Tom Cruise's character in Cocktail makes a Screaming Orgasm. Does he expect to collect royalties from that drink for the rest of his life? Hell no. He goes down the bar and serves the next drunken frat boy. And he knows that if he does his job well with flash and charm, the tips will be there to reward him for future drinks. He'll get the chicks, too.

I think the same principle applies to type design. I feel that each time I make a font, I get a little better at it. I am rewarded by the creative process. So I'm not gonna worry too much about the fonts I've made in the past. 'Cuz I wanna make new, better alphabets. And I know that if I get a reputation as the maker of the best new free fonts on the Web, I may be rewarded in the future when I land a fancy pants advertising agency gig for a client like Ocean Spray who can afford to pay me six grand to make a custom font for them. Hopefully I'll get the chicks, too.

I also believe in karma. I know what it's like to be a poor college design student jonesing for fonts. And I think I'm generating lots of good will for myself by giving something to these type-hungry little bastards.

As for the designer and foundry-owner who busted me for incorporating their work into my own... if they had approved of my appropriation I might be writing about what a powerful influence they were during my early career. Instead, I'll just leave these font-killing wankers un-named, and hope that they are reincarnated as a Hyundai and a toilet seat respectively.

There will inevitably be people who are so brash as to steal a font design to the best of their technological ability, and try to re-sell it under a new name so that they can make a little cash — with no interest in typographic evolution. They are font thieves. But they're certainly not creating any good will for themselves. Phone calls from irate font designers may not lead to any lawsuits, but I'm sure that kind of thing takes a toll on the font thieves' capitalist spirits. And there's also the possibility that a poor type designer who can't afford a lawyer might throw a brick through the money-grubbing font thieves car windshield.

These are the kinds of thoughts that make me feel warm inside.

To prove that I'll stand by my word, I'm delivering to you, dear reader, something that I stole from myself. When I saw my Orbital font displayed at the Exploding Font Company Web page, I couldn't help but think how easy it would be to steal it. So I saved the gif and cropped it like this:



I opened it up in Photoshop and ran it through some filters. Then I followed the steps I laid out in my column on how to make a font to create the new derived version:



Here's the old font and the new one side by side:


This new font, Brieincarnation, is a bit bolder and a bit narrower. It's also a bit more "organic" and less rigidly geometric. According to my contract with the Exploding Font Company, they can take legal actions against me for what I've done. They can sue me for ripping myself off. Pretty weird, eh? Luckily I'm on good terms with the President of Explofontco, and he wouldn't have a case because I didn't touch any of Orbital's computer code in the creation of the new font.

It's about giving. I give you this font. I give myself credit for inspiring it. And, I guess I give The Exploding Font Company some publicity in the process.