Local designer crafts eye-catching fonts

Neil Summerour has a 20-step commute to work. Socks and shorts are the dress code. The lighting is a little low, different sci-fi toy models sit on cabinets, and atmospheric music plays in stereo.

In the basement of his Jefferson home, Summerour runs his worldwide company, Positype. He passes his days by shaping letters, numbers and symbols into styles that are brand new. Large corporations all over the world pay him big money just to use his custom fonts.

This is how Summerour makes a living - and a pretty good living at that - but it's not as easy as it sounds.

"This is my hobby, but it's more than a hobby now," he said. "I get to walk around in socks and shorts, but I have to be in the studio working."

Summerour studied graphic design at the University of Georgia, where he had an epiphany in 2000. He listened to a font designer's lecture about what he did and realized he could do it better.

"I went home, grabbed a sketchbook and started drawing letters," he said. "I sold my first two fonts and just couldn't stop. It became an addiction."

A decade later, Summerour still is addicted to the craft. A self-professed nerd, he works from about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. When his wife and two children fall asleep, he goes back down to his office and keeps working.

Each font has about 1,000 different characters.

Some, like his font Lush, take five months to complete.

Others, like Fugu, are thrown together over a three-day weekend.

The Fugu font, a rough, textural style that Summerour made while his family was on vacation, turned out to be a breakthrough type for him. It won the top honor at the Type Directors Club in 2010. He won the award again this year with his new font, Nori.

Still, Summerour isn't one to brag.

"There are so many talented font type designers out there, but we're still a small group," he said. "I'm just happy to be in that group."

In 2009, Summerour started his own foundry with a few select font

Comment on "Local designer crafts eye-catching fonts"