Education and experience

Professional work and teaching

I serve as Senior Type Designer and Technical Director with SIL International as part of the Writing Systems Technology team. I began my work with SIL in 1991, in the Printing Arts Department, and have been involved in supporting minority writing system computing since my arrival. Some highlights:

  • Designed original typefaces for minority languages.
  • Managed type development projects and related research.
  • Developed tools for use in font development
  • Trained and mentored designers, both local and remote.
  • Occasional consultant to major companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Google.
  • Founding Editor of ScriptSource.
  • Co-author of the SIL Open Font License.
  • Served as the Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) Director (2011-2015).

I also teach MA Typeface Design students at the University of Reading as an Associate Lecturer, giving individual feedback and lectures in italics, extended Latin, diacritics, font production and Cyrillic design.

For a more detailed CV keep reading…

Education

PhD (Typography & Graphic Communication)
University of Reading, England

MA Typeface Design (with Distinction)
University of Reading, England

BA Liberal Arts (Mathematics and Music)
St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA

Honours

Andika tops the list of fonts recommended in USAID’s Best Practices For Developing Supplementary Reading Materials

Gentium chosen as one of the designs shown in the Types for the New Century exhibition (Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, London)

Winner in the TDC2 2003 : Type Directors Club type design competition (for Gentium)

Winner in the bukva:raz! ATypI international type design competition (for Gentium)

Memberships

Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI)

Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society (CLAS)

Presentations

‘The italic design process’ ATypI 2020, All Over

‘Seeing italic’ ATypI 2018, Antwerp (workshop)

‘The essential italic’ ATypI 2017, Montréal

‘Extended Latin condensed’ TypeCon 2015, Denver (workshop)

‘Designing Diacritics with FontLab Studio 5’ (webinar)

‘ScriptSource – a collaborative reference to writing systems’ TypeCon 2014, Washington DC

‘Open and collaborative font design in a webfonts world’ ATypI 2013, Amsterdam (presentation and panel moderator)

‘Fonts for every language’ Google corporate event, Mountain View, CA

‘ScriptSource – a collaborative reference to writing systems’ ATypI 2011, Reykjavik

‘The Eternal Word – the sculptural lettering of Arnold Flaten’ ATypI 2010, Dublin

‘Eternal words – the sculptural lettering of Arnold Flaten’ TypeCon 2009, Atlanta

‘Fonts for every language’ ATypI 2008, St Petersburg, Russia

‘Fonts for every language’ International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication, Thessaloniki, Greece

‘Worship type – the sculptured word of Arnold Flaten’ Friends of St Bride Conference, Birmingham, UK

‘Gathering Script Information as Collaborative Community’ ATypI 2006, Lisbon

‘Open font licensing’ ATypI TypeTech Forum, Helsinki

‘Designing typefaces for unrelated scripts’ ATypI 2004, Prague

‘The tenderness of princes being late: the design of Central European diacritics’ ATypI 2004, Prague (with Adam Twardoch)

‘Accents – a visual journey’ ATypI 2003, Vancouver

‘Multitudinous alphabets: the design of extended Latin typefaces’ TypeCon 2003, Minneapolis

‘Multitudinous alphabets: the design of extended Latin typefaces’ ATypI 2002, Rome

Papers and publications

Designing Italics: Approaches to the design of contemporary secondary text typefaces (PhD thesis: University of Reading)

(Editor) Guidelines for writing system support (book: part of UNESCO Project B@bel)

‘Problems of diacritic design for Latin script text faces’ (thesis: University of Reading)

‘The NRSI model for implementing writing systems’, ‘Smart rendering’, ‘An introduction to TrueType fonts’ (chapters for book: Implementing writing systems, SIL International)

‘Multitudinous alphabets: the design of extended Latin typefaces’ (essay: publication pending)

‘The influence of pen-based letterforms on Devanagari typefaces’ (essay)

‘Balancing typeface legibility and economy: practical techniques for the type designer’ (essay)

Online identities

Google Scholar

ORCID 0000-0002-1017-1909

Github jvgaultney

Twitter @jvgtype

Gmail jvgtype