Steve Mehallo is a graphic designer, illustrator and educator based in Sacramento, Calif. His favorite subject is graphic design history. “It’s all there. Everything one could possibly draw from to create something totally new. All my fonts are small history projects. The research is my favorite part — it’s why I end up spending a year or two on each design.”
The Jeanne Moderno™ type family has nine fonts in total. It is a synthesis of Bodoni Italic and 19th century ultra-bold “fat faces”.
In Steve's own words: “Jeanne Moderno – named after my wife – had its roots in a hand drawn title I saw back in 1996. It was on a monograph of the work of Adolph Loos. It was very German, with roots in 19th century fat faces. Over the years I kept finding elements of this approach – including (much later) Paul Renner’s drawings of a Bodoni Poster-like version of Futura™ Black face. Another inspiration was the film MAX (2002), written and directed by one of Emigre magazine’s founders, Menno Meyjes.”
“I decided Jeanne would be a fictional typeface that was released in 1918, the timeframe from the movie. I had many starts and stops in development – including an eventually rejected mess of letters created in 1999. Finally in 2008, I started drawing my idea and it all came together. Today, I’m working on a matching text version.”
Jeanne Moderno can be used for magazines, advertising, posters, flyers, fashion reports, letterpress experiments, silkscreen endeavors, exhibitions, signage, paper money, revolutionary political statements as well as formal declarations of peace or war. Jeanne Moderno is about the future, the past. The avant-garde. Humanist geometry + vintage footwear. Form, function, style, art and life.