, magazine ads, newsletter headlines, etc. Digitized from original specimen and expanded with a few built-in alternates and ligatures by Rebecca Alaccari, the font was named after the famed jazz singer Fontella Bass. These letters are just so sweet they had to be called Fontella.

Lush was a formal script until it had a few too many drinks and, as a result, loosened up a little bit. Harkening back to the handlettering of the 40s and 50s, Lush has evolved into a casual, but well-dressed script that maintains a rather aggressive rhythm. Transitions often whip back quickly, forcing the letters to reel from the movement and resolve efficiently. It is not as warm as some scripts, intentionally so, so as to distinguish it from its predecessors. Type and lettering fans will revel in the options afforded to each character—in some cases there are up to 15 different variations with multiple glyph recipes available to produce the most unique and fluid lettering combinations possible. An often overlooked segment of contemporary script fonts, the uppercase letters have at least 3 options to work with that mesh well with the 36 ornamental flourishes to add even further embellishment. In total, there are over 1,650 glyphs in the typeface that includes these OpenType options: Stylistic Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Swashes, Titling, Historical Forms, Initial Forms, Oldstyle Numerals and 3 additional Stylistic Sets. With this release, I have tried to provide as much flexibility and 'forgiveness' within the typeface so the lettering enthusiast can have fun and explore thousands of iterations… and it's pretty easy math to figure this out: with over 970 alternates and 270 ligatures, I intended this typeface to be one that keeps on giving. One important fact to note… this marks the first release of a smooth, non-brushed, non-textured script from me—but it won't be the last. That said, I will have to admit that the brush has influenced many of the characters and their construction. Enjoy :)