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This is a cute story about a mother and her son. :)
About a decade ago my own mother got very interested in my work. She used to say my letters had so many swirls and dazzling swashes, and suggested my job seemed to be very fun. She wondered if she could ever try to make her own alphabet... Well, she is a civil engineer and a maths teacher, and appeared to be a little tired of exact sciences...
I remember answering this, while she was listening with her typical tender look: -"Mamá... While type-design may be a really enjoyable thing to do, it also involves having a great eye and knowledge about the history of letters: nice curves and shapes require a meticulous study and, like it happens in many fields, practice makes perfect"-. Well, she raised her eyebrows at me. -"and so what?"-
She didn't have any experience neither in the field of art nor in the field of graphic design so, I told her that if she really wanted to get into this she should borrow some of my calligraphic books from my beloved shelves in my office. So... she did.
Some weeks after that, she came to me with many sketches made with pencils and markers: some letters where very nice and unique while others naturally needed some work. I remember she added ball terminals to all of her letters (even if they didn't need them) because that was one of the rules she imposed.
After some back and forth, we had the basis for what would be today, ten years later, the seed of this lovely font Girasol.
Her proposal was nice, something I was not accustomed to do, that’s why many years later I decided to watch it with fresh new eyes and finished it.
While she was in charge of making the lowercase letters, I helped with the uppercase and also added my hallmark in the alternates, already seen in others of my expressive fonts.
The result is an upright decorative font that follows the behavior of the copperplate nib with a naive touch that makes it really cute and useful for a wide range of products.
Many alternates per glyph make Girasol a very fun to use font which will delight you. Above posters are a proof of that!
This font is a gift for my mother, Susana, who, in spite of her exacts academic background, taught me that beauty can also be found in the imperfect.