Known for logos like Rolling Stone, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Architectural Digest, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Newsweek (and the list goes on), it seemed completely appropriate that his talk was all show and tell.

Fun fact: Jim only took one class in lettering.

Making his debut in the world of type design:
During a stint in Kansas City working at Hallmark, he got hooked on wood type and when he couldn’t a wood type he liked, Jim would cut it out of linoleum and using an exacto knife and band-aids. Eventually, he became an official type designer at Hallmark under the tutelage of Herman Zapf. When it came time to name the typefaces they designed, Jim said one person would open the dictionary and another person would put their finger down. Wallah.

On the Rolling Stone logo:
Jim’s Rolling Stone logo was going to debut on the tenth anniversary of magazine. Right after they received the delivery of hot off the press magazines he to get a signed copy of the inaugural issue. The signature said, “Thanks for the logo. P.S. Some alterations included.”

What does he have to say about the red bar behind the Newsweek logo? You can slap anything on the cover and don’t have to worry about the logo getting lost.

Jim Parkinson

Jim Parkinson was born in Oakland, California, in 1941. A neighbor who was a commercial artist got him hooked on lettering and he has been puzzling over the alphabet ever since. Today he specializes in custom and retail font design and the design and repair of typographic logos for magazines and newspapers. He has designed exclusive fonts for a number of publishers including Adobe, ITC, AGFA Monotype, Chank, The Font Bureau, and FontFont. He also sells other font designs directly through MyFonts, Fonts.com and FontShop. His work includes logos for Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Los Angeles Magazine, InStyle, the Detroit Free Press, the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. Jim’s font and logo designs can be seen on his web site: typedesign.com. Watch an interview with Jim on the FontFeed.

Speaker page

On being a type designer for the San Francisco Chronicle:
The entire paper is your work. He loved designing type for a newspaper because you spend all day arranging the type in a certain way, go home at night, and the next morning your test is sitting on your driveway.

Designing the logo for Los Angeles:
He sketched over 100 logos and finally told them, “I can do this all day, but if someone doesn’t pull the trigger on one of them, I’m going to flip out.” They replied back. We like #26.

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A neighbor who was a commercial artist got Jim hooked on lettering and he has been puzzling over the alphabet ever since. Today he specializes in custom and retail font design and the design and repair of typographic logos for magazines and newspapers. Jim’s font and logo designs can be seen on his web site: typedesign.com. Watch an interview with Jim on the FontFeed.

— posted by Brooke Francesi