The Wild, Wild West of Late ’90s Shareware Fonts
by Matt Scott Barnes
Introduction / Lead Off
The basics: you’d insert the disc and let it load up. You are prompted a list of folders, majority of these CDs were crudely put together and the file names were partial the font name and a handful of underscores. You would select a file and drag a font into your system, double-click, and cross your fingers it didn’t break your machine. Inside the directories lived a typographic graveyard: Helvetica, but weirdly stretched versions, a few bootleg Comic Sans, and somewhere in the mix, you would find an occasional treasure, a wildly beautiful display font. These CDs brought me my first chance to use Cooper Black and in multiple weights. Also, they helped me realize that the magazine Thrasher’s masthead was set in Banco.ttf, which I discovered on one of the discs and immediately started using it on flyers for a show I was promoting. I also remember the font named Igloo, and from my digging around it was also known as Ice Caps, it’s the gas-station ice cooler typeface. It’s kind of like a feeling of randomly finding something like a secret, right? You instantly think, "I've discovered something new." It makes you feel like a type archaeologist digging through digital junk, or maybe a hacker finding a hidden file. That's how I felt when I found Bedrock, where the letters look like someone just chopped them out of cardboard with an X-Acto knife.
Dr. OS/2
by Dr. CD ROM
1993
No License, No Masters
There were two types of products that defined them: Freeware and Shareware.
- Freeware involved distributing fully functional software at no charge. The author retained copyright but waived the usage fee.
- Shareware, however, is operated on a trial basis. It allows users to test a full or limited version for free but were encouraged, and expected, to pay a fee for continued access, unlocking any extra features.
These two concepts were fundamental to this CD-ROM economy. The font packs were filled with both, with a large percentage given away by designers as Freeware, while others were Shareware demos, often including only the regular weight, with additional styles included when purchased. This method of distribution completely bypassed traditional foundries or conglomerate licensing systems, allowing anyone with a bootlegged copy of Windows 98 and a CD drive to experiment with typography on another level that I had never experienced previously.
This is an embrace of a sidelines distribution and it reflects a core principle of postmodern design, which Rick Poynor described as rejecting "professional design's orderly methods and polite conventions, revelling in deviation and chaos and refusing to acknowledge any such category as 'error'" (Poynor, 2003, as cited in SOAR). The availability of a thousands of fonts even if it’s a mix of "good taste, poor taste" its presented at the same level, if sometimes messy, typographic landscape that effectively promote a "post-taste, post-style" era where the old rules of Swiss modernism no longer applied (Keedy, n.d.). The CD-ROM distribution, much like the underground press and punk culture before it, proved that a low-cost, decentralized distribution was a powerful engine for cultural experimentation (OpenEdition Journals, 2022). It made the era for me both never ending and exciting.
Dr. OS/2
by Dr. CD ROM
1993
Letraset but digital: Font Is Corrupted
However, this democratization came with high effort and high risk. Letraset demanded time for searching for the right letter on the right sheet of type. You would then cut it out, delicately line it up, and rub it down onto your final piece. Each transfer was a leap of faith; an old spent sheet or a slight movement would throw the letter off the baseline. Even so, through this process a new aesthetic was created.
The tactile, error-prone nature of this process—often combined with collage and found imagery—was the hallmark of a new, anti-establishment visual culture, particularly within punk graphics (Poynor, 2003). As Soar notes, this era was defined by the "scissors and glue" approach, which fostered an aesthetic of visible labor, randomness, and non-professionalism (Soar, 2025).
The freeware and shareware CD-ROMs delivered a new version of this, being digitally different, but similar without so many limits. For example, my discovery of the font Lower West Side—a digital revival of the Letraset-produced face Shatter—showed the final evolutionary step. Where the dry-rub lettering of Shatter was permanently fixed and inherently limited, the digitized Lower West Side became limitless and editable on the computer. The lowbrow spirit of Letraset had successfully crossed into the digital world, replacing the physical limitations of the sheet with the endless possibilities of the file.
Dr. OS/2
by Dr. CD ROM
1993
Gutter Spelunking
These CD-roms were worth more than 5 bucks I paid for them. They were introductions of experimental typography. Aarcover (AARCO___.TTF), a wild lightning bolt font, that works for everything, while Hobo, the bell-bottomed font you see all over Vermont ski towns.
