Airmole

I released Airmole on September 26, 2000. The name came from the kind of psychedelic juxtapositions I liked in band names such as Led Zeppelin or Soft Machine. Since moles live underground, calling one “Airmole” felt memorable and a little absurd.

The design was based on a sample I found in a Speedball lettering guide from the early 20th century. Rather than tracing the letters directly, I built them up with Bézier curves, keeping the spirit of the original but simplifying the shapes so they worked better as a digital typeface. That approach marked the beginning of my habit of doing looser revivals rather than strict ones. The lettering in the Speedball books was fairly clean, and a few other designers later produced more faithful revivals. Mine is pared down, which I think makes it more practical as a typeface.

Airmole is a heavy counterless display design with a casual art deco feel. Because it has no counters, it was actually quicker to produce than many other fonts I’d worked on. I released it with a free commercial-use license, and over the years I’ve seen it crop up now and then, usually in retro-themed contexts, though nothing especially memorable comes to mind.

In April 2024, I placed Airmole in the public domain. Looking back, I see it as part of my series of “not too strict” revivals, a style of reinterpretation that has remained a recurring thread in my work.