BRIAN SOOY
ALTERED EGO FONTS

Altered Ego Fonts are designed to solve visual and typographic problems for print, web and interactive media. AEF distributes original fonts designed by Brian Sooy, and is a division of Brian Sooy & Co. The company features dingbat, condensed and narrow-width fonts, and original text and display faces. It offers the unique and ongoing Eclectic Series of useful and whimsical dingbat fonts, including Eclectic Web and Eclectic PixieWeb, two collections of icons for website development. AEF also accepts commissions for custom type design projects. Their clients include American Greetings, The Cleveland Clinic, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ernst & Young, National City Bank and Tyndale House Publishers. AEF fonts are licensed by Adobe (Verve OTF), Bitstream (Arkeo), ITC (ITC Coventry) and Garage Fonts (Benderhead). AEF fonts are available in Postscript, TrueType and OpenType formats for Macintosh and PCs. AEF is featured in the book IndieFonts: A Compendium of Digital Type for Independent Foundries. The company is actively involved with the Society of Typographic Afiionados.

How did you first become interested in type and type design? I became interested in type and type design at about the age of 12, when I found a Speedball lettering book and some lettering nibs in our basement. I started copying the letterforms ("Speedball blackletter"), and it just took off from there.

Who has most influenced your work, in or out of the design field? The major influences on my work have been John Hogan, lettering artist extraordinaire, now retired from American Greetings, and the work of Hermann Zapf, Tim Girvin and Paul Rand.

What is your favorite typeface that you have designed? My favorite typeface I designed is Lucerna, a commission for Tyndale House Publishers. It's a typeface exclusively used in the New Living Translation Bible, released in June 2004. It's a contemporary translation.

What is the best-selling typeface you have designed? My best-selling typeface is actually a dingbat font: Eclectic Web.

Is there any commonly-used typeface that you wish you could banish? I don't really like anything that pretends to be calligraphic and looks amateurish.

How do you come up with a font name? Is it important or just whimsical? I come up with font names in two ways: I take inspiration from what I've been reading, or I use an English-to-Latin dictionary. It is important; for instance, the two fonts that I've designed specifically for Bible typesetting are named Veritas (Truth) and Lucerna (Lamp, inspired by Psalm 105:9). The Eclectic Series in entirely whimsical, because they are just that: the eclectic junk-drawer of dingbats. Only the web series are themed to this point.