10 Beautiful Hand Lettered Fonts from the amazing Font Designer, Emily Spadoni.

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Hi guys! I’m so excited today to share these amazing hand-lettered fonts from Emily Spadoni!  She is an AMAZING font designer and I’m so thankful to have gotten to know her and to be able to share these fonts with you!  I’ll be showing you the fonts throughout her fun and incredible story of how she became a font designer.

This post may contain affiliate links.  See my full disclosure here.

I know you are going to enjoy hearing her story!

Hi. I’m Emily, people call me Em. I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. I live in an adorable off-white house, with wild-flowered window boxesjust south of Boston. I drool over everything turquoise.

At thirty-something, (although I still feel like I’m a kid) I didn’t have computer courses in school. We didn’t have cell phones, email,internet, or “smart” anything. After school we rode bikes, played “pretend”, and laughed for hours over “Mad-libs” on the swings.

Needless to say, never in a million years did I imagine myself sitting, working in front of a computer screen, or even a job that required me to sit at all. (But, we’ll get back to that…)

I come from a family of antique and salvage dealers (borderline hoarders, really), artisans, and toolmakers. You’ll often find me digging through junk in the basement of my family’s jewelry factory knee-deep in a scrap bin of wire or old machine parts, tinkering with anything rusty, working in my garden, crafting a hand-made paper tile floor, or re-furbishing something in my (adorable off-white) house. I collect old tools, hardware, antique beads and buttons, and floral print clogs. I love to take things apart. Sometimes just to see how something was constructed, sometimes just to keep the parts for later. I love, love, love building lights. Light is so functional! Mingling found objects, old junk, tiny brass parts, crystal garland, and electricity – I’m in heaven.

With a blood line of creatives, I knew even before the cord was cut I wanted to be an artist. My mom, a seamstress and decorative painter, was always very crafty. (she’s an art supply hoarder by the way) I had no idea how lucky I was to grow up buried in fabric, paint, beads and stuff, (lots and lots of “stuff”) to fuel my creativity. By the time I reached my senior year in high school, I had finished all of my requirements and had my schedule down to 6 Art courses and 1 English course (apparently I had to take English in order to graduate). I just wanted to “make things”. Of course, that’s just another way of saying “I really don’t care if I ever have a lot of money”. Like many artists, I think we were born not only with the ability to create, or an aesthetic eye, but maybe a little O.C.D. We know just how we want things to look, to function, to feel, and sometimes you just have to do it yourself. We have a certain desire; expectation for perfection, always a work-in-progress.

So, off to school I went. I studied pre-college and college at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), and earned an additional degree in Fine Woodworking & Furniture Design from the Worcester Center for Professional Crafts. They wanted me to focus, “choose a major”? But I just wanted to make things. I was lost. I really didn’t have a plan, although I wouldn’t have admitted it then. I ended up working restaurant jobs, and eventually took a booking keeping job in our factory. Ughhh.

Enough rambling.

If you haven’t already guessed, I am a die-hard font addict. I dabbled in 3-dimensioal paper-crafts for a little bit, designed papercoordinates, stationery, logos, and collected fonts. (I’m ashamed to say I may have used Papyrus once or twice) Bored one snowy Sunday afternoon, I thought, “how the heck do they make those things?” “Where do fonts come from?” “Somebody really makes those things?” A little web search for tutorials and some free-software later. . .

Much to my surprise, I had been glued to my computer for hours! Whaaat? I hated computers. Ha! Joke was on me. I was hooked.

Learning to draw with my mouse was tedious and tiring. I loved every second of it! It took me about a month to get through 52 letters, 10 numbers and some miscellaneous punctuation that only sort-of fit together as a font. Then I made another, and another. Eventually, my contour lines got cleaner and letter shapes became character sets. With a loan from my parents, I updated my software, added more characters, more swirls, made a few images to show them off, took a giant risk, and submitted them to a free-fonts website. People were actually downloading my fonts! I even started receiving emails regarding their use. (Until now, I had only 2 contacts – Mom and Dad)

People actually wanted to pay for commercial use of my fonts. Eeeeek! So exciting. I asked for $5 bucks and they paid me. Sweeeeet!

Eventually, messy sketches became stylish hand-lettering, print transformed to cursive, and shapes turned in to swirly feminine fonts.

“Sweet Type” (perfect, right?) was founded. I feel so lucky every waking moment that I have found a niche (and income!) in font creation. Not to mention, invaluable friendships around the world.

I absolutely love to see my fonts in action, please drop me a line with your projects. After all, it’s your artwork that help make me and my fonts look so good! In my continued endeavor to create unique quality fonts, I welcome ideas and comments that nurture my improvement. I’m truly thankful every day for my customers and colleagues who have made my first year of font creation so exciting.

Two places you can always find me:

Creative Market – Emily Spadoni

Etsy – Sweet Type Design

Isn’t she AMAZEBALLS?  I’m totally in LOVE with Emily and her fonts.  She sent me several before the holidays and I use them all the time.

Which is your favorite?  Go get it right now and support this amazing artist!

xoxo

Gwen

P.S. Please help me spread the word about the fun and talented Emily and her amazing fonts by sharing this post on Facebook and Pinterest! This girl is the real deal!