Are you a crazy in love with fonts?

We know how it is here at Matter Of Scrap! Talented font designers provide an art form we can't live without - those lovely fonts that we collect and use to decorate our thoughts as they are put to 'paper'.

Our very first artist is a font designer, the beautiful and fabulous Ronna Penner! If her name sounds familiar, it's because she is also well-known for her gorgeous page kits and scrapbook art!

I asked Ronna some questions about her work...

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND?
I have been a graphic designer for over 10 years now and I'm lucky enough to be able to work from my home office (often in my pajamas!). The love of my life, my 20 year old son Brad, still lives at home with me. I love photography (I have a Canon Digital Rebel which is a better camera than I am a photographer) and books. After design work and photography, reading is what I love to spend time doing.

For a while I worked in the greeting card industry as a concept designer and typographer. I learned the ins and outs of Photoshop and various software while there and really honed my skills in typography and colour. Typography has always interested me and I've been dabbling with letterforms since I was a young girl, really. I doodled letters on any blank piece of paper I could find. I used to drive my mother crazy because I'd sit there at the dinner table drawing letters on my napkin and not eating my vegetables.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CREATING FONTS?
I seriously began designing my own fonts while in college and afterwards, when I began working at a large greeting card company in 1998. We had thousand of fonts at our disposal but we were always looking for something unique and interesting. My employers encouraged me to contribute to our library of fonts with my own creations. Oh, what a glorious opportunity for me! I seized on it and went on to design my first font, Sketchley. On a lark, I decided to submit it to Bitstream, a large font foundry in Boston, just to see what would happen. To my surprise, they accepted it for their New Font Collection and it also went on to win an award that same year. This typeface contest was held in Russia and the winning designs traveled around the world for the next year and ended up in places like Rome and New York.

Well, I figured I had something to offer the font world and began my own company, Typadelic, in 2002. The rest is history, as they say.

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR INSPIRATION?
Inspiration is everywhere! Sometimes inspiration comes to me when I least expect it and I have to develop the idea before it disappears. I have a terrible memory so that means getting it down on paper right then and there! Very often I get inspiration from scrapbookers. I knew my fonts had a place in the world...they fit scrapbooking perfectly. When I'm designing a font, I always keep scrapbooking in mind. I also get ideas from studying other typefaces and looking through old font books. Handwriting is especially interesting to me as it truly represents the character of an individual. Handwriting fonts are the most difficult to design but worth the process if they turn out well. Lately I've been inspired by very old handwritten letters from the 1800's. Back then, they were taught to use Spencerian letter forms, an extremely difficult calligraphic style to master. The Palmer method of penmanship took over in the early 1900's and the Spencerian method was lost as a beautiful form of writing. I love those old calligraphic styles and very often find inspiration there.

HOW LONG DOES IT TYPICALLY TAKE TO CREATE A FONT?
Typically? I suppose that depends on how motivated I am! I have one font that I've been working on for over a year now. I only work on it occasionally but it's an example of how untypical my design process is. I have one font I completed in one week, but more typically it takes me a month or two.

WHICH FONTS ARE YOUR FAVORITES AND WHY?
Oh, that's hard! After I've designed a font it's always my favourite, until the next one comes along. Of my own designs, I'd have to say Persimmon and Christine. Persimmon has the calligraphic quality I like and is quirky enough to be unique. Christine is such a legible, pretty typeface with an old-fashioned quality. I'm glad you didn't ask which font is my least favourite...I think you'd be surprised at my answer because it is extremely popular and I see it used everywhere! I have many favourites from other foundries, far too many to list, but one of my faves that comes to mind is Sloop Script by FontBureau. It's elegant, legible and beautiful.

WHAT IS THE HARDEST/EASIEST PART OF THE FONT CREATING PROCESS?
The easiest part is coming up with the idea. Everything gets difficult after that. I design my letter shapes in Adobe Illustrator and that is the probably the hardest part. Getting the shapes the way I want them is, for me, about 80% of the design process. When I have the shapes designed, I bring them into FontLab and that's where the fun starts. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as the font comes together. Testing the font on both a Mac and a PC comes after I've built the font and this can be a frustrating, time consuming and often very difficult process for me. There have been many, many times where I've had to go back to the drawing board and reshape letters because they are just not flowing properly, or some little glitch needs fixing.