Sweet Bastard

The unholy love child of several calligraphic scripts, Sweet Bastard is a display typeface perfect for any project needing some gothic flair.

About the Project

After graduating from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in 2022 with an M.A. in graphic design, I started exploring calligraphy as a way to practice drawing letterforms and create art that differed from my digital and typographic work.

As I was exploring and learning different historical scripts, I felt the desire to develop a unique personal hand—a signature script of my own invention. Originally, it was intended to be a written-only script that I would use for personal calligraphy projects. But as I started developing letterforms and working on creating a cohesive character set, I felt there was potential to create something unique—a typeface drawn from historical reference, but different enough to stand on its own.

The Design Process

Primarily drawing on Edward Johnston's Foundational Hand, formal italic, and blackletter fraktur as references, I loosely sketched a set of initial characters, gave it a second pass, then drew the final character set on a grid with as much fidelity as possible.

My idea was validated when I visited the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography in NYC—a fantastic archive of type and lettering that is free to the public (by appointment).

When I showed my sketches to the curator, Alexander Tochilovsky, and asked if he had any references for my project, he apologized, “I’m sorry, Eric, I don't have anything. This is different from any style I'm familiar with.” Though he seemed disappointed that he couldn't give me anything, it was actually an incredible moment for me because it confirmed I had something uniquely valuable on my hands.

Over the course of many months, I traced, refined, and finished the font in Glyphs, testing it extensively and paying particularly close attention to spacing and kerning. I'm proud of the result, and I've already seen it used in projects including a deck of illustrated playing cards and an indie comic book!

Donation-Based Licensing

I've chosen to make this font donation-based so that it is accessible for anyone who wants to use it in a project, especially DIY or self-directed work. I only ask that if you use the font for a project, please send me photos so I can share them!