Somewhere deep in those folders, I found David Rakowski. Not and explanation of who he was or that I even knew who he was at the time, but I found his work scattered through the disks, tucked between Comic Sans wannabes, Enya Font, and other absurdities.
From there, my research brought me to Dan Solo. Dan Solo was not a type designer, he was a collector. He saved and persevered type specimens, he assembled archives of type from blocks to phototype by lots of unnamed typographers. These collections might have been lost to time with out his collecting and sharing. I found even on my own bookshelf a Dover book that was a collection of Solotype, Special-Effects and Topical Alphabets, Which showed me printed specimens of the collection before they were digitized. Other designers, including Rakowski, likely took these printed collections and turned them into working digital fonts.
Rakowski’s submitted fonts in these packs were stood out in the folders on plain san serif mediocrity. His selection that he submitted were lively and musical, it showed me someone was experimenting and having fun with what fonts could be. Solo’s collection provided the inspiration, the printed evidence of what had come before, and Rakowski and others did the legwork of digitizing, cleaning, and making them usable on your system.
Among these fonts, I saw Shatter as it stood out. Wildly, it was originally produced through a contest by Letraset. It was produced as a dry-rub lettering sheet, Rakowski renamed it to “Lower West Side” when converted to a working font. Lower West Side, as Shatter it was limited by what was provided, but now it has become limitless, and editable.
Live Wire: High Voltage Typeface
“Aarcover is an all caps Type 1 PostScript font, plus numbers and punctuation, whose characters look like static electricity or limp lightning. It was done at the request of a group called, oddly enough, AARCOVER. This font was made on a Mac and converted with Wrefont for use with ATM/PC. No warranty is expressed or implied as to its working as expected. No warranty is made as to its functionality when ported to any platform other than Apple Macintoshes.
Aarcover is shareware, with the following terms: if you use or keep it you must do one of the following: send a check that will not bounce in the amount of $12,341,709.12 to Cynthia Lemiesz at the Columbia University Music Department, 703 Dodge Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027; send a crisp one dollar bill to the same address, along with a blurred photograph; or bow on your knees every day for twelve days and face Spencer, Massachusetts, repeating the mantra, ‘I like jam! I don’t understand!’ for 18 minutes.
Aarcover is © 1991 by David Rakowski, who holds onto Insect Bytes until they stop itching.”
It made a joke of early day licensing, but also a created a new idealogy; some things are meant to share and be put out into the world, to mutate and be used.
Preservation, Legacy, and Dafont as Punk Zine
It was much later in my career, revisiting these discs, that I first encountered Logger. That stacked log font, perfectly at home on a Vermont ski lodge marquee, pulled me right back to the feeling of exploring those original CD-ROMs. Many of these digital artifacts survive today. Sites like Dafont.com and FontSquirrel maintain as archives of early freeware and shareware fonts. These repositories are like the fan zines of digital typography. no rules and free to experiment without much of a critique. They celebrate equally the beautifully crafted and the ugly. Its kinda like anyone with access to a Xerox machine could produce a zine on their favorite local bands and bars in the 1980s, to anyone with Fontographer or FontLab could release a font in the 90s. There really isn’t a scale of what was good or cool versus bad and lame.
When you search enough and you find emerging patterns, the early web-era maximalism, transitional technologies,the rebirth of Letraset and Solo catalogs. Fonts like Lower West Side, Aarcover, Logger, Hobo, and Bedrock coexist with various iterations. Dafont and its kin are archives of experimentation and community, much like punk fanzines preserved music and subcultural visual aesthetics outside main popculture. Contemporary Design culture has long shit talked these sites, but doing so is to miss what actually is there; These sites are living platforms that archive digital folk typography, full of creativity and experimentation.
The Hopeful Future
Somewhere in an attic or thrift store bin sits a cracked jewel case labeled “5000 Fonts for Windows 95.” Inside are digital fossils: early experiments, lost display faces, homemade revivals. And maybe, someday, a new designer will pop one in, not to find the next Helvetica, but to rediscover the charm in a font like Guardian Bold, or wacky display, or a beautiful script that fails so completely it circles back to brilliance.
The hope is that they’ll see what we once did: that fonts are alive, that the past is still editable, and that design’s most exciting moments often start with a bad idea burned onto a cheap disc..
