The ITC Pino™ typeface family is Slobodan Jelesijevic’s second suite of commercial fonts. Although a small family of three weights, it is remarkably versatile. Like many typefaces, Pino grew out of a desire for a particular kind of design. Jelesijevic was creating a series of illustrations for a children’s magazine and needed a typeface that was lighthearted, legible and would complement his illustrative style. Unable to find exactly what he needed, he decided to make his own font. “I spent the better part of a day looking for just the right typeface,” he recalls. “Of course, the hard part was finding something that would harmonize perfectly with my drawings. A custom font was not part of the project brief or budget, but I thought that perhaps I could use it again.” The regular weight of Pino became the solution to Jelesijevic’s problem.

Jelesijevic did use the font again, but quickly realized that the single weight needed companion designs. Pino Bold and Black followed in quick succession. Before licensing the designs to ITC, the three-weight family provided headlines, book cover titles and even short blocks of text copy in several of Jelesijevic’s design projects.

Born in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia, in 1951, Jelesijevic graduated with a degree in graphic communication and lettering from the Faculty of Applied Arts in the University of Arts in Belgrade. Currently, in addition to typeface design, he is sought out as a graphic designer and illustrator. When not working on design projects, he teaches graphic communications at the Faculty of Art in the University of Niš, Serbia.