David Rakowski

Designer
St. Albans, Vermont · 1990–present
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96
Families
96
Styles
96
Total versions
The story90s Fonts: the freeware designers who gave them awayBefore fonts were a business, they were a hobby with a zip file. The story of the 1990s freeware font scene — Larabie, Rakowski, Curtis, Klein, Steffmann — and the one-woman archive that kept it online.Read the full story →

About

A double life in American arts: by day the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Composition at Brandeis and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in music; by night one of the earliest freeware type designers, reviving ornate 19th-century faces from 1990 on — UpperEastSide, Beffle (after Fry's Ornamented No. 2), Dubiel, Garton.

His revivals favor the exuberant Victorian and Deco display faces commercial foundries ignored, and they have been downloaded millions of times. His catalog is preserved in full on FontSpace.

Links

RoleDesigner
LocationSt. Albans, Vermont
Active1990–present
License mixacross 96 families — which way this catalog leans
Freeware 96 · 100%Commercial 0 · 0%Unknown 0 · 0%

Catalog

96 styles · one row per style, current version only.

Tribeca
Tribeca · Display · 1992
Tribeca
Freeware
UpperEastSide
UpperEastSide · Display · 1990
UpperEastSide
Freeware
Beffle
Beffle · Display · 1991
Beffle
Freeware