Meet a Designer: Denise Chandler

Meet Denise Chandler whose fonts and doodles quickly rose to popularity within the Creative Fabrica community!

Her store exudes character and charisma while also clearly displaying the sheer skill she has in her craft. We caught up with her to learn more about her creative journey.

How would you describe your design style?

I guess the best words that would describe my style are cute and playful. As much as I would love to create really cool, sophisticated fonts, I can’t fight my cutesy tendencies. So, I’ve learned to embrace it. With the emergence of color fonts in the past few years, it’s really helped inspire creativity and add an extra level of fun for font design.

How did you begin your journey designing fonts?

I took a Skillshare class about digitizing hand-lettering about 11 years ago. I had worked as a freelance web designer for a few years and was looking for a way to fill in the gaps of time between projects. Luckily, it turned out that I enjoyed it quite a bit and it helped ease the burden of continuously finding freelance work.

How did you learn and develop your skills as a font designer?

Drawing letterforms has always been a hobby of mine. Every margin of my class notes would be filled with words and doodles. I would create word art with my friends’ names and give them as gifts. Of course, I never would have guessed at the time that that would actually be career prep. Although I have refined my digitizing skills over the years, I like to keep the process as offline as possible, hoping to retain some of the charm of those margin doodles.

What is your most recent favorite font you have developed and why? What’s the story/inspiration behind it?

It’s been a couple of years, but Vintage Rainbows is still one of my favorites. It incorporates several of my favorite elements: interesting letter shapes, interlocking characters, and a fun color scheme. And who doesn’t love rainbows?

Don’t try to do what’s trendy, if that’s not your style. You won’t enjoy yourself and you won’t be happy with the end result. Whatever your niche is, there will be an audience. And fellow designers make the best customers! We are so encouraging of each other as a community and I’ve rarely had communications with customers that didn’t include extremely kind and supportive words. It’s been a very rewarding experience.