Guest post from Dallas Graham.
The idea seemed to come out of nowhere: one second I was peering across the street to a park, buzzing with Saturday morning farmer’s market goers and the next second I was asking myself the question: “I wonder if I can make a bird out of a comma…”
I made my way to my make-shift “studio” area of my 600 square foot condo and opened my laptop. Comma. Exclamation marks. Period. Oh… and something for the beak: a less-than symbol, but tweaked a bit. Within 5 minutes, a red bird made entirely from typographical marks, sat in from of me. I sat back in my chair and gazed at him, robustly red against the white screen. “You’re going to change my life,” I whispered.
That avian-expression of character design and merging symbols took place five years ago. I named him Red Fred Bodoni because, well, he looked like his name should be Red Fred. And “red” is in “fred”. The last name? Every gentleman needs one so I pulled it from the typeface he was created from.
So I made more…