I carry a small notebook everywhere—not for writing down big ideas or sketching out grand plans, but for casually hoarding the leftovers of daily life. Stickers peeled off fruit, labels from bottles I’ll never remember drinking, ticket stubs from events I barely attended—whatever crosses my path and feels vaguely worth keeping. There’s no strategy. No composition. Just impulse. Each page fills up in a way that seems completely arbitrary… until it doesn’t.
Because at the end of the year, something weird happens: all those random, thoughtless choices start to make sense. Patterns emerge. A visual rhythm appears. It’s like my subconscious was designing something the whole time, and I just wasn’t paying attention. This project is about that—about how we unintentionally create meaning just by living.
Book 1: 2024–2025
The research project delves into the activities and impact of CULT (Creative Union of Local Trades), a dynamic community collective designed to unite graphic designers, developers, makers and all around creatives from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region. CULT aims to create a collaborative platform where local creatives can share resources, expertise, and opportunities while fostering community engagement. By exploring the intersection of art, trade, and local culture, CULT addresses regional issues such as economic revitalization, cultural preservation, and social equity.
The project will analyze CULT’s role in building cross-disciplinary partnerships and providing support for emerging and established artists through meet-ups, exhibitions, and community projects. Key research questions include how the collective has influenced the local creative economy, its effectiveness in fostering a sense of belonging among the creative, and its strategies for engaging marginalized voices. Through interviews, participant observation, and archival research, this study will highlight CULT’s contribution to regional identity and explore how grassroots collectives like CULT can serve as models for sustainable creative economies in post-industrial cities.
It’s Hunter/Gatherer not Hunter/Gatekeeper
Short Essay coming out in a future publication2023
My life has been a series of mixing together experiences that have formed my identity. As a graphic designer, I have built my abilities by learning from many schools of process, constantly pushing my boundaries to relearn things I’ve found natural. Growing up fascinated in punk music, which began in my teenage years, has instilled in me a drive for my community, alternative tools, and my own voice. As a borderline hoarder, I have amassed an eclectic collection of items that reflect my interests, from collected ephemera, Japanese vinyl toys, vintage mopeds, and rare vinyl records. However, my fear of gatekeeping is perhaps a large calling to me. As I was coming up in my practice I found many colleagues with held learned tricks or sources to help themselves in a promotion. This feeling of exclusion has driven me to be more accepting and inclusive of others and to create spaces where everyone feels welcome. Despite the seemingly unrelated nature of these topics, they have all contributed to who I am as a person and as a professional. A common thread is an idea of using visual imagery to create a sense of identity, belonging, and ownership.
Punk rock emerged in the mid-1970s as a countercultural movement to reject mainstream values and aesthetics. It embodied a DIY ethos that extended to its visual executions. Punk flyers, posters, and album covers were often created using cut-and-paste techniques, photocopiers, and other low-cost materials. These designs were raw, unpolished, and chaotic, reflecting the punk ethos of rejecting established norms and embracing individuality. The visual language created by punk design expressed the movement's values and ideals, creating a sense of identity and belonging within the punk community.
The punk movement also embraced a culture of collecting, with many followers amassing extensive collections of low-run produced records, xerox fan zines, screen print posters, and other similar items. Music collectors are known for their passion and tendency to seek out hard-to-find relics. They scour the internet, music stores, and other sources to obtain obscure items that they can add to their collections. In fact, they often go to great lengths to acquire these rare pieces, such as trading with other collectors or even traveling to other countries to source them. This pursuit is not just about building a collection, but rather a labor of love to preserve the art and history of the movement for future generations to appreciate.
In addition to collecting, fans also created their own zines, which were self-published magazines that covered topics such as music, politics, and social issues. These zines would often include interviews with bands, reviews of albums, and articles about various aspects of punk culture. Posters were also popular among fans, with many featuring striking graphics and bold designs that helped to promote upcoming shows and events.
Overall, the obtaining of these items was just an aspect of punk culture, but not defining the movement as a whole. Collecting was a way of connecting with like-minded individuals, and small collections represented status within the culture.
