China patent
CN 100343791 C
The story
From mIRC bots to 170,000 fonts
First, home: I’m a husband to my wife and a dad to our four kids, who fill most of my days. Here’s how the work side came together.
Late 1990s · Spokane
It started with mIRC
In high school I got into programming through IRC, writing channel managers and bots in mIRC’s scripting language.
Late 1990s
Then websites, then design
Bots led to web pages, and web pages led to visual design. I’ve been building for the web ever since.
Late 1990s
An early font site
Good font sites were hard to find, so I built one of my own. Fonts had my attention from then on.
1999–2002 · San Luis Obispo
Cal Poly, in three years
Computer Science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, finished in three years, followed by an internship in San Jose.
2002–2017 · IBM
Fifteen years at IBM
Enterprise web applications and storage-management interfaces. I co-led the UI team for the Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center, received two Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, and was granted four patents.
2006
FontSpace begins
It started as a hobby. I wrote all of the back-end font-rendering technology myself, and it grew into a full-time job.
2013 · Knoxville
Back to a lake
After 13 years in the Arizona desert, we moved to Fort Loudoun Lake to raise our family by the water.
2017
Going independent
When IBM called everyone back to the office, the choices were Tucson, Austin or San Jose. I stayed in Knoxville and went out on my own.
2019
A new FontSpace
A full rebrand and redesign with a design studio in Düsseldorf.
2026
170,000+ fonts
FontSpace passes 170,000 free fonts from more than 3,500 designers. font.io relaunches as The Typeface Database, GlyphView goes live, and EQ11 opens in Knoxville and Farragut.
