Making Type: Amy Hood of Hoodzpah

I am beyond stoked to have our next installment of Making Type with Amy Hood. I’m unabashedly a fanboy of Hoodzpah and will not stop buying their merch. I’m talking bumper sticker on my car, poster on my office wall, mug for my coffee, hat on my head... you get the picture.

Sister duo Amy & Jen and their team at Hoodzpah have been making some of the most kick-ass design work around AND they happen to design delightful typefaces. A few years back I fell down a rabbit hole on a personal project and ended up buying their mega bundle of fonts (I couldn’t help it!). I was so so glad when they also became available on Adobe Fonts.

Here’s Amy on her type journey, influences, and life beyond the screen—

What was the initial spark that got you into type?

I was always the go-to kid in class who could do amazing lettering. You know at the beginning of the school year when you’d put your nametag on your desk or your paper covered books? Everyone would ask me to do theirs. It was social currency! Even having braces for 5 years, I had a place in the ecosystem thanks to my artistic skills. Flash forward to the early years of running our brand studio, Hoodzpah, and I was constantly hunting for fonts but not quite finding what I needed. So I started Frankensteining fonts. Adding serifs, making custom ligatures, drawing my own lettering and live tracing. Eventually it led to fully custom wordmarks and that became the thing most of our brand clients come to us for. 

How does your client work influence how you approach making fonts?

I think being a designer who is also a type designer is a super power. Because you don’t think about type in a vacuum, you actually know the applications and needs innately from your daily design practice. So I’m acutely aware of when there’s a gap for a new font, because I spent hours searching for it and not finding it. That’s the most amazing thing about type design. Even though fonts are more ubiquitous than ever, there’s still room for more. And for nuance. That doesn’t stop me from having my annual, “do we really need any more fonts” crisis of self. lol.

A lot of your fonts have a very SoCal vibe, do you find inspiration in your surroundings?

Always! I love going to Palm Springs and seeing all the Midcentury goodness. And all the historic signage on Sunset and Fairfax in LA, or Sunset Beach, and these other communities. Southern California is such a melting pot, so I find it an endless source of inspiration. 

You’ve been live-streaming some of your font making process, which is very fun to watch along. How do you know when to draw the line and call it ‘finished’ vs keeping tweaking?

That is always the issue! As soon as I think I'm done and I've done language support and all the tedious punctuation, I inevitably get struck with all these ideas for extra ligatures, and “hey, what if I add a full extra style set?” At some point I just have to set a deadline for myself and announce it publicly to stop the madness and just finish. Every font hits that stage where it could be a million different things. It's a super power to commit to a direction and save all your other great ideas for the next font. 

Congrats on the recent collab app with Fort foundry offering both of y’alls fonts. Can you give us any hints as to what new fonts you have in the works? 

I’m going to be going hard on script typefaces this year! 2 new scripts will be coming, plus a super fun personality rich sans that has the vibe of midcentury Italy. We love it so much we already used it on the cover of our book, Freelance and Business and Stuff! You know you're on the right track when you're already using your own fonts.  

I’ve loved watching Hood Fonts grow and feel like I keep spotting your fonts in use. Do you get excited finding them out in the wild?

It is TRULY the greatest thrill! I love seeing how people apply them and customize them. It's a bit of stolen valor, because I feel in some way I had a part in the beautiful designs they made, even though they did all the heavy lifting. But I always feel proud when I see them out. 

How do you stay creatively satisfied?

I think the key to creative satisfaction is having a rich life outside of making. Filling yourself up with friends, and experiences, and taking in new culture and having hobbies you're not good at. All those things help keep you grounded. And always taking time to celebrate the wins. It’s easy to just go and go and go and then start to feel burnt out. Celebrate that font release. Celebrate seeing that font in the wild. Celebrate the small progress. It’s part of the fun. 

Thanks again, Amy for taking the time to answer my questions. You can find Hood Fonts on Adobe Fonts at Hoodzpah, and from their website.