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aces we live and how they shape us i decided to get this up if you re here for design and type there are many stories that relate i made rubber address stamps for the three apartments i shared with my wife maria zizka you ll see them below along with some photographs 1 silver lake ca photograph graham bradley moving in the first place i lived that was just mine was a sunny studio on the edge of a courtyard on a dead end street at the top of a hill in silver lake i had very few belongings my wife teases that i kept one belt spread all the way out on the top of a cabinet because i had nothing else to put there the night i moved in i realized the apartment was full of fleas from the previous occupants cat after a frustrating week it got sorted out just over the tops of the hills was a beautiful view of the downtown la skyline the routine i commuted to work cooked dinner at night and ran around the reservoir or played volleyball with my brother on the weekends i did my grocery shopping at trader joe s and cooked a lot of beans and tortillas the kitchen had a nook with a table and built in benches a detail that felt very romantic and very la design i worked as a graphic designer at a small place in hollywood i very much wanted to be a type designer but i didn t even really know what that meant yet the people i worked with were spontaneous at one point my boss offered me the full set of pantone books from the office because he had ordered new ones i was too scared to say yes because i knew they were valuable at the time to me very valuable and i didn t want to overstep plus i got the sense that things were not above board in the office i was right it turned out one of the staff members was embezzling funds from the business even so i still regret not taking those pantone books home with me the magic when it s hot and everything is quiet and dry there s a special thing that happens in los angeles in old apartments you look absentmindedly across the room at a drawing table or a guitar that s leaning against the corner where the walls meet and this gold dust just rises off the floor and sits in the air time kind of slows down and stops for a second the tiny remnants of an old building lit up in the day s last rays of summer sun moving out this apartment was the one that got away i hardly lived there because i was accepted into type cooper 2 crown heights ny photograph graham bradley moving in i loved living by myself in silver lake and all of a sudden i was sharing a small apartment with three other people and two crazy cats one of the cats would consistently defecate on the floor i had this tiny room you could barely call it a room and at first the neighborhood seemed so cold and uninviting i didn t really have any friends in new york at first once type cooper started i met some new people and i had something i could pour myself into and that helped a lot the routine i worked at a letterpress shop half the time designing for clients and the other half doing mundane tasks like sitting at the foil stamping press cranking out two up business cards for many hours straight but god i loved type cooper i would sprint across town after work to make it to class and after class i would wander home dreaming about type totally cliche but true on the weekends i would run around prospect park go to the farmers market and lie on my bed in my tiny room working on typefaces design when i installed fontlab and opened it up i honestly felt so at home type designers will understand why this is amusing at the time fontlab felt like stepping backwards into a clunkier and much more opaque form of software but the concepts processes and tools of type design just made sense to me and as someone who didn t attend design school and struggled to find a place under the graphic design umbrella the experience of finally feeling like i had arrived where i was supposed to be was very meaningful the magic this year in new york was such a formative time for me but it was difficult i missed my girlfriend and i missed home but some of the moments i remember very fondly in hindsight walking through the met late on friday evenings and taking pictures of everything stumbling upon amazing block after amazing block of new york city for the very first time the classroom behind the clock in the old cooper union building raised eyebrows and helpful hands from new yorkers as i carried a very heavy air conditioner many blocks onto the subway and then many more blocks to my apartment i love prospect park so much it snowed very early in the year just after i moved in walking around the park watching snow falling from the sky for the first time in my life was a glorious thing moving out maria and i started dating in college and the whole idea to apply to type cooper came about because maria had applied and was accepted to the masters program at unisg in italy i ve always been chasing her and trying to keep up with her brilliance i wrote her letters the whole year long after we both completed our programs we searched around for someone who needed a car driven across the country maria flew from italy to new york and we drove back to california 3 santa monica ca photograph graham bradley moving in maria and i found a tiny cottage behind a house four blocks from the beach and it was ridiculously cheap even so the owner was very skeptical that we could make rent somehow maria convinced her to give us a shot we couldn t believe it we were thrilled and nervous to be moving in together suddenly my cast iron skillet and her cast iron skillet just became our skillets the routine in santa monica i worked for myself as did maria so we lived a dreamy life that did not involve commuting i woke up early played volleyball or surfed then came home and started on whatever project most urgently needed attention maria and i often went on a walk before dinner to this day i m still striving to re create our life by the beach design this time period in my work life was defined by big celebratory moments like landing my first typeface commissions which didn t pay much and an underlying constant worry about our financial situation our landlord was somewhat correct making rent each month was not easy but we did it every wednesday maria and i would each get a twenty dollar bill from the atm and then we d head to the farmers market together and that was most of our budget for a week of groceries all in all it was amazing to pay the bills while working on my own projects i took on any design related work that came along with the occasional typeface i created logos for pilates studios websites for preschools and more websites for authors teachers and musicians lots of websites the magic this was an amazing time for maria and i we were finally reunited after school and we were living together with very few responsibilities and very low expenses we used this time really well honestly i can still picture my wetsuit hanging to dry on the tree out front and i can still remember the exact smells the carpet a candle and a salty breeze coming in the window of my late night work sessions spent lying on the floor with my little laptop moving out tobias frere jones posted a job listing i took a few days off from work on other projects to put an application together the whole time i thought it was stupid that i would never get the job and there was other work i should be doing then i got it it was bittersweet i was so excited to be heading back