Years ago, by happenstance, designers Nancy Mazzei and Brian Kelly found an old decrepit typewriter in an abandoned lot with tall grass in Brooklyn. They kept it around their apartment for two years. Then one day they decided that it was time to move and they planned to throw the old typewriter away. But it was so beautiful they wanted to keep at least a part of it. So they decided on keeping the keys. They kept the keys in a brown bag until one fine day the keys were introduced to a camera. It was a match made in heaven that resulted in some beautiful quirky images of typewriter keys. These images were the inspiration for Backspacer. They were scanned, traced and turned into a working typeface by Zuzana Licko.