ITC Panic

ITC Don’t Panic’s distressed shapes and craggy outlines evoke the feeling you get when you’re just barely in control of a situation. This is type design on the edge. ITC Panic is further down the emotional track, when you’ve actually lost control and there is no hope in sight. Thompson says the inspiration for these faces arrived one day in the mail. “I received an envelope that looked like it had a rough trip; the type that was stamped on it had a tired, ragged appearance. Ironically, the haggard envelope woke me up. I got excited and wanted to replicate the look as a font of type.” Thompson designed ITC Don’t Panic, then stood back and looked at it and decided it cried out for a more agitated companion. ITC Don’t Panic gave birth to the positively psychotic offspring, ITC Panic. Both are all-cap designs with alternate characters in the unshift position. Creating an authentically disturbed appearance proved to be a challenge for Thompson. “I tried to design agitated characters, but they looked staged. So I tried multiple photocopies, but that didn’t work. Eventually, I laser-printed the basic characters, wadded up the lasers, then flattened them out and stomped on them with heavy boots. The end result was scanned and used as the basis for the rest of the design.” Thompson’s work on web sites and multimedia has influenced his interest in type and typography that transcends the cool, unemotional nature of the computer.