DTES—The idea behind DTES was to design a typeface based on the hand lettering of the Downtown Eastside. The project was an effort to preserve the lettering before it gets wiped way by the city’s efforts to revitalize the area. The vernacular of the area is very interesting because the lettering resembles type, rather than following traditional sign painting tradition. The project began by photo documenting all of the lettering and organizing the photos in different typographic categories. The next step was to draw the most distinct letterforms. The drawings were then imported into FontLab and developed as a typeface in the OpenType format. The typeface includes several ligatures, dingbats from the area, and all punctuation. Though very legible, the typeface is not intended for continuous text, but is recommended for titles, pull quotes, short paragraphs, and anywhere else visual impact and a hand generated quality is desired.