James Montalbano originally saw his future as printing type, not designing it. According to James, “It began when my father wanted me to take a printing elective in high school. He thought that the training could get me a part-time job running a multilith duplicator. But once I got my hands on all those California job cases and platen presses, I was hooked.”
ITC Freddo was inspired by a sign-lettering manual from the 1930s. Montalbano liked the basic character shapes illustrated in the primer, but found that what made for a good piece of lettering didn’t necessarily make for a good typeface design. The drawn capitals, for example, were nearly four times the size of the lowercase letters. In addition, many characters had inconsistent proportions and shapes. Montalbano carefully modulated these to create a true typeface design–with no loss in personality from the original lettering.