One of the author's many Moleskine sketchpads, showing some potential ideas.

Fontosaurus began life in 1995 or so, when I first discovered the smaller font designers doing their thing on the web. In 1996, I took out a massive loan for computer hardware, registered a domain name, set up my hosting service and started playing around. Now, at the time, I was in college and didn’t have the amount of time necessary to dedicate to something like a font biz, so it would be awhile before things started to take off.

In 1998, I graduated and in early ‘99, I moved to Philadelphia, and discovered an abundance of free time. I started delving into the font designing more deeply, and between 1999 and 2001, I produced about 90 fonts. During that time, I also became part of the Chank Army, and saw the visitation of my site grow exponentially. The downside to all this was that I wasn’t making any money from my efforts — I’d get the occasional (and tiny) royalty check from a vendor, or someone would actually make the two dollar donation I requested with my free fonts, but nothing ever really took off.

In 2002, I was unemployed, back in Minneapolis, and living in my parents’ basement. Not the best environment for creative endeavors. And Fontosaurus went fallow. I stopped producing, stopped caring, and just let it die.

Over the next few years, I would occasionally make half-hearted attempts to get things rolling again. I tried technology changes, I tried moving forward, but in the end, by 2004, I was done. Then in late 2004, I was on a conference call at work and scribbled the f-word in the lower right corner of a piece of paper. Ornately. I stopped taking notes, and kept scribbling. I was on to something. That design has led to a font that I’m still refining today, and it re-sparked my interest in font design.

So here I am, in January of 2009, with a pile of designs I'm moving from sketchpads to the computer. I've found an open source software package that will do an admirable job of running my website, and have that going. I have the support of my awesome girlfriend, a nice quiet office to work in, and an overwhelming urge to get started.

Dan Bailey
Founder, Designer, Operator