Hello! I’m Dan Reynolds. Although I originally come from Baltimore, I’ve spent my adult life in Germany, where I’ve moved around between Wiesbaden, Offenbach, Berlin, and Krefeld. Now I live in Wuppertal and teach in the book studies program at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.
From 2020 until 2024, I taught typography and digital print tools at the Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld. From 2011 through December 2016, I was a research associate at the Braunschweig University of Art. My area of research revolves around the German typefoundries active during the nineteenth century. In January 2019, I successfully defended my dissertation for a German philosophical doctorate there. This was Schriftkünstler: A historiographic examination of the relationship between handcraft and art regarding the design and making of printers’ type in Germany between 1871 and 1914. My current research projects include a database cataloging all sans serif typefaces sold in Germany during the nineteenth century and a look into Germany’s brass types industry.
Since 2016, I’ve increasingly focussed on design writing and deliver articles to Communication Arts, Footnotes, Klim Type Foundry, and the TDC’s Typegeist, among others. Together with CAST – Cooperativa Anonima Servizi Tipografici and Poem Editions, I’ve published pamphlets in various typographic historical topics. Additionally, I’ve contributed chapters to books from the jovis Verlag, the Klingspor Museum, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Letterform Archive, the Nebiolo History Project, and Steidl. For Fontstand, I edit the Fontstand News website and I’ve translated entire books for Niggli and the Verlag Hermann Schmidt.
Before that, I primarily worked as a practical designer drawing letters, building fonts, and marketing them, too. I started at the old Linotype GmbH before it got taken over by Monotype, initially working in the product marketing department. Later, I was part of the font development group. When I left for Braunschweig, I started picking up freelance assignments. Between 2011 and 2017, I designed type for Fontstore, Photo-Lettering, and the Typejockeys. Thanks to generous funding from Google, I made a few libre font families as well. I did a small bit of font development work for Darden Studio, Linotype, and a few clients NDAs prevent me from naming. More of my freelance time was taken up by foundry copywriting – which I mostly undertook for FontFont and the Indian Typefoundry. From 2014 to 2018, I was also part of the MyFonts.com Foundry Review Team founded by Jan Middendorp.
During the summer of 2016, I helped co-organize the chimeric Berlin Type School’s one-and-only event. I helped write a few grants to digitize collections of historical type specimens and typefoundry archives and in May 2022, I co-organized a symposium on type specimens at the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin.
In my student days, I co-founded the Offenbach Typostammtisch. It met regularly for about eleven years and inspired similar type meet-ups in Basel, Berlin, Hamburg, Mumbai, Oldenburg, Saarbrücken, Stockholm, Vienna, and Zürich – some of which are still active. I have a BFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Between 2003 and 2006, I studied visual communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Then I graduated with an MA in typeface design (with distinction) from the University of Reading in 2008.
Photo: Norman Posselt (January 2015)