City Center signage using ChaType in Chattanooga (image Robbie De Villiers).
I’m heading to London in April so I’m already nailing down all the things I want to do while I’m there. I was hoping to find a talk by Slow Design maestro John Thackara on some roster of events but I’m out of luck so far. While poking around on Doors of Perception, which he founded, and on Design Observer, an articulate site to which he contributes, I came across a mention of this piece in The Atlantic in the @DesignObserver Twitter stream, retweeted by Michael Bierut. The Design Observer reporter shared news of my hometown, Chattanooga, Tennessee, being the first city in the United States to have its own typeface.
Michael Beirut Tweets about Chatype.
Dubbed “Chatype,” the font was designed by Jeremy Dooley and Robbie de Villiers. Fellow designers D.J. Tischler and Jonathan Mansfield assisted in creating the Kickstarter-funded typeface, which was released on October 31, 2013. It has its very own proclamation signed by the mayor and I am happy to know about the project, even if it is a year and a half after the fact.
Dooley’s firm, Insigne Design, sells fonts online through MyFonts.com, and this expressive statement by the designer illustrates why he’d be involved in a think-outside-the-box effort like Chatype. “Type is very much like music. It is linear, and the notes or phrases have to fit the theme or song.” Cool-sounding (and looking) fonts on his site include “Mr Darcy” and “Questal.” You can find de Villiers’ artistic families of characters on his dedicated site for typefaces Wilton Foundry.
ChaType proclamation certificate from Mayor Andy Burke (image Jeremy Dooley)
Dooley told The Atlantic he hopes Chatype will raise the city’s profile, making it a more visible center of innovation and design that will create new markets and attract more creative talent. I hope it does; it’s the perfect “type” of advertising to attract imaginative thinkers (pun intended). I have so many innovative friends and family members there so I’m not surprised the city is on the forefront with an initiative like this. I also celebrate that creative people like my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew are in such a progressive place. I look forward to scoping out the typeface the next time I’m in town for a visit. I’ll report back on the ROI when I do!
My trip to London is a result of design-show season heating up, a jaunt that will also take me to Milan for Salone Internazionale del Mobile. I hope to catch up with some of my favorite editors like Pam Jaccarino of Sandow Media’s Luxe Interiors + Design, the Interiors Magazine peeps, the gang at Modenus and Newell Turner of House Beautiful, and manufacturers like Janus et Cie, Kartell, Secto Design, the Stephanie Odegard Collection and KraftMaid while attending shows overseas and in NYC. The Armory Show just wrapped, the Architectural Digest Home Design Show just announced tickets are on sale, and ICFF is on the horizon. It’s always such a remarkable experience to see new iterations of lauded designs by the greats like Eero Saarinen, Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Ettore Sottsass and The Eameses, and re-releases of products like Joe Colombo’s 4801 Armchair. I’m always excited to catch up with new product designers like Marcel Wanders, Max Lamb, Parrish/Rash—a Paul Johnson favorite, Rafael De Cardenas, Cleto Munari, Ron Arad, Claire Warner and Sam Vinz of Volume Gallery (who Dan Rubinstein put on my radar when he was editor at Surface Magazine) and Alex Mustonen of Snarkitecture.
The hunt for a Thakara sighting has led me to research other visionaries I haven’t caught up with in a while, namely Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh. I’ll see what I can dig up on these wizards of business and report back soon.
Text of Typeface Chattanooga: A Font of Wisdom © Saxon Henry, all rights reserved. Saxon Henry is the founder of the Literary Blog to Book Movement, and author of Home of the Brave and Four Florida Moderns. She is also the publisher of Productrazzi and SH, the blog, as well as a new media strategist based in New York City.
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