Prolific Comic Book Font Designer Launches New Foundry

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Press Release

SANTA BARBARA, CA. – You’ve seen his typefaces in comic books worldwide, on grocery store shelves, in Pixar movies and on billboards from coast to coast. After creating nearly 300 font families for the Comicraft studio, John Roshell — creator of the iconic Angry Birds, Black Panther, and Daredevil logos — is launching a type foundry that pays creative homage to the Golden State’s iconic visual styles.

Roshell’s new Swell Type foundry builds on decades of design experience as the creator of fonts for Spider-Man and X-Men comic books, the Clash of Clans video game and James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar sequels. It takes inspiration from the artist’s home state, presenting fun, friendly, functional fonts inspired by everything from California’s Gold Rush and fruit-crate labels to its surf and skateboard culture, Silicon Valley, aerospace industry and entertainment biz.

Swell Type begins with the same lively energy and accessibility for which Comicraft’s fonts are known and loved, but offers designers more complex and versatile font families with more weights and features in a wider variety of styles. The first release is HYPERSPACE RACE, a sleek 40-weight font family with elements of 1980s arcade games, new-wave album covers and sci-fi movie posters.

The HYPERSPACE RACE collection ranges from extra skinny and condensed to ultra-wide and heavy with a variable font that lets you select any possible point between — and includes a Blade Runner-meets-Star Wars alternate mode you have to see to believe.

“Since the early ’90s, I’ve enjoyed an immensely creative working relationship with John, and I’m looking forward to his next wave of releases through Swell Type with eager anticipation, and to continuing our work building the Comicraft font library together,” says Comicraft’s President and First Tiger, Richard Starkings. “Everyone who has worked with John in the field of comics the last 27 years knows his commitment to quality and originality. As he steps out of our niche industry and into the mainstream, I hope that the world of typography at large is ready for him!”

Swell Type will introduce new fonts quarterly. All year long, fans can watch Roshell work through the process of bringing a font to life on Instagram and Twitter, from researching and sketching to finessing the final harmonious curves of each alphabet. SwellType.com also reveals the creative stories behind the custom fonts he has designed for video games, movie merchandise and comic-book artists alike.

Roshell will continue to add to Comicraft’s font collection, supervising new releases and updates to the studio’s library of nearly 300 classic font families, and managing the library’s distribution on Comicbookfonts.com, Myfonts, Monotype, Fontspring, Adobe Fonts & Creative Market.

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  • Elevation says:

    Looking good. Is this font only for personal use or commercial also?

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