DF Pigtail is the result of a curious marriage of the 'free'-form of writing with the fixed (mono) space for each character of the typewriter typeface. In the early sixties of the last century, typewriter typography became popular as a Fluxus vocabulary. The Fluxus art movement (in fact a Dada like follow up) which encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity and anti commercialism over the conventional market-driven approach. I was educated in the mid seventies when this form of typography was still very popular and was even applied in corporate design. This particular letter has been used by my teacher Jan Begeer to compose his design assignments. Recently I rediscovered this type and was struck by its pigtail similarity and drew it my way.

Martin, a condensed semi-serif with rounded edges and friendly serifs, shows its charme best in short, pointed sentences, in headlines set in about 20 to 36 p. The playing with serifs in a condensed, very characteristic type design is attractive and the technical skill is convincing. More styles are planned. The idea was to try to apply a given design criteria (also see Volker Schnebel's Marita and Manuel fonts) to every single character. In other words, start with a character and develop all of the others from it. This is quite easy for some characters but extremely difficult for others. This process generates creativity and the characters move away from the initial constructed sketch. Together in a typeface, the individual characters are now all of a piece and character.