to new york for something amazing but i remember coming back home from surfing board in hand seeing our tiny cottage maria working at our one table and just breaking tears streaming down my face i cry a lot though so this is less dramatic than it sounds 4 windsor terrace ny photograph graham bradley moving in this was a tough move new york in march can be gray and gloomy and maria had just begun work on the sqirl cookbook everything i want to eat so she wasn t able to join me for a couple months i sublet a room in south slope from a performance artist whose work centered on bondage after living in a place that maria and i turned into a home together it felt like a step backwards to live in someone else s space apartment hunting was tremendously discouraging but after so many dead ends i put a deposit down and moved into what would be our brooklyn apartment i spent a weekend scrubbing off grime and when i finally stepped out into prospect park at sunset things had turned a corner i passed these months by starting to work in secret with a friend who also happens to be an amazing jeweler on an engagement ring eventually i picked maria up from the airport and we had a beer at the double windsor our local bar the routine new york this time around was the dream even after the difficulties of the move i would wake up sometimes early enough to run the prospect park loop then on a good day maria and i would walk outside together sometimes grabbing a coffee from colson or an apple cider donut from the farmers market on the way to work halfway to the frere jones office i would say goodbye to maria and she would head back home to write i would work on type all day i mostly packed a lunch and would eat it outside if it wasn t stormy we burned the midnight oil regularly but if i was out at a reasonable hour maria and i would sometimes have a picnic in the park or meet friends for dinner design beginning work with tobias was scary and exciting for a good while it was just the two of us in the office within a week i realized that i was going to deliver with many rounds of visual feedback of course production ready work that would go directly into fonts without anyone more senior opening up the glyphs in robofont at the time this blew my mind i held tobias s work in such regard and this realization made for a weighty sense of responsibility i worked so hard not just on the fonts themselves but on trying to see with my own eyes what tobias could see i d come in early to look at all the old specimen books while no one else was in the office being surrounded by all that source material was incredible the magic new york is a magical city but the first time i lived there i was focused on school and i was lonely this time i did it right well maria did it right and therefore i was able to be inside her sparkling aura i dream about these days all the time wandering manhattan on a lazy saturday morning sitting by our fireplace while snow was falling laughing with friends over pizza at lucali s knowing each curve and hill of prospect park and watching it change through all the seasons even the idea of locking up the office and heading home in the snow after midnight makes me smile now moving out maria and i always knew we wanted to live in berkeley we had a chance to work together on maria s first solo cookbook and we also were engaged so we decided to head back to california to start the next phase of our life together i haven t talked about this much but i also had kind of burned out a little on type design doing production work on sans serifs for a couple years can do that to you i thought i d look for a more general design job in tech as i worked on maria s cookbook and continue designing type on the side for a moment 5 berkeley ca photograph graham bradley moving in maria and i found an apartment over a garage in the berkeley hills it used to be a painting studio and it was just one big open room with a loft it was so nice to be back in california amongst the redwoods and hippie bakeries it felt like we came home the routine our life these days was immersive and deliberate we would wake up make breakfast work eat lunch outside on our stairs work more and then eat dinner outside on our stairs almost meditative very rejuvenating i would head into san francisco once or twice a week to teach or go to a meeting and the weekends were spent doing the same thing with a bit of reading interspersed throughout the day design the plan to find a more general design job did not work i realized type was my thing and i decided to stick to it i did pick up the kind of type forward identity design that i was doing before frere jones and i realized how much i missed it i also started teaching at type west and made so many friends through letterform archive i began a long running collaboration with jeremy mickel who i ve now worked with on many projects over many years our work together has been a complement to my time at frere jones i ve developed new and different skills and become a more well rounded type designer the seed for a was planted during these years as i began publishing my own typefaces thank you future fonts the magic i love berkeley so much it s definitely my home now even though i did not grow up here the geography of the bay area is really special and even though i m a native of sunnier lands i love the sight of the fog rolling over san francisco and heading toward the east bay there s a way of reading cookbooks shopping for groceries making meals and hosting friends that is very particular to berkeley and has been at the center of my life with maria since we were in college our little studio glowing with light and full of quiet laughter friends and salads it s just the best it s home moving out i ll always remember the amazing salad with steak and cherries that we ate on our steps the deer that would wander up our street the enormous tree maria decided had to come home with us for christmas a day came when it was time to say goodbye to our berkeley apartment it came along with sadness and joy and fear and love and it marked the start of something new recipe of the month is a reader supported publication to receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber subscribe 4 2 share a guest post by graham bradley graham bradley is a typeface designer and the owner of a plus type inc creating connection one jar of pesto at a time maddie kirkby jun 19 2026 2 share happy juneteenth as we head into summer a busy season filled with camping trips backyard cookouts wedding shenanigans and swimming lessons i ve been thinking a lot about how to be an intentional participant in my community these days modern technology allows us to streamline everyday tasks effectively eliminating moments of human interaction we can easily order groceries from our smart phones and get dinner delivered to our doorsteps without talking to a single person it s super convenient so it s no wonder that when life gets busy we tend to lean into these frictionless ways of getting our day to day tasks accomplished between our work and extracurricular activities an extracurricular activity photograph maddie kirkby don t get me wrong there are moments when these new technologies are incredibly useful we ordered dinner delivered via doordash the night before our wedding weekend kicked off and it was fantastic however leaning too heavily on them doesn t help us out when it comes to making connections with the 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