This is just his type.
A graphic designer is creating a font inspired by Bushwick, and now he is looking for local backers to kick in a few bucks so he can turn his design into a typable typeface.
“I’m asking the Brooklyn and New York community to pitch in any way they can to celebrate the Bushwick neighborhood through a typeface,” said Pablo Medina, who recently launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise the $7,000 he says he needs to complete his Bushwick font.
Since opening a studio in the neighborhood three years ago, Medina says he has been obsessively photographing writing from signs and murals on neighborhood streets, which he blended into the typeface.
The thick, heavy letters are modeled after graffiti tags around the neighborhood, while the shading is reminiscent of the hand-painted signs of long-standing local businesses — a combination that he says honors both the community’s enduring Latino presence alongside the recent hipster influx.
“There’s a really awesome integration of the immigrant community with the artist community,” said Medina, who has also created fonts inspired by Buenos Aires street art and neon signs in Manhattan. “There’s no real strong wall or strong divide — there’s an overlap.”
The wordsmith has already created all the upper and lower-case letters for Bushwick, but he still has to do the numbers and punctuation, which will take another six months, he said.
So he started the crowd-funding campaign to help cover studio rent and launch the finished product. Fans have already pledged more than $2,500 — mostly graphic designers and art directors who say they’re eager to get their hands on the font and start creating designs that just scream “Bushwick.”
“If there’s something that might be used within a context of something from Bushwick or northern Brooklyn, to evoke that feeling, it would be really great,” said Greenpoint designer Scott Kellum, who donated some cash.
