James Arboghast

Additional Information

Full name

James Arboghast

Personal Bio

Typowiki:James Arboghast
Typowiki:Sentinel Type

Interview with Dan Gauthier
A recent chat with Jess Latham, who I count as a kindred spirit.

As soon as I started making fonts I got very interested in type history. I spent most of 2006 away from making fonts to write about type and architecture for Wikipedia. My Wikipedia user page links to some of the articles I worked on there.

History of Western Typography is the only piece of mine to survive largely unscathed by tampering and “edit creep”.

I also wrote the base manuscript for Movable Type. That one proved an instant crank magnet—-I wash my hands of all responsibility! Some guy recently put in a few paras about movable metal type in ancient Rome—-with no reference. Straight away I put in the “citation needed” tag. We’re still waiting...

I don’t get to do a lot of design work now-a-days, not since my employers discovered I could write. Weh-hell, they call it “writing”, I call it “wordsmithing”. For the most part it’s hack, hack, hack. Most of my time is spent writing promotional copy of one sort or another and kicking around ideas for clients.

On January 31st 2007 I had a cerebral aneurysm that almost killed me. The survival rate for cerebral aneurysm involving a single burst artery in the brain is 5%. I had two burst arteries in the brain and a 1% chance of survival. The experience changed my whole outlook on life. Fluid pressure in my cranium during the sub-arachnoid haemorrhage damaged my optic nerves: my sight is marred by a light patina of dark and light patches, and I experience some linear distortion (straight lines don’t appear straight to me). Obviously this is one of the worst things that can happen to a visual artist. For a type designer it’s downright impractical, but with effort, and a little help from colleagues, I am still able to produce fonts.

City

Melbourne

State/Province

Victoria

Country

Australia

Home Page

http://www.myfonts.com/browse/foundry/sentinel/

Gender

Male

Occupation

advertising creative / writer / typographic designer