Ohno Radio James Edmondson, Ohno

Gen and Zrinka sit down to chat about meeting in grad school, starting a type foundry, and the perils of raising a child while being a type designer. We announce Yumex, the new typeface designed by them, and released through Ohno.

Elizabeth Goodspeed can speak in paragraph form. It’s pretty impressive to me, someone that has to write in paragraph form and then read it aloud.

I had been wanting to talk to Elizabeth for a long time, because she’s so funny. I knew she was smart, and a great designer, but I still don’t understand how her brain works. She’s known for spotting trends, naming them, creating archives around them. But her understanding of design goes far beyond aesthetic tropes.

In this interview, we talk about punching up vs punching down, why she’s reluctant to get on tiktok, and how she can’t quit twitter.

Summer is here, and so is this 18 minute identity crisis as I navigate running a business, renovating two homes, with two kids, and moving Ohno headquarters from Oakland to San Jose, California.

We go behind the scenes at Ohno to tell the story of our new typeface, Casserole. It began as a reinterpretation of Louis Minott’s Davida from 1966. I got to speak with his granddaughter to learn more about Louis as a designer, father, and grandfather. Then, we have a breif conversation between Colin Ford, and Jamie Otelsberg, the Ohno designers that worked on the project with me.

Jen Wagner didn’t come to design as a designer; she actually studied marketing, had a slew of businesses, eventually landed in fonts, and just hit the ground running. Today she’s a powerhouse, running her foundry Jen Wagner Co. She is prolific and has an incredible knack for hitting the nail on the head stylistically with each release. I absolutely loved talking to Jen, because it was so refreshing to hear someone thinking strategically with this different background. In our conversation, I learned about how just a single kernel of an idea from Jen’s marketing education—the minimum viable product—and a chance encounter with a mentor led to her discovering a whole new way of making a living. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jen Wagner.

Lynne Yun, what hasn’t she done? She worked at Apple, worked at Monotype, she’s got her own stuff through her foundry Space Type, she’s a calligrapher, type designer, lettering artist, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg somehow. More recently, she attended the School of Poetic Computation and has become an expert on generative typography.
Now, Juan Villanueva, grew up in Peru, as well as New Jersey, that old classic combo. He went to Reading. He’s holding down at MOnotype these days, but has an affinity for aligning himself and helping out with numerous organizations like Society of Scribes, Type at Cooper, Type West, he even started Type Crit Crew which is a free resource for type design students to meet 1–1 with experienced type designers for virtual critiques.
Then, Lynne and Juan, who are buds, looked at each other, and said, we don’t have enough going on, so let’s start a type school. A real one, not like Ohno Type School. An actual school with classes, and instructors, and students. It’s an ambitious undertaking, and truly noble in my opinion. Their mission statement is to form a more inclusive and equitable future in type and design by increasing access to education.