SPECIMEN N°. 003 · WHEELHOUSE TYPE COMMUNITY · APR 14 2020

NINETEENNINETY‑SIX

a working serif drawn from memory · 14 weights forthcoming, 4 ready, 2 sleeping

A NOTE FROM THE DRAWING TABLE

Hi everyone in #type-club. I have been making a typeface in the afternoons while the second loaf proofs. The starter is named Doris now; she has opinions.

I started Ninety‑Six on the Tuesday after the trampoline park closed. I wanted a face that felt like a sweatshirt I had in fourth grade — heathered, a little big in the shoulders, smelling faintly of the school cafeteria's apple crisp.

It is a soft serif. The terminals droop a half‑degree on purpose. I am sorry / not sorry about the italics; they lean the way you lean when a parent is hugging you and you don't yet want them to stop.

SPECIFICATIONS

Designer: Hollis Brennan (server tag: @hollis‑in‑a‑cardigan)

Begun: 17 March 2020, kitchen, Portland OR

Weights: Thin · Regular · Italic · Heavy · Stencil (sleeping)

Glyphs drawn: 312 of 528

License: a postcard mailed to my parents' house, OR a recipe for something autumn.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1996 · & · ? · ! · ¶
72 PT · ITALIC HEAVY
a soft year, remembered.
36 PT · REGULAR
The juice boxes sweated through the sleeve of my coat.
18 PT · ITALIC
The leaves were so loud that October that you could hear them from inside the station wagon with the windows up and the radio playing the soft hits station, which was the only station my mother liked, and which I now love, because of her, and because.
12 PT · CAPTION
Notes on the lowercase g: I gave it the descender of a kid swinging her feet under the booth at the diner where my dad let us order grilled cheese for breakfast on the morning of the spelling bee. The double‑story is too much for a face this tender; the single‑story carries grief with both hands. — H.B., 3 April 2020, between proofs.

★ THE YEAR ITSELF, FROM INSIDE ★

It is October and my mother is making applesauce on the stove with the cinnamon stick that she will save in a jelly jar afterwards because you can use them twice, Hollis, they have more in them. The phone in the kitchen has a cord long enough to walk into the pantry with. My sister is on it, talking to Megan about the dance, and I am pretending to read the cereal box.

There is a Tuesday next week that has not happened yet but already feels important. We will go to the orchard. There will be a hayride. I will wear the sweater with the pumpkin on it for the last time before I outgrow it. I do not know this is the last time. Nothing tells you it is the last time. That's the whole bargain.

The Macintosh in the den makes a sound like a small animal clearing its throat. The modem is the long song. I am waiting for a website about manatees to load and it is taking forever, which is the best word I know this year.

★ Process notes & thank‑yous (open me) ★
  • The lowercase e went through eleven drafts. Eleven. Doris (starter) was witness.
  • Thank you to Marisol in #crit for telling me the stem on the capital R was “trying too hard to be brave.” She was right. I softened it.
  • Thank you to Petey for the lockdown sourdough that became my third meal and second therapist.
  • Thank you to whoever posted that scan of the 1973 J.C. Whitney auto‑parts catalog — the headline weights in there are the reason this whole thing has a face.
  • The italic angle is 7.5°, which is the angle of my fourth‑grade school photo, taken just after Mrs. Eldredge asked me to please sit up straight.

♥ The Specimen Poster — Mail‑Order Form ♥

RISO‑PRINTED · TWO COLORS · ON THE GOOD PAPER · FORTY OF THEM EXIST

Dear Hollis,

My name is , and I am writing to you from the kitchen / porch / closet of . I have been keeping alive, mostly, and it is going .

I would like one Ninety‑Six specimen poster. I am sending you, in exchange, . I hope this is okay. I hope you are okay.

The thing I miss most this week is . I wanted to tell someone and you seemed like a someone.

Warmly & in advance,
— a friend you don't know yet

(it goes in the little tin by the door — checked Tuesdays)
P.S.None of this is true. I was born in 1999. I do not have a sister. The sweater with the pumpkin on it belonged to a kid in a picture I found at an estate sale in Hillsboro for two dollars, and her name was almost certainly not Hollis. I am sorry. I am not sorry. 1996 is a way of feeling, not a year I went to. The typeface is real, though. The typeface is the only thing in this whole sheet I can prove.