1977 was a good year for soccer. Attendance for the North American Soccer League (NASL) grew 33%, to 13,000 per game. Brazillian soccer legend Pelé played his final match, kicking for both the New York Cosmos and Santos of Brazil. And a soccerboy named Charlie was crowned with the nickname Chanky. In honor of his soccer hero Pelé, Charlie insisted the neighbor kids call him Chelé. They laughed at him and called him Chanky after Spanky from the Little Rascals. As he grew into his manhood, he became Chank the internationally renowned font designer. Chank created this font Soccerboy, as filtered through the artistic eyes of his 1977 childhood. It's a tri-line font, hand-drawn in Chank's signature cartoon whimsy. Soccerboy encourages play with color and alternate characters. Create coloring effects yourself using layers and the magic wand and paint bucket tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

Ornaments 4 are based on the Amsterdam Apollo and Gracia ornaments and the Amsterdam Crous-Vidal dashes (designed by Crous-Vidal).

While watching a 1920s Charlie Chaplin short film, Jeff Levine was taken with the unusually modern looking lettering of the title cards in that silent movie. The lettering was not only right for its time, but could also be adapted to both Art Deco and Techno applications. From this classic film comes the font Two Reeler JNL, a bit of yesterday with an eye toward the future.

Some years ago, a good friend and typophile, Gonzalo García Barcha, approached me with the idea of designing a typeface for his editorial project Blacamán Ediciones. He had just came across an hitherto unknown manuscript by Luis Lagarto, a colonial illuminator and scribe, working in Mexico City and Puebla in the late 1500s. The manuscript calligraphy was incredible and stunningly original. It featured three different hands by the scribe, intermingled in the text: a kind of baroque «Roman» roundhand; a very ornate, lively «Italic»; and some sort of irregular, playful, even funny «small caps». All imbued with an eccentric, convoluted zest and vivacious rhythm. Lagarto is the final result of translating these extraordinary hands into a digital type family. Since the manuscript had no numerals, math signs and many other characters now in use, part of the fun of the job was to infer them from the stylistic peculiarities of Luis Lagarto's calligraphy. Lagarto received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.