Kevin Barrett Kane

A non-exhaustive list of folks and programs who’ve had significant impact in my life, both personally and professionally, whose skills visitors to this website might find useful. I don’t include my handyman, even though he’s really good. These are people I know personally, not just a list of random jabronis I look up to, though I’m actively trying to meet all those folks and add them as well.

People

Stephen Coles is the Editorial Director & Associate Curator at Letterform Archive in San Francisco. He also co-publishes Fonts In Use and Typographica and is the author of The Anatomy of Type. He is a walking type identification machine and can identify almost any typeface in the world.

Lori Emerson is the director of the Intermedia Art, Writing, and Performance Program and founding director of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado. She gave me the single best piece of advice to not pursue a higher degree in Creative Writing.

Emma Christine Hall is an art director, designer, and educator. She is an art director at Penguin Random House. She is also a certified permaculture designer from the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA). She is my wife.

Lynne Yun is a NYC-based type designer, educator and technologist. She is a founder of Space Type and Type Electives. She has an infectious smile and is a great hugger.

Juan Villanueva is a type designer, letterer, and educator in NYC. He is the creative director at Monotype, co-founder of Type Electives, and teaches type design at Yale University and elsewhere.

Ying Chang is amongst the most talented calligraphers and type designers in the whole wide world. Enough said. She is brilliant.

Richard Hendel is a book designer living and working in Chapel Hill, NC. He is the author of two seminal works, On Book Design and Aspects of Contemporary Book Design. He is infuriatingly humble.

John Stevens is a master calligrapher and lettering artist. He is the author of several books, most recently Mastering Brush Roman Capitals. He is justifiably not very humble.

James Edmonson is a type designer and educator. He is the founder of OHNO Type Co, a foundry that specializes in type that I really want to buy but can hardly ever use. He taught me everything I know about drawing the letter S.

Joel Swanson is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who serves as the director of the TYPO Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute, where he works as Associate Professor. The coolest thing about him is 18pt Granby Inlined, which is saying a lot because he’s pretty cool.

Grendl Löfkvist is a calligrapher, letterpress operator, and blackletter aficionado living in Oakland. She is dean of Type West where she teaches design history. She doesn’t have a website, but you can usually find her anywhere where black cats and really great gothic letterforms hang out.

Laura Serra is an illustrator, letterer, and translator living in Oakland. She is the Official Certified Most Charming Human Ever Born. She is the best thing about Stephen Coles, which he would agree with.

Jeremy Tribby is an artist, designer, and technologist. He is the founder of Countertype. He is a type vampyre who is my primary source of Typographic Beef and the latest Piping Hot Tea from the type world. And he does not suck rocks.

Libbie Bischoff is a brand & type designer and educator. She is the founder of Type Du Nord. She once designed a typeface a week for one year and we’ve been in awe ever since.

Nurullah Gokdogan is a leading UX/UI designer with a background in Applied Mathematics and Fine Arts. I once offered up a concept for an app I was dreaming about and he made it overnight.

Kel Troughton is a type designer, lettering artist, curator, graffiti enthusiast, and educator in Oakland. He is the founder of Overlap Type and a certified OG.

Sumner Stone is a type designer, calligrapher, and educator who served as Adobe’s first Director of Typography. We once spent an hour on the phone discussing the serifs in ITC Galliard.

Zoe Norvell is a book designer and founder of I Need A Book Cover and I Need A Book Interior. She has the most book design good karma of anyone I know.

Charles Brock is an award winning book designer and former creative director of Faceout Studio. He does things with sans serif typography that give me nightmares (in the best way).

Nina Stössinger is a type designer and educator working at Frere-Jones Type in Brooklyn. She runs for fun. Who does that? Sicko. Unfortunately she is also a grade-A human with no perceivable flaws.

Paul Shaw is a renowned type and design historian and calligrapher. He is the author of many books, including Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. His writing about design, specifically typography, is some of the best.

Edward Tufte is a leading scholar on information technology and visual systems. His books and seminars are paramount to many designer’s educations today. He is the first person I point to when someone asks for an example of a successful self-published author.

Tim Roberts is a scholarly book designer and full-service production provider through his company, Field Editorial. He once instructed me in “speed & accuracy, in equal measure,” a quote that remains emblazoned above my desk to this day.

Briar Levitt is an archivist with very small hands who made an extraordinary documentary called Graphic Means and is the founder of the People’s Graphic Design Archive.

Brian Johnson is a brilliant designer, curator, author and educator whose work for his studio Polymode pushes the boundaries of what design and typography are and can be. He once scolded me for confusing Neue Montreal for Helvetica and I will never live it down.