I often found myself looking for a hand-printed font that I could use in projects. Most didn’t meet my needs. Some were so varied in treatment that they didn’t set well. Others only had just a few key glyphs. Almost none offered more than one weight.

So, I decided to make my own. The process started with drawing out each letter, which went pretty quickly. After that, I worked to make treatments and alignments more consistent. (This part did not go quickly.) I tried to make the fonts more legible without losing the hand-drawn feel.

There’s more to do here, but I’ve now released the first version. I’m calling it Campy. This family offers a complete Latin character set, and it comes in 7 weights (ranging from Light to Black) with an italic option for each weight. The family currently includes 2,912 glyphs in total.

I’m sure that I’ve made lots of mistakes with Campy. That said, I like how it looks casual without feeling too messy. Throughout the project, I came to look upon Campy a bit like Comic Sans but (hopefully) more functional.

Yes, I did put that in the title, and it is for anyone to read. That said, the length of the piece gets to be my call. If you, or John, feel that it’s too long, you don’t have to read it. That’s your call. :-)

This might sound snarky or defensive, but I don’t intend it that way. I wrote the piece I wanted to write, at the length I felt appropriate. If some choose not to read it, for that reason, I’m OK with that.

That’s a personal call each of us makes, many times a day. There’s no shortage of content to read, and it’s difficult to know which things are worth the time.

I’m not saying this article is worth your time, or John’s for that matter. It was an article I wrote for myself—that a lot of other people just happened to read.

I could have made it shorter, but I didn’t want to. I made it as long as I thought it needed to be.

It’s kind of you to share your advice, but what you say seems somewhat reductive (no pun intended).

I write short pieces, mid-length ones, and even books. In each case, I determine what I want to say—and consider how much detail it requires. The answer to those to questions informs how long the piece will be.

While brevity can be useful, a shorter piece isn’t necessarily better. It’s often just… well… shorter. I suspect this is why dialogue on Twitter often becomes toxic. Distilling an idea to its shortest form makes it seem clear, but the result often lacks nuance.

So, yes, I could have made this shorter. In fact, I could have reduced it to a paragraph or sentence. That said, doing so would have removed a lot of the detail I felt relevant to what I wanted to communicate.

The bigger concern (in my mind) is that anyone balks at a 5,000 word essay. You make it sound as though 24 minutes is a long read. I suppose that’s a sign of the times. It also suggests we all need to read more books. ;-)

I’ve learned that likes on Facebook mean very little. The first clue to this was when friends would “like” a link I shared within 1 minute of posting it (even though the article would take 10+ minutes to read). ;-)

There are certainly many good reasons to use Facebook. That said, I feel the marketing value is often far lower than expected. (At least that’s what we discovered when we closely looked at the results of campaigns we were running for clients.)

So, if it works for you, great! However, it’s worth looking at your metrics and determining if it really does work. You might also find there are other tools that allow you to do the same—even better than Facebook does.

Thanks! So far, it’s been surprisingly easy—which wasn’t the case when I could just pop in to “just check one thing.”

I post this somewhat reluctantly, as it’s not directly design related. That said, the impact this choice has had on my work in the studio is huge. Perhaps it can be helpful. If not, I’m fine with the mods removing it.

I’m a designer, but a substantial part of my day revolves around writing. From strategies and briefs to correspondence aimed at persuading a client to try an approach—it’s all writing. This article contains a handful of tips on what’s worked for me. Maybe it can for you, too.

This is a big, gnarly project @Shelkie and I are working on. It has bugs and issues all over the place, but we’re working to fix those as quickly as we can.

We made it, in part, because of my love/hate relationship with social media. Networks like LinkedIn quickly fill up with bragging and vacuous self-promotion. Meanwhile, communities like Hacker News are largely impenetrable, now that they’re so popular.

What we’re attempting to do with Officehours Streams, is to allow members to post specific types of content—and then categorize them so their stuff reaches interested parties. At present, it’s in closed beta, and limited to Articles and Product Launches. In time, we’ll open up videos, links, collaborative opportunities, job/gig listings, et cetera.

All of this ties into the primary OH functionality: helping people share experience/advice, one-on-one. For example: https://officehours.io/categories/graphic-design. The big idea here is to create a mutually beneficial community, in which folks find good information, make new friendships, and access means of collaborating on projects.

The whole thing is ambitious, and I fear that we’ll screw it up. That said, I’m optimistic about what it could become.

If you have a product you’d like to showcase, or an article you think others would find useful, please let me know. I’m happy to offer post access to those who’d like to take part in building the community.