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Goldenbook 2.0 and Refrigerator Deluxe 2.0
Goldenbook and Refrigerator Deluxe have become two of my most popular type families in recent years. The last couple of months I've been working on big updates for both of them. I first released...
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Mostra Nuova 2.0
I've made a big update to one of my most popular type families, Mostra Nuova. First, I've added three new weights: Semibold, Extrabold, and Extraheavy. The Semibold weight was based on a request from...
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De Re Atari
In the early '80s, before I had a Mac, and before I was making fonts, I was an Atari home computer user. I've been down an Atari rabbit hole lately, organizing and documenting my old Atari files and...
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Studio Tour Update
I recently had the ceiling in my studio repaired due to some water damage. While they were at it, I had them give the room a fresh coat of paint. Out with the yellow, in with the warm gray. This was a...
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Acme Gothic Sightings
For some reason, a high percentage of sightings of Acme Gothic in use have been in science fiction movies and tv shows. Not what I would have expected at all for what I admit is a somewhat "retro"...
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Introducing Etna
I'm very excited to introduce a brand new typeface family that's been on my back burner for decades: Etna. It was inspired mainly by the Aetna style of wood type from the 1880s. Etna tames this quirky...
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Mostra Nuova in Entertainment Weekly
Christmas came early for me this year when I received the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly and saw my Mostra Nuova all over the cover. It's always a big deal as a type designer to see my fonts in...
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Introducing Proxima Vara
Well, this has been a long time coming. Variable fonts (a.k.a., OT-VAR, or OpenType Variable) started to become a thing in late 2016, with backing by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google. The standard...
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Ohno Radio Interview
A fellow type designer, the talented James Edmondson (Ohno Type), started doing a podcast recently called Ohno Radio. Like everything James does, it's very well done. It features interviews with...
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The Bookmania Cookbook
Ten years ago, when I first released Bookmania, I mentioned in the specimen book that there would be a user guide showing how to take advantage of the hundreds of swash and alternate characters. While...
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What Serif Font Should I Pair with Proxima Nova?
Have you ever wondered what serif font would work best with Proxima Nova? I've often been asked this question, and I never really had a good answer. That's about to change. I've been working on...
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Introducing Proxima Sera
Not long after I released Proxima Nova in 2005, people started asking me: "What serif font would work best with Proxima Nova?" It's very common to combine serif and sans serif typefaces, usually a...
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Introducing Dreamboat
I’ve been interested in the classic script style of the early 20th century for as long as I’ve been drawing letters. It was commonly used in logos and trademarks, meant to convey the idea of a...
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"Typecasting" Revisited
It's been nearly ten years since I last posted an item under the "typecasting" category here. (Although it's not like I've been posting a lot here in any category recently, other than new font...
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1979
I've been using a Mac for all my design, illustration, lettering, and type design work since the mid-1980s. I embraced it fully and enthusiastically, before it was really even ready sometimes. It made...
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Direct Sales Are Back (Plus Live Font Previews)
Party like it's 2007. Note the shopping cart on the right side. At one time, early in the history of Mark Simonson Studio, I sold fonts directly from my website. This was back in the early 2000s when...
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Introducing Proxima Nova Wide & Extra Wide
One of the ideas on my back burner for a long time has been to add wide styles to Proxima Nova. Condensed and Extra Condensed have been there since the very beginning, but it was missing styles wider...
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Pre-Digital Font Tech No. 1: Formatt
Before digital type and desktop publishing took over the world in the late 1980s, there was metal type and phototype. But if you were on a tight budget, you could set type yourself using various "dry...
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Caricatures. Wait—What?
I'm known as a type designer—and fonts are pretty much what it's all about here on my website, and in my life in general. But I haven't always been making fonts. At various points of my career (which...
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Introducing Viroqua: Kandal Revisited
Viroqua's ancestor, Excalibur, hand inked. I released Kandal in 1994. It's one of my earliest typeface designs, going all the way back to an earlier design in 1978, which I submitted it to...
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