Hello!

Hi, I’m Tal and, as you have probably deduced, I design typefaces. I’ve been doing this for close to 20 years. You may have even seen some of my work here and there. I started designing typefaces because I needed better tools for my graphic design work and, while my day to day work is now almost exclusively typeface design, I still work from this perspective. I love graphic design and I love making tools for graphic designers. The typefaces here are the typefaces that I want to use. These are the typefaces that I think need to exist. These are the typefaces that keep me awake at night. That brings me to…

Balto

I’m thrilled to introduce my newest typeface, Balto. I have been thinking about and working on it for a very long time. I’m quite proud of the result. I think it has the robust soul of the classic American gothic along with a wide range of styles, features and optimizations that are necessary for 21st century design. It has been meticulously drawn, hinted and produced to be as good at what it does as it can be. I used Balto extensively while designing this site and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I hope you find it useful.

Ohm, Timonium and Torque

Over the past several years, I have released a few typefaces (Ohm, Timonium and Torque) through Village. Those are available here now as well. You can still license desktop fonts over at Village, but if you want fonts for other situations you can get them here. Speaking of “other situations”…

Are your fonts available for…

I have long been interested in making typography better everywhere. I was an early, outspoken proponent of webfonts. In fact, I am co-author of the WOFF specification (though Jonathan Kew deserves the vast majority of credit for that) and I was part of the group that brought WOFF through the process to being an official W3C Recommendation. Anyway… As of today, all of my typefaces are available for traditional desktop, web and mobile app licensing. Each family page gives you information about the various licensing options, so refer to those if you want to see the licensing parameters and how much the fonts cost. I’d like to mention a few technical details about the different formats, licensing and so on:

Desktop Fonts

These are provided in high-quality OpenType-CFF (Postscript) format. These include carefully crafted OpenType features specifically suited to each particular typeface.

Webfonts

Webfonts are licensed for self-hosting and are provided in WOFF format. (They are also provided in legacy EOT format in case you need backwards compatibility with older versions of Internet Explorer.) I have spent a considerable amount of time and effort optimizing these fonts for web use. They are not merely the desktop fonts put through a “Save for the web…” function in a font editor. These are the real deal. Plus, these are full fonts with the same OpenType features as the desktop fonts. These can be accessed with the soon-to-be-finished, and already implemented in some browsers, CSS Fonts Module Level 3 font-variant-* and font-feature-settings properties. (Don’t worry, each font comes with an instruction file detailing how to use all of this. It’s easy!)

Mobile App Fonts

These are provided in OpenType-TTF (TrueType) format. In fact, the core data in these fonts is very similar to the data in the corresponding webfonts. So, if you are deploying an app on a platform that makes use of hinting, the fonts will look great.

Your Account

Once you have licensed a font or two or three-hundred, you can manage and upgrade your licenses through your account page. I think it’s all pretty easy. You can even purchase a few styles in a family now, come back later and purchase more at the same discounted price you would have gotten if you purchased them all at the same time before.

Console Games, Electronic Books, Refrigerators, Etc.

I’m keeping a close eye on developing technologies for future licensing models. (I’m looking at you, ePub.) In the meantime, if you need fonts for something other than what is readily available here, please get in touch.

Thanks!

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. I hope you see something around here that you like. Please let me know if I can do anything for you.

P.S. I have to acknowledge a handful of folks. The fine gentlemen at Friends of the Web co-designed and built this site. I can’t thank Josh and Andy enough for putting up with my ridiculous requests. (You should buy their apps and/or hire them for a big money project.) I have to thank my friends and colleagues, Christian, Erik, Jonathan, Rich, Ken, Ben, Kai, Kris, Peter and Zuzana, for offering advice and encouraging me to stop talking about starting a foundry and to go ahead and get this thing off the ground. (You should buy their fonts because they are the best.) I especially have to thank my wonderful wife and two amazing little boys for putting up with me while all of this was being developed. It’s finally done!

September 3, 2013