Students of Design

Jen Wagner – Creative Market, Self-Worth, and Font Licensing – Ep41

Episode Summary

Jen is a Nashville-based independent type designer and resource creator for creative business owners. You might be familiar with some of her best-selling typefaces, like Perfectly Nineties, Editor's Note, and Founder's Hand. However, long before her formal education in type design from Type@Cooper, Jen got her start on Creative Market. She created and uploaded font after font, even though she didn't know the rules and guidelines of type design. The best part is IT WORKED, because people bought and used her fonts, and that was enough to inspire her to keep doing it. Surprisingly, Jen only wanted to make enough money to pay her water bill and eat at Chipotle once a week. But now, brands like Sprouts, Victoria's Secret, Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sweetgreen are using her typefaces. She's come a long way from wanting to be an orthopedic surgeon in Colorado; her love for type design has gone from hobby to career, and she's LITERALLY sold a digital product every single day of this year.

Episode Notes

Jen is a Nashville-based independent type designer and resource creator for creative business owners. You might be familiar with some of her best-selling typefaces, like Perfectly Nineties, Editor's Note, and Founder's Hand. However, long before her formal education in type design from Type@Cooper, Jen got her start on Creative Market. She created and uploaded font after font, even though she didn't know the rules and guidelines of type design. The best part is IT WORKED, because people bought and used her fonts, and that was enough to inspire her to keep doing it. Surprisingly, Jen only wanted to make enough money to pay her water bill and eat at Chipotle once a week. But now, brands like Sprouts, Victoria's Secret, Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sweetgreen are using her typefaces. She's come a long way from wanting to be an orthopedic surgeon in Colorado; her love for type design has gone from hobby to career, and she's LITERALLY sold a digital product every single day of this year.

Tune in for a talk about getting started on Creative Market, her struggles with tying her self-worth to her income, and finding the balance between making type that's accessible for everyone and becoming a world-class type foundry. Follow Jen on Instagram @jenwagnertype, and explore her typefaces on her website jenwagner.co. If you sign up for her email list, you'll get 20% off your first order!

Questions for this interview.

• Which of these options do you think affects readability more: a combination of font size, leading, and line length, OR a combination of color, weight, and stroke contrast?
• Jen, who the hell do you think you are, thinking you could get accepted by Type@Cooper with no formal education in graphic design or typography?
• So, if you compare your designs from a few months before and after attending Type@Cooper, how did they change, and how are they better?
• Can you think of something you learned from being a type designer that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise, that is also something you believe every regular-ass graphic designer should know?
• How bad were the first 25 fonts you made and uploaded to Creative Market?
• If you knew just a little more about type design when you were getting started, do you think you would have gotten in your own way and held yourself back from releasing your first 25 fonts?
• What changed with Creative Market around 2021, and why did you feel it was the right time to explore different options?
• How many of the last 30 days would you say someone licensed a typeface or purchased any kind of digital product from you?
• You've struggled with your self-worth. Have you gained enough experience and confidence to grow out of that way of thinking, or do you still find yourself struggling with that perception of yourself?
• How difficult is it to balance making type that’s accessible for independent designers with a desire to be known as a world-class type foundry?
• How often do you design a typeface and think, “This is it,” this one’s gonna be my new best-seller, only to realize, nope, no one’s interested in buying it?
• Can you identify your typefaces immediately when you encounter them in the world? Have you ever come across a typeface you thought was yours but turned out to be someone else’s?