Font of the month: Sir Quentin Blake

Crumbs it’s the end of March! While we go have a sit down to get over how fast the first three months have flown by, we’ll leave you with the typographical delight that’s our favourite font of the month yet, and the first that (heart-breakingly) you can’t yet get for your own use. Here’s the (we hope it’s available soon) Sir Quentin Blake.

Created to replicate the unmistakable handwriting style of the beloved illustrator (and knight of the realm) who defined the look of the likes of Roald Dahl’s The Twits, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, and of course Mathilda to name but a few, this gloriously evocative and fun font has been created by US foundry Monotype as a commission for the man himself.

If you can forgive this little-bit of trans-Atlantic cultural pilfering you can’t help but sit back and admire the care and attention to detail that’s gone into this bespoke typeface.

You can read the full story of the project here on Creativepool, but here’s the tale in brief.

This wasn’t the first attempt to create a typeface that mimicked Sir Quentin’s unique penmanship but the original was deemed not quite up to the job. And with a whole new raft of digital projects in the pipeline (including apps based on Roald Dahl’s The Twits) it was the perfect time to dive back in and perfect it.

Quentin and his people picked out the Monotype team to take on the challenge. They crafted four variants of each character to replicate the variation that Quentin naturally adds to his writing and they set up custom kerning for each character pairing. The end result is a definite and distinct improvement and one that’s gained the illustrators unequivocal seal of approval.

Now who do we need to sweeten up to get the chance to use Sir Quentin Blake ourselves?

If you want to know more about fonts, check our article 8 Utterly Terrible Font Puns!

Feeling inspired? Shop the range at Printed.com now!

Go Shopping