James Edmondson and Colin Ford talk about the origins and purpose of "The Ohno Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Typography.” They discuss trend forecasting in type design, the instructional approach of the book, the importance of proofing and spacing, the influence of family, the business of type design, the evolution of a type foundry, and advice for aspiring designers.
Gen and Zrinka sit down to chat about meeting in grad school, starting a type foundry, and the perils of raising a child while being a type designer. We announce Yumex, the new typeface designed by them, and released through Ohno.
Elizabeth Goodspeed can speak in paragraph form. It’s pretty impressive to me, someone that has to write in paragraph form and then read it aloud. I had been wanting to talk to Elizabeth for a long time, because she’s so funny. I knew she was smart, and a great designer, but I still don’t understand how her brain works. She’s known for spotting trends, naming them, creating archives around them. But her understanding of design goes far beyond aesthetic tropes. In this interview, we talk about
Summer is here, and so is this 18 minute identity crisis as I navigate running a business, renovating two homes, with two kids, and moving Ohno headquarters from Oakland to San Jose, California.
We go behind the scenes at Ohno to tell the story of our new typeface, Casserole. It began as a reinterpretation of Louis Minott’s Davida from 1966. I got to speak with his granddaughter to learn more about Louis as a designer, father, and grandfather. Then, we have a breif conversation between Colin Ford, and Jamie Otelsberg, the Ohno designers that worked on the project with me.
Jen Wagner didn’t come to design as a designer; she actually studied marketing, had a slew of businesses, eventually landed in fonts, and just hit the ground running. Today she’s a powerhouse, running her foundry Jen Wagner Co. She is prolific and has an incredible knack for hitting the nail on the head stylistically with each release. I absolutely loved talking to Jen, because it was so refreshing to hear someone thinking strategically with this different background. In our conversation, I lear
Lynne Yun, what hasn’t she done? She worked at Apple, worked at Monotype, she’s got her own stuff through her foundry Space Type, she’s a calligrapher, type designer, lettering artist, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg somehow. More recently, she attended the School of Poetic Computation and has become an expert on generative typography. Now, Juan Villanueva, grew up in Peru, as well as New Jersey, that old classic combo. He went to Reading. He’s holding down at MOnotype these days, but ha
I’ll be honest, this episode was recorded in July, but some things, like the work of our guest, are timeless. I talked with Kris Sowersby for almost two hours, which makes this the longest Ohno Radio episode in history. You know Kris’s work, it’s top notch, in both concept, and execution. I hate him, because he can take even the most well-trodden thing, like I dunno, Helvetica or Times, and still manage to do it in a way that even the most jaded graphic designers can find compelling. Kris’ type
A few months ago, I saw Ben Kiel talk about a covid scare in his family that kept him home from the Typographics conference. I knew Ben was planning on attending, and I knew he was stoked to go! Now, I was also feeling just a bit of fomo about the conference, so I reached out to talk. Now if you listen to this podcast, you probably know who Ben is, but if you don't, he's what we call in the industry, a low-key hitter. Ben is behind many of the most popular typefaces being used today. He's worked
Today on the show we have Rutherford Craze, the designer behind the foundry Mass Driver. In just about 2 years, Rutherford has taken his Mass Driver from a little baby, to a fully adult foundry. It’s a truly remarkable trajectory, and I wanted to talk with him, and just see how he did it. You might have seen his Future Fonts release entitled MD Nichrome, and you might have also seen his other Mass Driver releases like MD IO, MD Primer, and MD System. His work is meticulously clean, and technical
In today’s episode, we answer a question from Tony Quintero who wrote in to ask how students can get the most of whatever program they’re in. The answer to that question boils down to Sister Corita Kent’s 10 Rules for Teachers and Students. We dive into the rules, and talk about why this short piece of writing has been hugely influential to me. Special thanks to my Typograph 1 teacher, Angie Wang, who first taught us about those rules.
This episode features Fabiola Mejia, the founder of the brand new type foundry, Supercontinente. I'm always urging people to start their own thing, own 100% of the work they create, and release their own stuff. Do their own marketing, make the type, just do it all, yourself. I think it's mostly because I've had a lot of fun going that way, and I truly believe in owning all of your own work. But, here's the rub: it takes an extremely specific person, and personality type to do that! It's hard. Bu
Here's why I like Christian Schwartz. Ok, the guy was like a type design wunderkind. Christian was releasing type—not just designing—at age 15. So that's page 1 of this bio. Now where does he go from there? The banger of bangers Neutraface. He does that when he’s 25! What was I doing when I was 25? Jack Shit is what I was doin. Anyhow, Christian has released world class type at every foundry known to man, won every award, worked with some very very fancy clients, but honestly, I don't care. All
It was TypeCon Portland 20212 where I first got to meet Travis and Lizy, and was immediately impressed with how gregarious Lizy is, and this was right around the time that Travis’ typeface Chartwell came out. They both seemed nice a smart, and they would usually head out to Typecon, so it was easy to maintain a friendship with them. I remember a specific moment when hanging out with the two of them just felt like being at summer camp or something. Nice, smart, hardworking, genuine folks. Then ma
It's been a bit of a break, but we're back with a sort of special episode where I interview my friend Erik Marinovich. I've been friends with Erik for years, so I went into this episode with no notes and no research! Erik and I chat every week, and over the past year I've been helping out with him launching his own type foundry. Today is special because today, right now, these things that he's been working on are available for the first time! Erik has a background in lettering, and of course tha
Today we're talking to one of my favorite people of all time, Bob Aufuldish. When I was in my very first year of design school at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, another one of my favorite people, Angie Wang was my Typography 1 teacher, and she just knew that I'd love Bob, and implored me to take his class. I ended up having Bob as an instructor for 2 different semesters in my undergrad and that was a very big deal to me. Bob ended up becoming a sort of role model for his design
Have you ever seen a graphic designer act like a jerk, or act all cool, or have their nose in the air in some way because their list of clients was pretty high profile? Or they were running like a successful studio or something. Here's the antidote to that problem: Jeremy Mickel. the founder of Mckl his Eponymous foundry, and the designer of some amazing retail fonts, and a wildly impressive list of custom projects. I'm talkin Adidas, Uber, Ogilvy, logotypes for Fisher Price, American Express, E
Our second installment in the life saga of Corinne Ang, and I talk to my dad, George R. Edmondson, about when he became an adult (tl;dr: age 37).
Today I'm talking with Jaimey Shapey, who is yet another graduate of Type@Cooper in New York. You know those people that come out of high school, and seem to immediately be on a path? They graduate in four years and get thrust into doing what they're gonna do when they're like 22? That was NOT ME, but it seemed to be the case for Jaimey. I first met her through Type Crit Crew about a year ago, and was wondering how she was doing, so I invited her to come on the podcast to catch up, and I'm reall
I met the designer Jérémy Landes at the Lure Typography conference in the South of France, and he just turned out to be such a lovely individual—and when I say individual I mean it. His typeface Digestive was started as something he just put together, then it came over to Future Fonts, then finally when it was done, we released it into the Ohno library as the first typeface that was not drawn by me. So Jérémy and I became friends, and a few weeks ago he emailed to just set up a time to chat, and