The Graphite® font family is another of the many fonts that is based on an actual person’s handwriting. Designer David Siegel was interested in creating a font based on the “chiseled pencil” look of an architect’s handwriting and decided on the styling of renowned San Francisco architect Anthony Celis LaRosa. He deliberately gave it a weight and axes width that would allow a breadth of variations from Light Condensed to Black Extended with ease. It lends itself well to situations that require an informal type style.
Graphite History
Web designer David Siegel and font designer Tom Rickner collaborated with Font Bureau founder David Berlow to create the script Graphite font family at the Font Bureau for Adobe in the early 1990s. In part inspired by Tekton®’s look of the “pen and ink” interpretation of an architect’s handwriting, the name of the font calls attention to the penciled handwriting style that the font is based on.
References:
Linotype: Graphite
Graphite Usage
In manufacturing, all Hewlett Packard jet-printers have the Graphite font as part of their standard font package.
In the entertainment world, the Graphite font is often used to represent comic book type fonts, such as when it was used with the fonts Comic Sans™ and Jim Lee™ for the DVD cover for the movie American Splendor (based on an autobiographical comic book). In addition, the font is used for the title cards for the animated television show Phineas and Ferb.
In architecture the font is often used, along with Blueprint®, for the printing on the actual blueprints. This is somehow appropriate considering the font is based on the handwriting of an architect.
