Hacker culture was irresistible to me, growing up in the suburban arcadia of south west England in the 1990s. But being “good with computers” pointed towards the life depicted in Fight Club, so in high school I dropped maths and physics for contemporary art and socio-linguistics.
Combining my interests in art and computers eventually led me to the BA Interaction Design programme at Ravensbourne College in London. By the time I graduated in 2006, I was fascinated with the potential of software freedom for graphic design and typography. I decided to free fonts. I attended the University of Reading’s MA Typeface Design programme and graduated in 2009. In my thesis I related the history of the software freedom movement to key concepts in type design. My student project “Cantarell” was included in the launch of Google Web Fonts and chosen as the default User Interface font for GNOME. In 2012 I am traveling widely thanks to the CouchSurfing project, writing a column for the Libre Graphics Magazine, consulting for Google Web Fonts, and running workshops on typeface design with free software along the way. I believe that anyone can learn to draw, and Transition Towns is really important.
