Hello dear Reader 🐉

I hope you and your loved ones are well in these trying times! I do have good news to share: I FINALLY have rested enough to not burn out anymore. I am back to work, reducing caffeine again, my ADD meds have been refilled. I am determined to type design. LFG.

First and foremost, the vast majority of my time these past two weeks has been spent on starting an exciting freelance type design project. I am extremely happy about this, because in 2021, I was miserable, desperate to escape doing corporate graphic design to meet both ends, and now I get to type design for a living. I'm just grateful.

Secondly, Baleze is about 97% done. I FINALLY finished processing the glyphs!! I'm continuing to improve my general pipeline for releasing typefaces; here it is if you're curious hehe:

1. base process: completing set base glyphset 100%; checking if glyphs need adding; correcting glyphOrder if needed; considering icon sets; considering scripts (for open source especially)

2. metrics: ultimate spacing check → kerning groups → kerning

3. clean up process: anchors check (like if the glyphs that don't need some do not have some for instance); decomposing and merging connected diacritics; cleaning up guides, layers, annotations, colours; unnesting nested components; cleaning up outlines / open corners if applicable (not often haha); Red Arrows plugin check if applicable; Tunnify if applicable; running FontBakery; feature code check

4. exporting: OTF / TTF / WOFF / WOFF2 (most of the time with remove overlap and autohinting); trials OTF / TTF / WOFF / WOFF2 (most of the time with remove overlap and autohinting too); variable if applicable

5. copywriting: checking supported fantasy languages; listing OpenType features (stylistis sets, alts, case punctu, ligas, etc.); writing a font description with lore

6. graphics: specimen for Instagram; horizontal pdf specimen; square specimen (adapted from the one for Instagram); reel / motion if need; print if needed.

And that's already a lot lol! For Baleze, I'm now at the copywriting part. I want to worldbuild a little bit; I've thought of a magic system with cards, and I have a site I started last year for it, but it's not 100% done yet. Soon tho!

I think a recurring theme in my newsletter has been, and will be, media. I strive to always create more than I consume, but I do consume a LOT. So here's for the past two weeks!

I've played mostly two games lately: Baldur's Gate 3, and Stardew Valley. In Stardew, I have my character, Oscar, married to Shane, since I believe 2019. I'm veeery far into end game. I play on Switch, which is harder for me because I tend to use mods a lot - the timer aspect is what I dislike the most in this fantastic game. But I was craving starting fresh, so I started a beach farm called Nat20 (cause of course), started a new character called Ando (cause of course), with purple hair (cause of course). I am still hesitating with Haley and Abigail for partners, it's like the trad and doomer girls memes you know lol, but I think ultimately I'm a Haley girlie. What can I say? I have a type.

And for Baldur, it leads me to shows and movies: I've been watching Critical Role SO much that it made me really want to play anything remotely related to D&D again. And irl is better, but I mean BG3 is the best game ever so. Forever my favourite game (for fantasy at least, not counting Cyberpunk 2077), and watching Marisha play Beauregard in CR just made me crave playing a monk so bad. I think I'm naturally always drawn towards monk and bard classes. I absolutely want to play a dual class bard monk one day!! The character I created is a lavender tiefling monk called Chance (been wanting to use this name for D&D forever) with an Outlander background.

I love her so much. She's not the smartest lol, but she's just über COOL. I've actually started drawing a font for her, based on my old one I did for Jester from CR, so it's just perfect. By the way, CR's Mighty Nein episode 62 is probably my favourite so far, and that means a lot. I absolutely DIED of laughter during the weasel part (trust me, it's even better with context).

In terms of reading, I've been going through two books lately, pretty much opposite in terms of fun: the Cyberpunk 2077 art book I got from the Collector Edition box set, which is just insanely beautiful, and the French Code de la Route - driving road rules. I got my driving licence first try but I have crippling amaxophobia (recently learned it had a name), which I'm trying hard to get over.

For audio stuff, I've been enjoying this particular playlist of Cyberpunk 2077 music while working. It's an hour long so acts as a timer of sorts which is awesome. I adore this playlist, I've listened to it 19 times so far (sic). I'm also back to Zeldawave on the regular; but mostly, I'm listening to Claudia Valentina, especially GIRLY THINGS, on a LOOP. Man, the "WHAT CAN I TELL U" EP is my AOTY period.

I am also almost done with my article on the relation between fantasy and type design I've been writing for a while. It's incredibly exciting and I can't wait for you to read it. I started writing about how I set up my Obsidian for type and life (and also on how to kern with a controller) but I think I would rather do a video for YouTube, and that I want to do back in Paris, especially cause my controllers are there. I'm STILL writing my EULA btw, it is SO painful, but it's getting closer every day.

In other news, I've recently been obsessed with the trend of having a personal curriculum. For me, this translates into a lot of things, but mostly by wanting to learn more about what I'm most passionate about, type. I want to talk about this more in the future, I’m still figuring it out, but I’ve been gathering type history resources.

Lastly I just want to say, I already talked too much: I'm going to the seaside to our family home in Trouville in Normandy by mid August with a friend, and I'm super excited about it; I need to recharge before picking up teaching mid September.

Thank you so much for reading 🫶 Excited to see you soon!!

Take care ⚔️🔠

Ando