Stetson (2012)

Stetson is an experiment in geo-historical typography. The single-weight display face was drawn from a very small sample of 19th century hand-drawn letterforms that I found depicted in an old photograph in a shed in Weymouth, Massachusetts. In the photo, the sample “E. H. Stetson and Co.,” is surrounded by a display of shoes. Not far from where the photograph was found is the actual Stetson Shoe Co. factory building, which operated in Weymouth from 1885 until 1973. The Stetson typeface is in a kind of spatio-temporal duet with its own history: it locates itself within the original photograph (late 19th-century New England), as well as in the shed on January 11, 2012. The letterforms vibrate in time and space.

Stetson was created for Weymouths, a 12-volume book project commissioned by the 2012 b-side Arts Festival in Weymouth, England (part of the London2012 Cultural Olympiad by the Sea). Production by Thomas Jockin. Stetson is available here for free download under an SIL Open Font License / Version 1.1.