A couple of years ago I made a living guiding tour groups around the world and selling the photographs I took during those travels. I really liked my easy-going life and I told myself I was never going to settle down!

But the times they were a changin’… I became a dad and needed to find a more steady job.

I decided to focus on photography. An image says more than a thousand words, so I figured I needed a website. To make the site more personal, I wanted to use a ‘handwritten’ font. I found many, but none were what I had in mind. I had no understanding of fonts (I always thought they came with your computer), so I read up on the subject, watched a whole lot of tutorials and finally created my first (ugly) font. In the end I never used it for my website, but that first ugly font started me off in a direction I had never thought about.

Right now, I live in the fruit growing area of Holland with my lovely wife and three small kids.

All of my fonts are still made by hand, using whatever material I can find – pens, crayons, Chinese brushes and broken satay skewers. I still don’t have an office: I use the kitchen table, much to my wife’s dismay.