A bit of an update / Excuses for not updating the site for a rather long time:

 
Unfortunately, things has been hectic lately and this site has suffered. There are many updates waiting and plans for the future here, just no time to implement them (this is a common problem for most of us it seems).
 
Since opening Mota Italic in October I have had almost no life*. The remainder of 2009 was spent bug fixing the shop, fine tuning the design, and adding a bit more content. Major updates to Vesper and Mota Pixel were began then as well.
 
So far most of 2010 has been divided between these two designs and the new family “Gemma.” I can report that all three of projects are coming along nicely and will be released in the near future now. We had hoped to have Vesper out already, but we ended up adding way more features and improvements to it that have pushed the schedule back. Gemma too is a bit behind schedule, but that is due to the family growing greatly. The wait should be worth it – we hope! I’ll update our Facebook page in the next couple days with some new previews.
 
The last relevant story is that along the way too I had a hard drive crash and lost most of my photo library. This is might be recoverable, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. This concerns you, Dear Reader, because the next 40 or so “Showcase” posts are sitting on this drive. In the meantime I have a few posts that I can still put up and/or I’ll just go discover some new cool images.
 
I keep telling myself that life will eventually level out and it will be easier to fit side projects in… we will see. But deep down I am pretty sure that assumption is false. So in the next months I will try harder to at least occasionally put up some new things here. Thanks for your patience and for coming back!
 
 
* There is a German term my mother-in-law loves to use to describe me: Kellerkind. Haha, it has my name in it. The explanation of this though is basically a kid that lives in the basement and never goes outside or sees the sunlight; i.e. I sit in front of the computer all day.
 

 
After many long months of coding, designing, and bureaucratic paper work, Mota Italic is finally online and open for business! We have worked hard to bring you some great font families and a special shopping experience. The website features numerous images and samples of the fonts and a totally unique shopping cart and checkout process. Extra! Read all about it →

I know we both like type. If you are anything like me then you probably also have a slight addiction to following the latest updates and buzz in “the industry”. Us type geeks/nerds (pick your own adjective) tend to be rather social online – or at least interested in others’ posts. This leads to such a daily torrent of type news that it can become overwhelming to follow everything. Reading the important stories, then sorting through all the duplicate content to find those extra special nuggets is a chore. So a couple months ago Sonja and I started working on an aggregator to help deliver us the best type-related news with less work, in a way that is easier to skim and also more fun to browse. Meet Type News.
Extra! Read all about it →

Today’s post is a bit of a mixed bag. It was intended to be an exciting announcement about my new project, but certain events have toned things down a bit.


As many of you already know, I have been working on Vesper full time these last few months, expanding it, and preparing it for sale. On top of this, Sonja Stange and I have been tirelessly developing and coding a new online store to sell our fonts.


So, as somewhat of a pre-announcement, we present our new digital “type foundry” Mota Italic!


The site is not currently online, but behind the scenes things are about finished. The goal was for it to go live at the end of March, but that now seems highly unlikely. Thanks to German bureaucracy the proper business permissions are still not yet finalized, so it is not legal for me to sell fonts in Germany. Hopefully this will be cleared up quickly and the site can go live soon (possibly still on schedule) or else with as minimum delay as possible.


We are looking forward to finally revealing the site and our new fonts to you all! Vesper is looking good and I am quite proud of how the site looks and functions. Sonja has done some amazing work with the store. Nothing is “out of the box” – just about every module, script, and element has been customized. We have created a unique browsing and buying experience that is simple to use, yet presents our products in depth. By selling the fonts ourselves we are able to offer some special license policies and ways to manage your accounts and purchases. These details will be clarified more in the next weeks.


There is no point in teasing any more with this announcement, since I am not actually showing anything concrete. Just watch out for Mota Italic, it is coming soon!

 
Recently I have been overly busy with several large projects, and updates here at the blog have been lacking. In the coming weeks I will be posting more about these new things.
 
But briefly, I am furiously working to finish up Vesper – which has grown into a much larger, and more interesting, family. Additionally, Sonja and I are creating a new online shop to sell our typefaces. This site is a large undertaking with the front-end having a slightly different approach from most other online typefoundries and much of the back-end is custom to enhance the buying process. Hopefully our method of displaying and purchasing will prove to be worth the efforts.
 
As for this site, we recently updated some sidebars to show recent posts as well as my latest tweets from Twitter. You can see them on the main page or follow me directly from Twitter if you are interested. Coming up, there is still a long list of posts waiting to be prepared, as well as many previous art projects to be transferred over here to the new(er) format and database. Keep checking your RSS and stop by again soon!

  
Well my year at Linotype went fast, and it was a great experience. It was enlightening to see how this large company handles their extensive library and their many daily customers. My education from Reading did not adequately prepare me for this sort of work in the ‘real word.’ Or I should say, it didn’t prepare me to expect the ‘real world’ to be the way that it now appears. Overall, the year turned out to be a wonderful learning experience which afforded me many compelling projects.
Extra! Read all about it →

 
Here is the long awaited update to where I have been all year and why Vesper is not finished. Check out some of its big changes and improvements!

Extra! Read all about it →

Check out some photos and news from last year’s University of Reading, MA Typeface Design class… This area is now basically closed seeing as how I have moved away. I have a few more additions and changes to make still, but then it will be complete.

For posterity’s sake, you can check everything out here…

The MATD07 class website is online now. Most people have uploaded PDFs or links to image samples of their typefaces. I am in the latter group. You can see some more photos of my design here.