Making a font is a blast. It actually goes pretty dang fast, which is surprising. That A-Z design process can whip by if you’ve got yer moves down. But remember, this is the kind of stuff I had only heard from type designer colleagues. They’d shroud the rest in mystery. When I made DDC Hardware, I simply would crack open my Adobe Illustrator file and hunt and peck the characters I needed piece by piece, then crudely kern them into the word I needed. Dumb, right? Imagine how the world took off with that first draft TTF file I got to install? That’s fine and all. It’s the avalanche of everything else that goes into developing a font, finding folks who’ll do it right, have the vision to properly protect it, and, keep the licensing stuff in check. Quite the education I’ve had, and I am thankful to be partnered up with Stuart Sandler on this typographic adventure with DDC fonts. We’ve got so much stuff on deck! Excited to launch new goodies!
DDC Hardware
Project Details:
01. Designed in 2006.
02. Developed in July, 2016.
03. Personnel: Aaron Draplin, Riley Cran, Stuart Sandler and Dathan Boardman.
Exclusively sold at ddcfonts.com.
DDC Biden Bold
Inspired by the Joe+Kamala’s historic run-up to the 2020 election, Biden Bold was created on November 2nd, just a day before the historic, on-the-edge-of-our-Aerons, nerve-wracked election. Joe and Kamala’s bold ideas and guts to stand up to Don the Con energized the bold geometry of Biden Bold.
Aaron Draplin kicked off the basic forms for his election graphics, Stuart Sandler made sense of it all and built out the complete typeface and Dathan Boardman brought it to life in Glyphs.
Congratulations to the 46th President of these United States, Mr. Joe Biden! Congratulations to the 49th Vice President of these United States, Ms. Kamala Harris.
Project Details:
01. Designed and developed in November, 2020.
02. Personnel: Aaron Draplin, Stuart Sandler and Dathan Boardman.
03. Exclusively sold at ddcfonts.com.
DDC Hardware 45
We took our workhouse “DDC Hardware” typeface and angled the corners to an unapologetic 45 degrees, across the boards…er, glyphs. I had been tweaking DDC Hardware in Adobe Illustrator here and there, and told my DDC Fonts partner Stuart Sandler about my exploits messing with characters corner by corner. He said, “No more of that, buddy. We’ll make it into a typeface.” So there you go!
Project Details:
01. Designed and developed in December, 2022.
02. Personnel: Aaron Draplin, Stuart Sandler and Brian Bonislawsky.
Exclusively sold at ddcfonts.com.
DDC Fonts
Personnel
Aaron James Draplin
Aaron is a graphic designer based in Portland, Oregon. If you asked him how he gets so much done, he’ll pretty much tell you he doesn’t know any other way. Outsiders can easily attribute his success to “hard work” but they’d be severely understating Draplin’s maniacal hustle as he has painstakingly built his career, brick-by-brick, into a wide-ranging empire.
Stuart Sandler
As the creative mind behind the Font Diner foundry, Stuart Sandler has been designing eye-catching retro software product designs since 1996. With over 400 original typefaces created for the graphic design industry, Sandler has established a reputation as an esteemed typography designer with a flair for anything 50s.
Dathan Boardman
Dathan Boardman has contributed to fonts for everyone from Brian Bonislawsky, Cindy Kinash and Laura Worthington, to Sideshow, Tart Workshop and Google. With over 60 fonts under his belt, including Asterism, Boardman is famously known as the go-to guy for Font Bros installation.
Brian Bonislawsky
Founder of the independent digital foundry, Astigmatic One Eye. Known by his nom de caractère as Astigma, Brian Bonislawsky has been developing his typographic skills since his early years in school. With over 1,200 original typefaces created for the graphic design industry, Bonislawsky has established a reputation as an esteemed typography designer with a flair for display and monogram font styles.