John Downer (born 1951) is an American sign painter, typeface and logo designer. Downer began his career as a painter of signs. Among his best-known digital fonts are

Iowan Old Style Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1991. Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces from Renaissance Italy, now called the “ old-style” or Venetian model of typeface design, ...

, Roxy, Triplex Italic, and Brothers. Downer studied at

Washington State University Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant unive ...

and the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

. His work was featured amongst that of others in the 2014 documentary ''Sign Painters''. He has lectured on type and sign design at conferences and at

The Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

Typeface designs

- Venetian old-style serif * Roxy (Font Bureau) - stroke-modulated sans-serif * Triplex Italic (Emigre) * Brothers ( Emigre) - chamfered display

wedge-serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

influenced by nineteenth-century lettering * Paperback (House Industries) - text serif face with

optical size In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mode ...

s * SamSans - humanist sans-serif * Vendetta (Emigre) - inspired by old-style Venetian serif fonts but with sharpened serifs * Council (Emigre) - condensed display

, capitals-only * Ironmonger (Font Bureau) - angular all-caps display alphabet inspired by lettering on buildings * Simona (Design Lab) - serif, similar to the work of Fournier and

Bodoni Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas o ...

Proprietary typefaces

* Gonnick or cartoonist Larry Gonnick* Screenmax (bitmap serif typefaces at 7 pixel x-height in Roman, Italic, Bold and Black)

References

External links

Schriftdesigner John Downer
-

Klingspor Museum The Klingspor-Museum is a museum in Offenbach, Germany, specializing in the art of modern book production, typography and type. It includes a collection of fine art books from Karl Klingspor, one of the owners of Klingspor Type Foundry in Offe ...

article on John Downer's work (German)
John Downer Speedballs
(Typographica)
Sostav
(Russian) - page on Downer's lettering and influences

-

Luc Devroye Luc P. Devroye is a Belgian computer scientist and mathematician and a James McGill Professor in the School of Computer Science of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Devroye specializes in the probabilistic analysis of algorithms, r ...

's page on Downer and other Iowa-based type designers
MyFonts

John Downer, TYPO Berlin
(German)
Font Bureau
profile page {{DEFAULTSORT:Downer, John Living people American typographers and type designers American graphic designers 1951 births University of Iowa alumni Washington State University alumni Artists from Tacoma, Washington People from Iowa City, Iowa