Graphic design has played a key role in both punk rock and collecting culture. Punk culture was not just a style, but it was an entire movement that expressed itself through music, fashion, and art. The design was a crucial component of the punk visual language, as it reflected the values and ideals of the movement. Punk design was all about being raw, unconventional, and rebellious. It was about breaking the norms of mainstream society and creating something new and different. The punk aesthetic was characterized by bold graphics, DIY ethos, and anti-authoritarianism. It was a way of expressing individuality and challenging the status quo. In essence, punk design was about pushing boundaries and creating a cultural revolution through art and design. In collecting culture, design was more than just a way of connecting with a larger community of like-minded individuals. It was a way of expressing one's own identity and values, while also learning from the values of others. In fact, many collectors would often spend a great deal of time researching the history and cultural significance of the objects they collected, in order to better understand the movement. Additionally, design played a crucial role in shaping the way that people interacted with each other and with their environment. By studying the design choices of different cultures and time periods, collectors were able to gain a deeper appreciation for the diversity of human experience and the ways in which people have sought to create beauty and meaning throughout history. In both cases, the design was a way of creating a personal identity.
However, the distinction between collecting, hoarding, and gatekeeping can be subtle. It's important to understand that collecting is a conscious choice made by individuals who have a genuine interest in collecting certain items. Hoarding, on the other hand, is a compulsive behavior that involves the uncontrollable accumulation of objects, often to the point of creating clutter and chaos in one's living space. Gatekeeping, similar to hoarding, involves the desire to accumulate objects, but with the added element of controlling or limiting access to those objects by others. It's crucial to recognize and respect the differences between these behaviors in order to better understand and appreciate the motivations behind them.
As a potential hoarder, it is important to be aware of the potential dangers of hoarding and to create healthier alternatives to collecting physical media. For example, we can create shareable digital storage that allows for the same sense of collecting while being able to share with future admirers of similar interests.
In conclusion, it is worth noting that graphic design, punk rock, and collecting share a common thread. These things we absorb and surround ourselves with shape our identity, and give us a home of our choosing.
Graphic design, for instance, can create a language that speaks to a particular subculture or community, like punk rock often using a do-it-yourself aesthetic that pushes unconventional or anti-establishment messaging. Similarly, your collection can be seen as a form of visual expression, as individuals surround themselves with objects that reflect their personalities and interests.
Ultimately, the power of visual imagery to shape our sense of self and community is awesome.
Remember, don’t be a jerk and share what you have.
Visit: badtype.club
BTC Peace
BTC Peace starts with a simple, almost unfashionable question: what if a sans serif stopped trying to be clever and instead tried to be useful in public? Not useful in the corporate sense of “clean” or “efficient,” but useful in the street, on a placard, in a PDF shared too many times to count. It’s a triple-weight utility sans, built to distribute information clearly and without apology. No whispering. No decorative hedging. Just legibility that holds its ground.
The forms are sturdy and direct, engineered for impact rather than personality theater. Each weight does its job, scaling from functional clarity to blunt emphasis without losing coherence. BTC Peace doesn’t aspire to be neutral; it aspires to be understood. It’s typography that assumes the message matters more than the typographer’s signature.
Its larger intent is where things get interesting. BTC Peace was created to live as a free, open-source typeface—available for protest, resistance, and anti-political campaigns of all stripes. It’s designed for the moments when the smallest voice needs to occupy the most space. In that sense, BTC Peace isn’t about style so much as amplification: a typeface that treats volume, visibility, and access as core design principles. It’s not here to sell you anything. It’s here to be read.
From Bawitdaba to da bang da dang diggy.
A post-graduate journey to find out how to care less.
10.9-15.2022
To quote a contemporary prophet, "From Bawitdaba to da bang da dang diggy."
A post-graduate journey to find out how to care less.
After completing the VCFA program in October 2017, I returned to civilian life in Louisville, Kentucky. I had started a small art gallery while working full-time freelancing. However, I soon realized that my income was not sufficient to meet my financial needs. In order to secure my future, I decided to travel to New York to freelance for short sprints at different agencies. This proved to be a wise decision as it allowed me to pay off some of my credit card debt and my car loan.
My experiences freelancing in New York also helped me to overcome my fear of moving to a big city. With newfound confidence, my partner Kelly and I sold our collected belongings, packed up our house and studio/gallery space, and moved to Brooklyn. To our delight, we both landed jobs within a couple of days of arriving in Brooklyn.
After a couple of months, my friend Chad and I were presented with a large project through our neighbors in the building we were renting from. Working together, we pitched a proposal that was surprisingly accepted. This led us to scramble to brand ourselves, set up an EIN, bank account, and build a proper statement of work. Our hard work paid off, as five years later our business has grown significantly. I am proud to have created an apprenticeship program and implemented a 4-day work week.
