Bullpen

I released Bullpen on March 14, 2001. It was based on the titles used in the “Bullpen” letters section of old Marvel comics. I drew the original three styles—Regular, Italic, and a shaded italic called 3D—entirely from scratch in FontLab, extrapolating an alphabet from the few existing samples. The shaded italic was included to echo the comic book effect directly. I later discovered that the original source in Marvel comics was Gonzales Clarendon, though my version diverged significantly from that model.

The design emphasized rectilinear construction. Compared to a traditional Clarendon, Bullpen was squarer and heavier, with slab serifs that were completely unbracketed rectangles. The strong, mechanical curves and blunt terminals gave it a sturdy, industrial tone.

On May 7, 2012, I rebuilt Bullpen as a larger family. I used the earlier outlines as a base but reworked spacing, proportions, and language support, expanding coverage to include Greek. The family grew to seven weights with italics, plus the 3D style. At that point, the style originally called Regular was renamed Heavy, so the free fonts became Heavy, Heavy Italic, and 3D.

I continued to maintain Bullpen with technical updates. On October 9, 2024, I reorganized the weight names—Book became Light, Light became Extra-Light, Extra-Light became Thin, and Ultra-Light became Hairline. That release also added refinements: the ellipsis was narrowed, the OpenType fractions feature was expanded, and obsolete characters such as L with dot were removed. Some outline issues in the 3D and Hairline styles were corrected as well.

Bullpen circulated widely in the 2000s, and although I saw it in use often, I don’t recall specific projects. It remains one of my sturdier slab serif families, with a comic-inspired origin that led to a distinctly square interpretation of the Clarendon genre.