Designing a font from scratch — and submitting it to Google Fonts in 24 hours
[EDIT: It’s live on Google Fonts! You can find it here.]
One Day Builds
I’m a huge fan of Adam Savage’s One Day Builds. At the beginning of the day he starts with a pile of materials, and ends up holding something that he once coveted (this one is my favourite).
So with this in mind (and a day off from work), I set myself a challenge…
Create an entirely new font, from scratch, and submit it to Google Fonts in under 24 hours.
I had a couple of letters already sketched out in an old notebook. I wanted to create a tall, sans-serif, display font that could be used in posters, or large scale artwork. In my early days at Men’s Health, I would have to use fonts like ‘Tungsten’ or ‘Heron’, which were terrible for chunks of body copy, but amazing when used in headlines, or for promotional material (which was my main job there). This was the style I set out to create.
