My interest in fonts started when I was a kid, playing around on a 286 computer in my dad's desktop publishing program, and I saw one that constructed letters out of logs. Cue forward almost 15 years later, when I started making websites, and stumbled upon a website called Larabie Fonts. While other kids downloaded music, I downloaded fonts.

Larabie Fonts is a site run by Ray and Rina Larabie, a Canadian duo currently based out of Vancouver. Ray does the font designing, while Rina takes care of the business side of things, including any graphic design, promotional text and album covers. The Larabies also run Typodermic, which is the paid mirror site of Larabie Fonts.

Ray Larabie took a couple moments out of settling into his new Vancouver digs to answer some questions for Keetologue.

Keetologue: While sitting on the subway in Toronto, I've seen your fonts used in a couple ads - what was your initial reaction when you saw this?
Ray Larabie: When I started making fonts ten years ago, I was hoping that they'd be seen somewhere. Then, about a year later, I saw one of my fonts on a bus advertisement. At that point I realized that I had actually made a small difference in the visual environment. The thrill wears off pretty quickly and friends quickly tired of my constant pointing out "hey, there's Nasalization on that sign…" Understandably so.

K: On that note, where is the most interesting place you've seen your fonts used?
R: About five years ago, someone emailed me to tell me that a Neo-Nazi web site was using Die Nasty, the KISS band logo font. Not that it was any of my business who uses my fonts, but I thought it was interesting, considering all 4 members of kiss were Jewish. Ace Frehley designed the Kiss logo himself.

"Some people will tell you that Comic Sans is like a clown hat and a clown hat isn't a bad thing in certain situations. Comic Sans is like ill-fitting black shorts, slippers worn in public, a baseball cap with a slogan about Bingo, a pack of Rothmans and a fanny pack." -Ray Larabie on the font Comic Sans

K: In the case of creating a font from a pre-existing logo - how do you go about developing the other letters of the alphabet? For example, for Die Nasty, every letter but I, K, and S?
R: Sometimes it's really hard if the right letters aren't there, especially with script fonts. I've been contemplating the Tim Horton's Donuts logo for years but there's not enough to go on. For the most part it's a Frankenstein chop job. You start by chopping pieces off and making the obvious letters. I found the Kiss logo difficult because there's so little to go on and the K and S have very different styles. The I doesn't tell me anything I couldn't already figure out from the left side of the K so essentially it's a font based on two letters. In a case like that, you just have to experiment and harmonize one letter at a time, starting with the easy letters. It's been years since I worked on it but I probably went for the L next, just to establish the horizontal thickness. Once I made a guess at what the L looked like, I'd test it in context with the existing letters in words like KILLS or SLIK. Once I'd settled on the L, I went on to the next easy letter: the E, then the F and so on. The more letters you complete, the easier it gets. When testing, it's important to pay close attention to the original K and S just to make sure you don't wander off on a tangent, losing track of the feel of the original logo.

K: I've read in your other interviews that you started out your interest in designing fonts with Letraset. What exactly is Letraset?
R: Letraset was the most popular brand of dry transfer lettering in the 1970s and 1980s. They had an interesting chemical smell, came on legal size sheets of plastic, with pale blue tissue paper backing to keep dirt off the business side. Letraset sheets contained multiples of each letter like AAAAABBBBCCCDDDEEEEEEE kind of thing. You'd place the sheet on your artwork, visually align your letter of choice and rub the letter using a burnishing tool or dull pencil. Most art supply stores carried Letraset sheets so they weren't hard to come by. By the mid 1980s, they were about $10 per sheet. Unlike today's fonts, once you used up the letters, you had to buy more sheets. Sometimes, you'd run out of a particular letter and have to buy a new sheet or improvise by combining letter parts. What I loved about Letraset was the tangibility of the letters. Sometimes the letters would come loose, pieces would flake off or fail to adhere to the page. I used to apply them to my toys, lunch box, Thermos, fingernails.

