Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

Most people know my notes, and my personal icon, the Wanderer

Since 1999, I’ve had a relationship with the metaphor of a path chosen in a wandering, winding, wended pathway, a quest for answers and insights that is particular to a non-linear way of thinking—rather than a straight line, I respect, and inspect, a way that is intentionally non-tensile in the principle of wayfinding.

Walking known pathways?

Nope.
Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

In my personal adventures and journeys of discovery, I walk in a way that is contemplative—a meditation in the moment—observational, it is:
“what’s here, what’s that, where was I, where am I?”

One might ask, “wait, how does this relate to a branding blog?”

It does come down to design thinking—does one metrically define a creative solution exploration
that is a closed loop of investigation, or are there insights in the wending journey that newly awaken possibilities?

The best answers don’t come from a booklet of questions,
but questions that are founded on the meander of curiosity.

You wander.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

My brother died in 2001, and he and I were both wandering explorers, investigators in the outward, global pathways.
His departure from this plane, was a wander in itself, a rescue mission for Unicef in a Russian helicopter over the snowiest plains of Northwestern Mongolia. He died out there.
That idea of roving for ideas—or any quest in discovery—was surely one that we shared.

However, I found the Wanderer in an earlier solo trip, to Southeast Asia and the South China Seas—Java and points east. I had Matt in mind. I had a kind of general itinerary, but it was vague. During this trip, and in others to other parts of the planet,
I would see figures—
single walkers—out on the horizon, usually with a remote horizon.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

This visioning played to a singular journey-making, and I began to believe in
the archetype of the journeyer—I called them, then—Wanderers.
Envision a lonely single figure—far out there—
on the edge of adventure, or striding into the beginning of one.
Here’s an additional backstory on the Wanderer at Tim.Girvin.com.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

You’ve seen them yourself—the person, striding out there.
You might ask, “where are they going?”

I’m now working on a book, a folio, a print of all 32 Wanderer cards,
a small book, a poster and containment—a shippable merchandiser— a carrier.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

As evidenced in the video above—the head of this blog,
I was interested in using this archetypal rendering
as the inspiration for a typeface.

But that I would draw this like a wanderer—
a completely off-the-cuff rendering,
and drawn in the manner of the illustrative styling of this figure.

I just drew it, like a wanderer—an improvisational, alphabetic saunter.
You can see the rough work before the font, below—and, being freehand—it’s meandering on the page.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

In a month, to be finished as a key-strokable digital font.

Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer

Think, as well about the spirit of the Wanderer as a state of “lostness.” While we are journeying, we are in a state of being lost, on the route to being found—or, our finding.

As a designer, I was using the same tool to draw the Wanderer figure, as I drew the font.

Tim | OseanStudios + GIRVIN | Strategic Brands

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Keep a look out for your Wanderer.
Hand-drawn fonts | A custom type face for the icon | Tim Girvin's Wanderer