Font Bureau was built by type designers. Tobias Frere-Jones is one of those vital practitioners who defined what we do and how we do it. We are proud to offer some of his earliest and most interesting typefaces — work that continues to have relevance and utility today.

By David Berlow || Meeting Tobias Frere-Jones can be a forgettable experience, but only if you don’t talk to him. Reserved is his natural state. But below the surface lie exceptional versatility, observational skills, and inventiveness. This all can be seen in the early typefaces he developed at Font Bureau. Gathered here, from Garage Gothic via Interstate to the Poynter and Benton series, and on to the fanciful ones, are those early families: effective, practical, timeless, unique.

Garage Gothic began as fallen receipts from a Brooklyn parking garage. Tobias didn’t have a car, and I never knew him to drive, so I assumed at the time he walked past the garage and found them, or walked past the garage to find them. Either way, what he found was not nearly as interesting as what he made.

Interstate began when the specifications for highway signage fell into Tobias’ hands. For some time he pored over it and we discussed the differences between signage and printage, before he began slowly designing a new family. There were plenty of typographic diversions on the way, leading to the extensive, multifaceted series Interstate is today.

Poynter began as a well-publicized study of modern newspaper types circa 1990. I was mystified by Mike Parker’s advice on a proper direction, but Tobias heard and saw something that took several years to become roman, italic and the first system of graded weights in response to newspaper printing issues.

Those, and more, are now available in updated font formats and progressively released for web use, even after all these years.