Retail typefaces by Joe Stitzlein are in fact somewhat of a rarity. After ITC Tactile, which won a TDC award in 1999, Hamster follows a quarter of a century later.

Hamster is a typeface that is simply fun to use and is peppered with all kinds of design and technical subtleties. Usually, Joe can be found creating waves and stirring up dust in the custom font sector. In fact, he has designed fonts for SGI (awarded a D&AD Pencil), Sempra Energy, Cloudera, Glasgow Rangers, Telge and a popular social network, many of which included huge language extensions.

First and foremost, Joe is a designer of brand systems and identities, of which his or other designers’ fonts play an integral part. He has left his mark on many household and well-known brands such as FedEx, Herman Miller, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move programme, H2FLY, Helion, P&G and Pixar, and has designed logos for Netflix, Lilly and dwell.

With Steve Jobs, he defined Apple’s imagery and packaging standards, as Executive Creative Director at Google he helped them become a global design studio, and for Nike he was Senior Global Creative Director for Nike+ and Nike Running, creating a campaign that resulted in the world’s most successful shoes (Nike Free).

In 2016, he joined forces with Leslie Stitzlein to form Stitzlein Studio, a brand identity, type design and digital environments practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on his vast expertise to help brands stand out.

We couldn’t be happier that his immense experience is now making its way into the Fontwerk library with Hamster.