Making fonts in the 90s

as best as i can remember, the process of making endless fonts in this style involved copy pasting images together in photoshop 3. i didn't know about the “layers” function back then – if it even existed – and went on using all kinds of image making software very simply til the mid 2000s. a raster-to-vector tracing program was the middle step between a pirated copy of photoshop and a pirated copy of fontographer 4. my friends jay and bradford, themselves masters of this dark art, exchanged tips with me, from where they were in missouri and georgia. to every stranger all around the world i got in touch with back then for technical advice, who so kindly and patiently helped me out, or shared their fonts with me: thanks. and to my friends curly and michael for sharing floppy disks with dos-based cc generators with me on the school bus, keeping me online all those years. above: a remix i made of a font called “scripteriatoid” by durban based designer brode vosloo (with his blessing), 1998. download it.

gravity car, named after an olivia tremor control song. march 5 1999, fontographer 4.1. download it.

“elephant6” by bradford, probably 98 or 99. years back, i put up this archive of just some of his fonts from the 90s.