I met my friend (font/web designer) Brian Willson while working on promotional materials  for a Halloween oriented event at The Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine.  I wanted to create cool promotional materials and had heard Brian designed historic fonts. It seemed like a great idea at the time to use one of his more eerie looking fonts to replicate a sort of wintery/cemetery impression.  What I could not believe was how inexpensive purchasing the font was and then how supportive Brian was of the event (he is now the head of the theatre’s film society). The event sold out, we had more requests for posters than we could supply, and now this amazing guy continues to design fonts anyone can purchase for $39 to make their own invitations, menus, cards, etc. etc. How brilliant!

Dipping into a digital inkwell with Brian Willson…**If you like what you see contact Brian at Old Fonts.

About fifteen years ago, soon after I’d begun fiddling around with type design, I decided it might be fun to recreate the look of antique handwriting from the early- to mid-1800s. At the time, my mother worked at the Center for American History in Austin and was able to send copies of some letters written by famous Texans. The penmanship of Thomas J Rusk, Secretary of War, seemed perfect — not to fancy, not too plain — and I set to work. A couple hundred hours later, I unleashed my first historical handwriting font on the world: Texas Hero.

Texas Hero not only proved popular but was fun to make, so I decided to model other typefaces after old handwriting. For instance, the famous strokes of Timothy Matlack, who engrossed the familiar copy of the Declaration of Independence (authored, but not handwritten, by Thomas Jefferson). I named this font American Scribe.

I made good use of a few of the old Texas letters my mom sent, also, among correspondence from arguably the most famous Texan, Sam Houston. Houston’s bold, graceful penmanship inspired a font I called Houston Pen.

Then there was the indomitable, indefatigable Emily Austin Bryan Perry — sister of Stephen F. Austin — who traveled a lot and sent elaborate instructions by mail to her husband back home. Emily Austin simulates her distinctively compact, legible hand.