K: Haha, that's cool! You've definitely come a long way since then. Of the fonts you have designed since then, which ones are your top 5?
R:

1. Quasix:

It's my vision of the future. An extrapolation of contemporary industrial design trends and commercial disharmony. Each letter is an individual, designed to look interesting on its own while barely harmonizing with its neighbours, just like people and corporate logos.

2. Tank:

It's a font designed to be used in ITC Machine situations. The clean, consistent, gaps make it suitable for framing or wrapping fish.

3. Zosma:

I managed to focus on a theme and stick with it. The result is a high-style, low-readability, throwaway fashion font.

4. Jillican:

The second font I created for Typodermic. The idea was a technical font intended to wean Brits off their Gill Sans addiction. By mimicking Gill Sans, it retains the readers' unconscious associations. In Canada, Gill Sans is often seen on UK products but rarely seen in domestic design. For me, that gives Jillican a subtle Euromilitary/Thatcher punk feeling.

5. Neuropol Nova:

An extension of the bleak techno-futurism of Neuropol. I had a chance to create a deliberately less legible version of Neuropol with broken and truncated lines yet adhering to a logical stencil/template formula.

K: What exactly is the font market like? For example, how often do you get requests to make particular fonts?
R: I get about one custom font request a week. Sometimes what the customer is looking for ends up being already out there either as one of my own fonts or as someone else's but occasionally, someone has a genuine need for a custom font. Once in a while I get a request from someone who wants a vanity font: something unique and exclusive. I refuse requests like that unless there's a very good reason that font needs to be exclusive. So far I haven't heard a good reason.

K: What is your rationale for not keeping fonts exclusive? I've noticed that you are one of the largest proponents of free fonts.
R: If I make a font exclusive, it's only for a limited time anyway. The customer is licensing the design from me. This is pretty standard in the font world and has been for at least a century. So, let's say the customer pays extra and I can't release the font for seven years. They use it on a product like a movie and it's a big hit. A few weeks later you might have messages like, "where can I get the Da Vinci Code 2 font?" Of course, the answer is "nowhere" and some freeware font designer releases a knockoff freeware version. Font designs are un-copyrightable so it's perfectly legal to make a knockoff as long as you don't copy the font data and you're careful about naming it. Usually freeware designers won't knock off a commercial available font. So, the exclusivity actually encourages knockoff versions. Also, it's a big world. I rarely see my commercial fonts in use and I'm keeping an eye out for them. It's highly unlikely that the general public will see your custom font elsewhere and post on a blog, "oh my god the font they're using for Mission Impossible 4 is the same one I saw on Bick's Bread & Butter Pickles". Then there's the worst reason of all for wanting an exclusive font: the vanity font. "I'm writing a book and I want my own custom font that nobody has. I have no idea what I want but I want you to design it." I get these about 6 times a year. Puh-lease.

K: What are your thoughts on Comic Sans MS? I was surprised to see that there were hate websites actually dedicated to it.
R: Comic Sans is supposed to look like a child's handwriting and was designed to look good at small point sizes onscreen. It's appropriate for text on email or websites where you want it to look like a child's handwriting. It's not appropriate anywhere else. Some people will tell you that Comic Sans is like a clown hat and a clown hat isn't a bad thing in certain situations. I think there are much better "clown hat" fonts. Comic Sans is like ill-fitting black shorts, slippers worn in public, a baseball cap with a slogan about Bingo, a pack of Rothmans and a fanny pack. When I see Comic Sans, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet or any similar font used for signage, especially neon signage, it tells me that the designer was far too lazy to be bothered looking beyond their system font folder.

K: Like clothes, I have noticed that many fonts are very popular for certain seasons, and drop off - like ones I have seen over the past season over and over again are Souvenir, the 3D font from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, and for awhile, Gothic fonts - what do you think is the "next" font?
R:That's what I try to figure out every day. I predicted a Lubalin Graph comeback a couple of years ago and I'm still waiting. Compacta was my favourite font when I was a kid and I think it's due for a return.

To see more of Ray's work, hit up Larabie Fonts or Typodermic.