Artist Shantell Martin has been catching peoplesโ eyes for more than a decade with her large-scale black-and-white drawings. They simply canโt be ignored! Often times they include messages and questions โ such as โWho are Youโ โ in Martinโs signature all-caps handwriting. Now, with the open source release of Shantell Sans, everyone has access to this bold, playful, easy-to-read font!
The marker-style font was built for all types of creative expression by Martin, Arrow Type, and Anya Danilova. They made sure to include Latin and Cyrillic characters to support languages throughout the Americas, Europe, Central Asia, and Vietnam. Shantell Sans can be adjusted by weight, spacing, informality, bounce, and italics. Itโs also worth mentioning that its all-caps design is especially easy to read.
Martinโs relationship with fonts and type go way back because she lives life as a proud dyslexic. โI always wanted to reclaim that space due to my dyslexia, and defeat my past challenges. The creation of my own font was an innate process and an extension of my artwork, and something I always wanted to do,โ she said. โI think fonts can really change the mood of a person in the way that they can be dense and limiting, or, on another hand, open and playful. I think we do pick up on these subtle messages on a subconscious level. I wanted to share my work in a new, exciting medium accessible to anyone.โ
Fun, welcoming, energetic, approachable, and creative are just a few of the words Brooklyn-based Arrow Typeโs Stephen Nixon used to describe Shantell Sans. โThe variable axes of bounce, informality, and spacing take the basic font and add in more of the natural variance and personality from Shantellโs writing, and I especially hope to see people find uses for those in animated text in video titles and stuff,โ he shared. โShantell Sans is a little bit like an elevated, less stiff Comic Sans. Itโs also a little bit soft and inky like Cooper Black or Windsor.โ
Download Shantell Sans for free here.
To learn more about the making of Shantell Sans, visit shantellsans.com.
Itโs a new month, so itโs time to refresh your laptops and screens with our latest Designer Desktop! This monthโs artwork is by Mario De Meyer, a graphic designer and artist from Ghent, Belgium best known for his typography-based artworks. He has worked with clients including Adobe, Speedo, Penguin Books, Bloomberg, Fortune, Inc., Ogilvy & Mather, IBM, Wired, Henkel, and more.
De Meyer also experiments with abstract creations, one of which turned into this monthโs trippy and eye-catching desktop wallpaper. Download it below for all your tech devices!
DESKTOP: 1024ร768 \\\ 1280ร1024 \\\ 1680ร1050 \\\ 1900ร1200 \\\ 2560ร1440
MOBILE: iPhone XS \\\ iPhone XS Max \\\ iPad Pro
Learn more about Mario De Meyerย hereย and follow him on IG here and here.
View and download past Designer Desktopsย here.