Craftworks with Chank Diesel

Font creator and “alphabetician” Chank Diesel hosted a special workshop to celebrate Colorado and its abundance of craft breweries.  Diesel’s custom fonts  are seen everywhere: on ads, packaging, video games, publications–you name it. His book Travelling Font Salesman illustrates several of his highly creative fonts through storytelling. “Every font has a story to tell,” writes one reviewer.

Chank shared his methods for creating fonts and where he finds his inspiration: everywhere. Buildings, old signs, childhood nicknames, the circus–there’s even a font called Liquorstore, inspired by hand-painted signage in his hometown of Minneapolis. Oftentimes the names of the fonts are just as creative as the unique letterforms, with names like Kazootie, Rib Joint, Sister Frisky, Space Toaster and Urban Circus.

For October’s Craftworks, program chair Amy Malanga brought the inspiration: beer and its many possible ingredients. An array of natural ingredients, all used in beer making (she really did her homework,) created a unique learning experience. Licorice, citrus, spices and chocolate are used in crafting beer and for Craftworks the ingredients were used to make letter forms. Hop vines (grown by our very own chapter President, Helen Young) turned into letterforms and, along with many ingredients, created beautiful works of art.

Once photographed, Chank demonstrated how to work with the images in Photoshop, import them into Fontographer, and create a unique alphabet.

Thanks to Chank Diesel, Amy Malanga and everyone who joined us for this letter-making experience. We hope to see you for our next installment of Craftworks!

photos courtesy of Amy Malanga Photography