Joshua Darden facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Joshua Darden
Born	(1979-01-02) 2 January 1979 (age 46) Los Angeles, California, US
Known for	Type design
Awards	Print's New Visual Artists 2006

Joshua Darden was born in 1979 in Los Angeles, California. He is an American typeface designer. A typeface designer creates the unique look of letters, numbers, and symbols. These designs are called fonts.

Joshua Darden published his first font when he was only 15 years old. This made him the first known African-American typeface designer.

Joshua Darden's Design Career

Joshua Darden started his design journey early. In 1993, he and his friend Timothy Glaser created The Scanjam Design Company. This company designed different things, including fonts.

Early Font Designs

Scanjam made several popular font families. These included Diva, Interact, and Index. The Index font even won an award from Macromedia. These fonts were sold through a company called GarageFonts.

Working at Hoefler Type Foundry

In 2000, Joshua Darden started working for The Hoefler Type Foundry. He began as a freelancer, then became a full-time employee in 2001. This was a big step in his career.

Starting Darden Studio

After a few years, Joshua Darden decided to open his own company. In 2004, he started Darden Studio in Brooklyn. This is where he creates and sells his unique font designs.

Famous Font Designs

One of his most famous creations is Freight. This is a very large collection of 120 fonts. It has five different styles, like Freight Big and Freight Sans. Typographica magazine called it a "Favorite Typeface of 2005." Many magazines and websites have used Freight.

Another very popular font is Omnes. It is Darden Studio's best-selling font. Big companies like AT&T, Crayola, and Fanta have used Omnes.

Joshua Darden also designed Jubilat. This font became well-known for being used in Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

Awards and Recognition

In 2006, Print magazine named Joshua Darden one of their "New Visual Artists." This award goes to 20 talented designers under 30 each year. He even helped choose the winners for this award in 2010.

Darden Studio's Future

In 2019, Joshua Darden sold Darden Studio to Joyce Ketterer. She had worked at the company for 13 years. The company still uses his name and continues to release his font designs.

Teaching and Sharing Knowledge

Joshua Darden also enjoys sharing his knowledge about design. He has given talks at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has also been on panels at big design conferences like TypeCon.

He has visited the Rhode Island School of Design to give advice to students. He also taught classes on how to design and use fonts at Parsons School of Design.

Joshua Darden's Typefaces

Here are some of the typefaces Joshua Darden has designed: