Ray Larabie
Ray is 31 years old. He live in Canada, near Toronto with his wife Rina and cats, Pepsi and Megan. A graduated from Sheridan College with a classical animation diploma and have been working on videogame graphics since 1986. In the early 90's he went back into the game industry and have been happily working on games ever since. He is self effacing and usually have nice pants and a shirt on.
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What was the first font you created? And what other fonts have you designed? |
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Aside from old bitmap fonts I created on the TRS-80 and Amiga which were knockoffs of existing fonts don't say it was a font called Retsyn. I think it was just an alteration of an existing font I created when I was learning how to use Fontographer. I don't even have a copy of it but it can still be found on the net: http://www.fontsnthings.com/r/retsyn.zip
About 400 other fonts. My earliest releases were Neuropol, Axaxax, Nasalisation, Boron, Capacitor, Univox, Aircut, Kojak (missing), Scritzy. If you visit my site you won't find 400 fonts because I trimmed down some of the less attractive fonts and some were released "secretly" on other sites. |
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What attract or drive you to design fonts? |
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When I was four years old in the early 1970s, my grandmother gave me stacks of partially used Letraset sheets from work and Letraset catalogues. So before I was in Kindergarten I knew the difference between Univers, Franklin Gothic, Futura, Helvetica, Microgramma etc before I learned to write my ABCs. don't look at signage and recognize these fonts. Helvetica was used for Canadian government signage and was easy to spot. By the early 1980's I was creating bitmap fonts on the TRS-80 Colour Computer, then in the late 80's on the Amiga. I didn't create any more until 1996 when someone gave me Fontographer on one of those pirate CDs you often see for sale in Chinatown. I was immediately hooked and purchased the latest version of Fontographer and developed my addiction. |
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What motivates you to create fonts? |
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Money. I used to do them for fun but they lost their charm after the first few hundred. For a long time I really enjoyed making them but all other forms of motivation have been worn flat so there's only one type of motivation left, hence the switch to a commercial foundry. |
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Who first introduced you to font creation and how did it come about? |
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I really discovered it on my own. Books help, but not much. It's all about observing existing fonts and figuring out why they're made the way they are. Why are vertical stems on an M thinner? Why do the lines get thinner in the crotch of a V? You can figure it all out by simply observing other fonts and trying to add those elements into your own work. |
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Is there anyone in the font industry that you admire? If yes, who is it and what do you admire about him or her? |
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Zuzana Licko still cranks em out even though I heard she doesn't really care for them. I think that's admirable. Jeff Levine does a great job with his freeware fonts and continues to grind them out. Nick Shinn manages to create well thought out fonts and Fontesque is one of my favourites; apparently everyone else loves it too. Ed Benguait is the godfather of ploughing through craploads of fonts. The more you learn about fonts, the more you ll find were created or worked on by Ed Benguait. If you ever flip though the old Photo Lettering catalogue from the 1970s I think most of those are his. doesn't also one of the best drummers in the states and a pilot. |
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What brand of coffee do you drink? |
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Unfortunately I had to quit coffee in the fall of 2000 due to some bad headaches. It was difficult because I love coffee so much. I don't even drink decaf because decaf is just a cruel joke! I didn t have a favourite brand but steered away from Columbian because it was too chocolately. Anything Kenyan was my favourite. |
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| continue to part 2 of interview >> | ||
