Blue Vinyl Fonts www.bvfonts.com

BY JESS LATHAM

TODD SHOWS OFF HIS TATOOS!

Todd Oldham is one of my favorite designers. What I like most about him is his sense of fun that he brings to everything he does and his fearlessness with color. It was amazing that he took the time out of his busy schedule to be interviewed for Snacky Zine. This interview occured in October 2005.

JESS: I really enjoyed your special on HGTV Handmade Modern that aired in September (2005) and I was wondering if you were planning on doing more or is that it for Handmade Modern?

TODD: I had so much fun doing Handmade Modern TV. My schedule doesn’t allow the huge amount of time it takes to do a full time show, so I was happy to do it as a series of specials. I think the next series might be Handmade Modern Garden, as I am a plant nut. I‘m glad you liked it.

JESS: Being a type designer and a big fan of yours I was excited to see the typeface you designed and used in your book Handmade Modern. Have you designed any other typefaces? Do you have plans to design more? What was that like? What techniques did you use, hand drawn or computer drawn?

TODD: The font I designed for the book was called ERASE, as it was hand cut out of pink erasers and scanned into the computer. It has been very useful and its serif free, chunky forms have blended well with all sorts of other fonts, like the House Industries font called NEUTRAFACE that we also used in the book. We have designed many fonts at my studio. One of my very favourites is called PINDOT. We punched the entire font into cardboard using a straight pin and scanned from there. I prefer to make or draw our fonts by hand because to me, in our entirely automated world it brings me joy to see a human hand present.

JESS: You seem to be into designing everything lately: photography, interior, graphic, tv, etc. Do you ever feel stretched in a million directions? How do you keep it up?

TODD: I am very blessed to be able to design all kinds of stuff and I would suffocate if I had to do only one thing. I have managed to sculpt a career out of a very short attention span and I encourage everyone with a wandering mind to do the same. We are a nation of specialists and that can be very boring.