Village was originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1903 for Kuppenheimer & Company for advertising use, but it was decided it would be too expensive to cast. It was later adopted as the house face for Goudy's Village Press. The design was very much influenced by William Morris's 'Golden' type. Paul Hunt began working on a digital version of Frederic Goudy's Village type prior coming to P22 in 2006 for an internship (which evolved into a staff designer position at P22.) Around this time, The Tampa Book Arts Studio was looking for a digital version of Village to complement with a letterpress edition of a book called "The Rich Mouse" by JJ Lankes. Many years later the Rich Mouse project has been completed, so we decided to release the Village type on the same day as the release of the Rich Mouse Book!

At first glance, the lettering style of Technopen JNL seems to emulate the computer-age fonts of the 1980s. In actuality, this font is derived from an alphabet sample found in an instructional booklet for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens. The Drawlet line was Esterbrook's answer to the iconic Speedball pen points sold through their chief competitor, the Hunt Pen Manufacturing Company. So, what seems to be late 20th Century typography is actually from vintage source material. In fact, the entire contents of the instructional booklet were copyright 1929! A few minor changes were made to the original A-Z alphabet and additional characters were added. The name Technopen is a shortening of the term 'technical pen', which is both a nod to the techno age of the 80s and the technical instruments of the past utilized for drawing and lettering.