To keep my creativity flowing, I also started creating 10-minute posters in the mornings or at the end of the day. This has helped me to stay motivated and hone my design skills. Additionally, I have taught a thesis course to 20 students at the New School on Fridays. I am passionate about teaching and sharing my knowledge with others.
Last week, I became a homeowner and moved from Brooklyn to Cincinnati, where I bought my first lawn mower. This marks a new chapter in my life and I am excited to see what the future holds.
The images themselves are aggressively unspectacular. Domestic corners. Travel detritus. Friends mid-gesture. Pets being themselves. Accidental compositions. Awkward discoveries that only exist because I happened to be paying attention that day. None of it is edited into importance; the point is volume, proximity, and accumulation. Meaning emerges through adjacency, not curation.
The ritual is partly about touch—returning images to a physical state where they can age, scuff, and be misremembered. It’s also a practical gesture, a way of reclaiming space from the soft tyranny of the hard drive. The phone gets lighter, the year gets heavier, and memory stops pretending it was ever meant to live forever in the cloud.
2022 One-Sided Documentation
Three Books
Over 1200 pages
Edition 1/1
2021 One Sided Documentation
Two Books
Over 750 pages
Edition 1/1
2020 Pandemic
Two Books
Over 700 pages
Edition 1/1
Visual Repairment
Published by UsByUs
Size: 8 × 10 in
Reading theory has always felt slightly incomplete to me, like listening to a record through one speaker. The words land, but they don’t always stay. Over time, I realized retention happens more reliably when reading is paired with making—when visual responses are allowed to argue with, echo, or interrupt the text.
Visual Repairment grew out of that impulse. The publication gathers a series of posters produced alongside written material, not as illustrations but as parallel thinking. The visuals don’t explain the text; they metabolize it. Each spread becomes a small act of repair, stitching image and language together to form something more durable than either could manage on its own.
The result is less an archive and more a working document—a record of learning through translation. Theory comes in, form comes out, and somewhere in the middle the ideas stick.
Bending Spoons with Britney Spears
by Chuck Klosterman
I found the conversation between Klosterman and Britney Spears to be quite interesting. The way in which Klosterman tried to dig at Britney's persona in order to get her to open up was quite fascinating, it was funny to see Britney counter with a dumbfounded response. Klosterman even asked if she was genuinely that foolish or if she was on some sort of Kaufman level of marketing. It was quite an intriguing moment, and it made me wonder whether Britney was simply playing dumb or if she was truly as clueless as she seemed.
One thing that struck me about the interview was the idea that Britney was told to simply "play dumb" and to only respond with predetermined lines that had been written by marketers. It seems that Britney was being used as a puppet to sell a particular image or persona, and that she had little control over her own public image. This makes me feel badly for Britney, as it seems that she was being manipulated for her fame and that she had little say in the matter.
The interview pushed me to think about the Britney Spears infatuation that occurred back in 1998. At the time, I was 15 years old, and I remember spending most of my nights listening to "Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo" by (then) Christian Pop Punk band MxPx It was a great album. One night, my friend Angela and I were watching TV when we stumbled upon the video for "Baby One More Time." We both laughed at the video, mostly at the idea that it was going to be the next big thing, and the expectations of hearing about it at school the next day. Angela, who a few years earlier was infatuated with boy bands like Boys II Men and NSync, had a response that stuck out to me: "It's crazy what 12-year-olds will fall into." It doesn't sound particularly profound now, but it was interesting to think about two 15-year-olds chatting about iconic advertisements.
Overall, I found Klosterman's interview with Britney to be quite fascinating, and it made me want to learn more about the music industry and the way in which artists are marketed to the public.
Best take away, listen to MxPx again.
Freedom to make anything you want and having learning be fun again.
On-Going Warm Ups + Warm Downs
As designers, we're all constantly trying to improve our craft. We often spend hours scouring the web for useful tips and tricks to enhance our design skills. However, while it is important to seek inspiration and learn from others, it is equally important to set aside time for experimentation and creative exploration. By dedicating more time to the process of creating and designing, we can develop our own unique style and perspective, and push the boundaries of what is possible in our field. Additionally, this process can lead to unexpected breakthroughs and discoveries, as well as a deeper understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses as designers. So instead of solely relying on external sources for inspiration, let's make a conscious effort to prioritize the act of creating and designing ourselves.
Here is a collection of warm-up and warm-down exercises that have been created over the years to be used at the start or end of the day.