Rutherford Craze

Rutherford Craze

Type Designer in The Hague, he/him

Projects

2023

A contemporary monospaced typeface designed for clarity and legibility, particularly at small sizes and on digital screens. IO uses unconventional glyph constructions and large, functional ink traps to improve glyph recognition — utilitarian features which become eye-catching stylistic elements in their own right when used at larger sizes.

2023

A monospaced counterpart to our flagship sans-serif typeface family, System Mono shares the same vertical metrics as the proportional family — and the same slightly rotated contrast that gives the typeface its warm, analogue character.

Designed by Luke Charsley, with additional production & engineering by Rutherford Craze.

2022

A typeface based on the unique retro–high-tech aesthetic of Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR), and the pre-digital typefaces it inspired.

Specimen website: polychrome.mass-driver…

2021

A typeface which reinterprets the flaws and inconsistencies of early sans-serifs in a ‘digital-first’ way. Inspired by a range of both European grotesque and American gothic designs produced in the late 19th Century.

Design process: mass-driver.com/article/md-pri…

2020

A typeface for general use. MD System is a workhorse type family of 30 styles, combining the warmth and readability of classic grotesque designs with a practical, contemporary structure.

(Originally released in 2020, updated with two additional widths in 2022.)

Specimen website: system.mass-driver.com
Design process: mass-driver.com/article/md-sys…

Side Projects

Ongoing

Small internal tools created for projects at Mass-Driver, now made available for anyone to use.

2022

Entries into the My Famicase Exhibition, organised each year in Tokyo by METEOR. (2018–2022)

2023
Recombinant Type at TypeA’dam
Amsterdam
2021
Tools for Working with Fonts at ATypI Tech Talks

Work Experience

2020 — Now
The Hague, Netherlands

Mass-Driver is a studio for typeface design and font production, focused on combining a deep understanding of history and materiality with contemporary, original ideas.

I run the studio day to day, including designing typefaces and producing fonts, as well as developing software tools to better enable those processes.

2019 — 2019
2014 — 2018
Graphic designer & web developer at Freelance
Devon, UK

Education

2015 — 2018

Contact

Website
Mastodon
Instagram