{"id":3326,"date":"2009-06-21T00:00:54","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T07:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/?p=3326"},"modified":"2018-04-17T05:11:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T12:11:22","slug":"focus-on-fontstructors-john-skelton-afrojet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/2009\/06\/21\/focus-on-fontstructors-john-skelton-afrojet\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus On FontStructors \u2013 John Skelton (afrojet)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(This article was originally published on FontShop<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFontFeed\u201d blog. Many thanks to MonoType<\/a> for permission to reproduce this article here.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On April 1st FontStruct<\/a> \u2013 FontShop<\/a>\u2019s award winning<\/a> free online platform for creating and sharing modular, grid-\u200bbased fonts \u2013 quietly slipped into its second year. More than just a font building tool, it is also a thriving community of type and design enthu\u00adsiasts which number at almost 150,000 confirmed regis\u00adtered users. As its creator Rob Meek<\/a> recently commented on Brick By Brick: News about FontStruct<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you! FontStruct is just an empty shell without your work and that of all FontStructors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\nIndeed, the numbers speak volumes \u2013 as I am writing this there are 27,684 active FontStruct sessions, and this already impressive number is only a portion of the grand total of 166,341 FontStruc\u00adtions, 7334 of which are public. But who are these FontStructors, these talented, dedicated tinkerers who patiently construct fonts, literally brick by brick? Well, what better way to find out than simply ask them? The coming weeks The FontFeed will be running a series of mini-\u200binterviews with FontStructors to introduce this bustling community to you. And hopefully to entice those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with FontStruct yet to give it a go yourselves and dive into the wonderful world of brick-\u200bbased modular type design.<\/p>\n

John Skelton (afrojet)<\/h3>\n

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John Skelton<\/a> is better known as Afrojet<\/a> on FontStruct. Origi\u00adnally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. After going to Lewis &<\/span> Clark College<\/a> in Portland he did post-\u200bgraduate work for two years in Mexico and Guatemala studying Mayan hiero\u00adglyphics. The image below shows a series of Mayan hiero\u00adglyph sketches he made that tell the story of his ancestry. Trans\u00adlated it\u00a0says:<\/p>\n

On July 7, 1942 A.D.<\/span> When the Seventh Lord of the Night ruled, it was seven days after the moon was born. On that day Lady Skelton (John\u2019s mother),<\/em> touched the earth and then she crowned herself The Divine Lady of The Lineages.<\/p>\n

31 Years, 5 Month and 5 Days after she was born, on May 13, 1973 A.D.<\/span> One Katun had passed, and the Seventh Lord of the Night ruled, where the moon was 24 days old. On that day Lord John Skelton materi\u00adalized through divinity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\nMayan hiero\u00adglyph sketches by John Skelton<\/span>
\nJohn Skelton has been a freelance graphic designer\/web designer for the last eight years. His only formal type education consists of exactly one class he took from \u2013 in John\u2019s words \u2013 the incredibly talented Bill Moran<\/a>. John blogged steadily<\/a> for years, but after his son was born two and a half years ago he found it much easier to commu\u00adnicate in short bursts of 140 characters or less<\/a>. Recently he\u2019s taken to posting larger typeface samples on the Behance Network<\/a> (although he admits it feels a bit like cheating on FontStruct when he does that ;). And for those who like eye candy John has a very nice Typog\u00adraphy<\/a> set on his Flickr account.<\/p>\n

John first discovered FontStruct shortly after its public release in April 2008, \u201cfrom either the FontShop e-newsletter<\/a> or the old FontShop blog<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Do you have any prior experience with type design?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prior to working in FontStruct, I had never released a font for public consumption. I\u2019ve done projects for clients that involved customized type or hand-\u200blettering but nothing to the point of fleshing out an entire font. I think one of the reasons that I gravi\u00adtated to FontStruct was that it provided a fast and fun outlet for non-\u200bclient driven work. I\u2019ve always been a fan of modular typefaces, and with FontStruct I was able to quickly build out some ideas that had long floated around in my head but were never executed upon.<\/p>\n

