Typographer's blues...

Okay, the new font Mokum Stad was in the making. I only had an example for upper case, and tried do make my own lower case. That was the first version of the font. It was not quite what I thought it would be. After some talks the original idea was abandoned and a new, rounder version was made. That looked like this:



It was modelled a bit after one of the Broadway typefaces. And guess what? People I showed it to all found it "remarkably like Broadway" and "not quite as nostalgic as it could be". Blast! I couldn't but agree, so there I was. Up a certain creek without a paddle...
Time for some serious thinking, done while sawing logs for the fireplace. Destroying lumber as a means to free your mind... And yes, it worked. A new lower case was born, as a sort of small caps. Looking like this:



Well that's more like it. There are still some wrinkles to iron out, but the result looks nostalgic enough for my purposes. Have another sample here:

A new font, finally

It took me some time to produce a new font. This time I was inspired by the city of Groningen, in the north of the country. That region has a rich tradition of architecture and the like from the 1920's and 30's.
One of the city maps was done in Amsterdam School style, with a peculiar lettering. This forms the basis of my new font:



The name of the font was a challenge, because I wanted to include the word Mokum (meaning city in Hebrew). This had to be combined with another term belonging to Groningen. The inhabitants call their cjty Grunn, so Mokum Grunn was an option. In the neighbouring province of Friesland the city is called Grins, leading to Mokum Grins. This suggestion was definitely discouraged by Koos Staal, graphic designer from Haren, province Groningen.
Then a third option came into view. The people from Groningen are often called Stadjers, meaning inhabitants of Stad. Presto, the name was born: Mokum Stad, in which Mokum stands for city and Stad stands for city as well! But who cares?