Hi Everyone,

I did not post any newsletter since july 2021. More than a year. I planned to explain in details why I did not do it, but that was too much of a work. And only that sentence is a good reply to the question itself. Procrastination and ADHD definitively won for a too long time.

So from now, I will try to post more regularly, I will do my best to do it each time I have something to say. Probably not monthly but more as soon as I have news to share. My mental health seems to like it more that way.

So what happened since July 2021? Here are the news!

I did a Domestika course!

And I am really proud of it. That was a great project, with a great team. I have now more than 400 students, which could be better, but still I did exactly what I wanted to do so I am really happy. Thanks again France Domestika team. Here is the link to my class and here are some projects students did publish online.

I worked on the Fontself iPad app

I already worked with Fontself in the past, on their Illustrator plugin but also already on the iPad app while it was in beta. In march this year, they launched publicly that app and I helped them to communicate around it during the 36 days of type challenge. But let’s tell you the truth here: I love that app. I totally love it. This is so useful. I feel like using Procreate but for fonts. You draw letters in each spot, make your alphabet and the piece of software do the font for you. Spacing and kerning included. This is huge. This can be used for display fonts, script ones and in the last release, you have straight lines and you can fill the shapes super easily. This is really cool. So even if you never thought about creating a font before, go check it out! And check this short video with the last features.

I joined I Love Typography

Beginning of 2022, Nadine Chahine, CEO of ILT, did contact me because they wanted to sell my fonts on their platform. ILT is an independant font distributor created with the energy of both Nadine and John Boardley. John is the founder of ILT in the 2000s. That was the reference blog for everything type. The content was fantastic and and I must say I was in love with the website itself :P

So when they contacted me because they wanted to have me on board and that they thought my work had its place there, I was so honored. I develop mostly experimental fonts, with layers, colors and use of Opentype. Nothing buzzy here. But it is different.

So I joined in june 2022. Feedback was huge, fantastic. I did not always had good feedback from type designers so I was a bit afraid of showing my work that way to their world. But at the end that was great!

Here is the link to my shop on ILT.

And cherry on the cake, last month, Farandole and Lustik were selected by the great Steven Heller as fonts of the month. Crazy moment here again. I was so honored and I must say proud. You can build and create strange stuff and being on the front scene.

I launched a new podcast… in french… and on mental health

Last year I started the Typochondriac podcast. That was quickly a huge fail for me. Too much was going on at that time, and after 4 episodes I could not continue to maintain it. I love podcasts, I love sharing insights but the work to put into it was too much.

But this year, I thought about launching it again or maybe launch something different. Beginning of 2022 I was invited to a french podcast, the Patate club podcast. And I shared my experience with mental health. Stress, anxiety, depression and ADHD. And right after the episode was out, I received many messages of people recognizing themselves in my experience. And they asked me many questions. I tried to help. But since that podcast, I continued to received messages from people looking for answers to their problem.

I thought about launching a blog, but too much work, some videos on Instagram? Too much work. And that is after sending many vocals via Whatsapp to a group of friends that I realized I was missing podcasting and sharing my thoughts on certain subjects. I used to send these vocals while being in the forest or mountains. And one of these friends said “you should record these vocals, you should do a podcast!”. And for the first time since I stopped the Typochondriac podcast, I felt confident to maintain a news podcast: short, recorded in the wild, and quickly mixed on my phone with Anchor. That was it!

The podcast was launched last week and I already recorded 5 episodes. I also chose french to make it even easier for me. Sorry international friends :-)

Here is the homepage of the Petit Journal d’un créatif.

This is it for today. No inspiration sorry. I now need to think how I want that newsletter to be in the future. I know I want it short (not like today but well… for more than a year of stuff to share this is short for me :D), with news, and sometimes inspiration that I found worth sharing, mostly lettering stuff.

If I was away for too long, don’t hesitate to unsubscribe at the bottom, that is fine. Otherwise, see you next time, hopefully soon with great things to share. Thanks again for your patience.

Francis

The Typochondriac Newsletter

#11 - Finally back...