Ohno Radio

Gen and Zrinka sit down to chat about meeting in grad school, starting a type foundry, and the perils of raising a child while being a type designer. We announce Yumex, the new typeface designed by them, and released through Ohno.

Elizabeth Goodspeed can speak in paragraph form. It’s pretty impressive to me, someone that has to write in paragraph form and then read it aloud.

I had been wanting to talk to Elizabeth for a long time, because she’s so funny. I knew she was smart, and a great designer, but I still don’t understand how her brain works. She’s known for spotting trends, naming them, creating archives around them. But her understanding of design goes far beyond aesthetic tropes.

In this interview, we talk about punching up vs punching down, why she’s reluctant to get on tiktok, and how she can’t quit twitter.

Summer is here, and so is this 18 minute identity crisis as I navigate running a business, renovating two homes, with two kids, and moving Ohno headquarters from Oakland to San Jose, California.

We go behind the scenes at Ohno to tell the story of our new typeface, Casserole. It began as a reinterpretation of Louis Minott’s Davida from 1966. I got to speak with his granddaughter to learn more about Louis as a designer, father, and grandfather. Then, we have a breif conversation between Colin Ford, and Jamie Otelsberg, the Ohno designers that worked on the project with me.

Jen Wagner didn’t come to design as a designer; she actually studied marketing, had a slew of businesses, eventually landed in fonts, and just hit the ground running. Today she’s a powerhouse, running her foundry Jen Wagner Co. She is prolific and has an incredible knack for hitting the nail on the head stylistically with each release. I absolutely loved talking to Jen, because it was so refreshing to hear someone thinking strategically with this different background. In our conversation, I learned about how just a single kernel of an idea from Jen’s marketing education—the minimum viable product—and a chance encounter with a mentor led to her discovering a whole new way of making a living. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jen Wagner.

Lynne Yun, what hasn’t she done? She worked at Apple, worked at Monotype, she’s got her own stuff through her foundry Space Type, she’s a calligrapher, type designer, lettering artist, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg somehow. More recently, she attended the School of Poetic Computation and has become an expert on generative typography.

Now, Juan Villanueva, grew up in Peru, as well as New Jersey, that old classic combo. He went to Reading. He’s holding down at MOnotype these days, but has an affinity for aligning himself and helping out with numerous organizations like Society of Scribes, Type at Cooper, Type West, he even started Type Crit Crew which is a free resource for type design students to meet 1–1 with experienced type designers for virtual critiques.

Then, Lynne and Juan, who are buds, looked at each other, and said, we don’t have enough going on, so let’s start a type school. A real one, not like Ohno Type School. An actual school with classes, and instructors, and students. It’s an ambitious undertaking, and truly noble in my opinion. Their mission statement is to form a more inclusive and equitable future in type and design by increasing access to education.

I’ll be honest, this episode was recorded in July, but some things, like the work of our guest, are timeless. I talked with Kris Sowersby for almost two hours, which makes this the longest Ohno Radio episode in history. You know Kris’s work, it’s top notch, in both concept, and execution. I hate him, because he can take even the most well-trodden thing, like I dunno, Helvetica or Times, and still manage to do it in a way that even the most jaded graphic designers can find compelling. Kris’ type foundry is called Klim, and you know that already, it’s on Future Fonts, but what you might not know about is the Future Fonts Slack channel. I’ve seen Kris being super helpful, offering sound advice on topics about pricing and ethics. You know who doesn’t take a ton of time to write helpful posts there? Me!

Our conversation gets a bit raw and Kris talks about his mom sadly passing away. When I re-listened to that part, I found myself struggling to understand his grief. But since this episode, I lost my brother. So if my reaction sounds a bit like someone who’s just unable to fully empathize, well, I think my reaction now would be a little different. Anyway, sorry to be bummer! I hope you enjoy this conversation with Kris Sowersby.

A few months ago, I saw Ben Kiel talk about a covid scare in his family that kept him home from the Typographics conference. I knew Ben was planning on attending, and I knew he was stoked to go! Now, I was also feeling just a bit of fomo about the conference, so I reached out to talk.

Now if you listen to this podcast, you probably know who Ben is, but if you don't, he's what we call in the industry, a low-key hitter. Ben is behind many of the most popular typefaces being used today. He's worked at House Industries, done work for Sharp and Klim Commercial, and many of the bigger independent type foundries, and now, he's 1/2 of XYZ type alongside Jesse Ragan.

Ben studied type design at the University of Reading blah blah blah bio stuff. Here's what's interesting. Ben has kids, and teaches basically full time. And he's a total expert in font production, and can draw as evidence by his fantastic typeface Ballast which is my personal favorite from Ben. I am pretty freaked out by people that can solve every side of a problem. Like, if you can draw, you shouldn't be allowed to also know how to make world class fonts, from a technical perspective. Whatever I'm just jealous at this point. Anyhow Ben is also doing social media for his foundry, follow them on instagram and tiktok by the way. XYZ underscore type. AND they recently pushed a bunch of new changes to the XYZ website. Anyone who has worked on a type foundry website before know that those projects are just an insane amount of work. I've known Ben for years, but still he's the kind of guy that just makes you feel like you've known him longer than that. So I hope you enjoy this interview with one of my favorite people in the type design biz, Ben Kiel.

Today on the show we have Rutherford Craze, the designer behind the foundry Mass Driver. In just about 2 years, Rutherford has taken his Mass Driver from a little baby, to a fully adult foundry. It’s a truly remarkable trajectory, and I wanted to talk with him, and just see how he did it. You might have seen his Future Fonts release entitled MD Nichrome, and you might have also seen his other Mass Driver releases like MD IO, MD Primer, and MD System. His work is meticulously clean, and technically impressive—but his talents seem to go beyond just producing excellent typefaces. The marketing is genuine, and on point. His website is beautifully designed, he even has a few free web tools he's made available—so here’s the thing: If you’re looking for the blueprint in setting up a niche business, just look at Rutherford, because he seems to have it all figured out. I was eager to catch up, see how the pandemic has treated him, and why he moved back to The Hague.

In today’s episode, we answer a question from Tony Quintero who wrote in to ask how students can get the most of whatever program they’re in. The answer to that question boils down to Sister Corita Kent’s 10 Rules for Teachers and Students. We dive into the rules, and talk about why this short piece of writing has been hugely influential to me. Special thanks to my Typograph 1 teacher, Angie Wang, who first taught us about those rules.