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Tory Lattin

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Aug 2, 2024, 9:54:06 PM8/2/24

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Gooper was drawn in adoration of goopy, swashy, fat faced, tight and touching old style serifs. It sits as a companion to Cooper, Bookman, and dry transfer/photo lettered era display type. This post is a little behind the scenes provided mostly to clarify my intentions to a community that has a long history of rip-offs, homages and revivals.

Cooper Black is remembered for its warmth, not for its old style skeleton. I like to imagine that Cooper was conceived (hang on, let me go read the wikipedia) after Oswald Cooper had the experience of seeing an ugly sign improve as he stepped backward from it.

It's worth pointing out here that (goopy universe aside) Cooper exists within its own subcategory of myriad ripoffs and Cooperish letter products. Iron on lettering, wood bead alphabets, fridge magnet alphabets, and children's foam letters all flesh out the public experience of "Cooper".

I'm not proposing that goop or goopiness is a good typographic description. I am similarly not proposing cooperish is a good pattern we've set for describing things. I'm mostly just shrugging and trying to point out that our own (my own) inability to invent typographic diction is keeping us from non-derivative progress.

Most my type projects start as lettering. I'm not super methodical early on, and tend to draw just one letter at a time as needed. Gooper's earliest drawings were in January 2017 with the title for a half marathon I host with my friends and family each summer.

As of V0.1 the middle three weights are 100% interpolated. It's my first time releasing a font with only two masters. Contrast and stress can get a little boring in the lighter weights when you use interpolation to produce your middle font instances. Usually I generate a regular weight via interpolation, then tweak it as a new middle master. Gooper's extreme differences between light and black provided an interesting challenge for generating non-janky middle interpolations.

Prolific type designer (and UPPERCASE subscriber!) Mark Simonson has released a tour-de-force typographic family. A revival based on Bookman Oldstyle (1901), this Opentype release called Bookmania has a crazy number of alternates and swashes, as witnessed above, as well as weights from light to black plus italics.

Allow me to date myself: The very first "font" I ever purchased was Bookman: the Letraset version! My grandfather had commissioned me to design a logo for a cultural organization. Though desktop publishing was just becoming viable at this point, as a young highschool girl, I didn't have those skills and needed "professional-looking" (at least to my inexperienced eyes) letters for the design. The local art supply store had a wealth of amazing dry transfer letters from which I could choose. I remember standing there for quite some time before I settled upon Bookman. Drawn to its pretty capitals and classic looks, I paid a huge sum ($25?) for one sheet of letters. Next time I'm home visiting my parents I'll see if I can unearth the design. It would be good for a laugh! (And perhaps someday I'll share my typographic shame... Mistral.)