Lettering has always been a passion for LisaBeth Weber. In the first grade, her favorite subject was penmanship. When she eventually got her first checkbook, Weber was disappointed to learn that her signature was supposed to be the same on every check. She happily says, “I brake for cool signs’ should be my bumper sticker.”
Back in 1999, when her ITC Weber Hand™ typeface was made available to graphic designers, it quickly became one of ITC’s more popular handwriting fonts. Used for everything from restaurant menus to billboards, the single-weight design was missing something though: more versions. The light weight needed a bold companion and condensed variations to give the typeface greater versatility.
A decade after her typeface’s release, Weber decided to extend her design into a complete family. However, being an accomplished and sought-after artist, writer, musician, illustrator, photographer and craftsperson left her little time to devote to typeface design. Monotype Imaging’s type designers stepped in to help, and Weber was able to develop a new bold and two additional condensed weights to round out the family.
Although this typeface design mimics handwriting, Weber Hand has an underlying decorous, gently structured quality. This, along with additional weights, makes for a remarkably useful typeface family in a relatively small package. Equally at home in headlines and short blocks of text copy, Weber Hand can be used in brochures, advertisements, logotypes, periodicals and even package design. Weber comments, “Thanks to Monotype Imaging’s support, ITC Weber Hand has grown into a suite of warm, friendly designs that are well-suited for a wide range of applications – even bumper stickers!”