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\nPlaytime<\/a> by Afrojet<\/span><\/p>\n

When looking at your FontStruc\u00adtions it\u2019s easy to see you perfectly grasp the modular concept of the tool. Where does your love for modular typefaces come from? And what unique advan\u00adtages does grid-\u200bbased type design offer you as a designer?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good question. I think my appre\u00adci\u00adation for modular type is a fairly natural extension of a childhood spent playing Atari, an adoles\u00adcence spent listening to too many synthe\u00adsizer bands, and estab\u00adlishing my footing in graphic design at the same time pixel fonts<\/a> were so popular. I think it was inevitable that by the time I started looking more closely at type I would be easily seduced by things like Wim Crouwel\u2019s \u2018New Alphabet\u2019.<\/p>\n

For me the advantage of grid-\u200bbased type design is that it becomes fairly easy to visualize an entire alphabet once you\u2019ve estab\u00adlished the grid parameters and designed a couple key characters. I work better with a set of limita\u00adtions. Within Fontstruct, that\u2019s meant smaller grids and fewer bricks.<\/p>\n

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\nHydroplane<\/a> by Afrojet<\/span><\/p>\n

You always Share<\/a> your Fontstruc\u00adtions for others to Clone<\/a>. How does it feel to relin\u00adquish control over your creations?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Incredible. There are far too many things over the course of a day that I attempt to control. It\u2019s much more fun to free the font and see where it will go. Another reason I like working with fewer bricks on a smaller grid is that it makes it easier for others to remix the shapes or swap bricks.<\/p>\n

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\nSessions<\/a> by Afrojet<\/span>
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\nScreen print on canvas of the Sessions<\/a> Gropius image.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your Josef Albers<\/a> inspired FontStruction Sessions<\/a> was recently picked up by Grain Edit<\/a>, and many of your designs seem quite popular. Ever thought of branching out into \u201ctrue\u201d type design, or trying to make some money licensing your designs?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have. I think FontStruct is a gateway drug to \u201ctrue\u201d type design. It can be an amazing educa\u00adtional tool. I feel like I\u2019ve learned so much about all facets of type design from both the software and the community in the past year alone. In order to take things to the next level though, I need to become more fluent with \u201ctrue\u201d font software in addition to learning how to license my designs. Recently, I\u2019ve used FontLab<\/a> to flush out the Sessions font to include an uppercase, accented characters, and full Latin support. I\u2019d like to add some stylistic sets to it as well. My goal would be to release it as a commercial OpenType<\/a> font.<\/p>\n

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\nScreen print of a new Fontstruction in the works called Gaga.<\/span>
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\nGig poster for the band Juniper Tar<\/a>, designed by Brian Kriederman<\/a> from Milwaukee, a friend of John Skelton\u2019s, using his font Jettison Stencil<\/a>.<\/span>
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\nLogo design on Tshirt for Crossville Home School Chess Team, designed by Drawing on the Promises<\/a> (dotp \u2013 graphic designer Frank McClung and artist Miriam McClung) using Afrojet\u2019s Sawhorse<\/a> for the text and Sawhorse Braumarks<\/a> for the illus\u00adtrative parts.<\/span>
\nThis wraps up the first one of our mini-\u200binterviews. Stay tuned for more Focus on FontStructors.<\/em>
\nHeader image:<\/a><\/strong> Men of Complex Mystery and Smart Hand Gestures \u00a9\u00a0John Skelton<\/a>, edited &<\/span> manip\u00adu\u00adlated by Yves Peters<\/span><\/p>\n

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(This article was originally published on FontShop\u2019s \u201cFontFeed\u201d blog. Many thanks to MonoType for permission to reproduce this article here.)   On April 1st FontStruct \u2013 FontShop\u2019s award winning free online platform for creating and sharing modular, grid-\u200bbased fonts \u2013 quietly slipped into its second year. More than just a font building tool, it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focus-on-fontstructors","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}