Mr Blue Sky is a bold, handmade Gothic sans-serif display font inspired partly by a bag of popcorn. The font also came from wanting to escape the brush-lettering ideas I naturally gravitate towards.
Mr Blue Sky still looks handmade, but there isn’t a brushmark in sight. It’s bold, bubbly and slightly odd—which is normally where the interesting ideas live.
It started with a bag of popcorn
I can’t remember the brand, the flavour or whether the popcorn was any good. It must have been okay cus I ate it.
What caught my attention was the lettering on the packet.
A thin line ran through the middle of the characters, cutting across the fat outlines and dividing each letter into two sections.
It was a small detail, but it changed the whole thing. Suddenly the typeface looked cooler and had loads more personality.
I liked it. Quite a lot, actually
The letters were still big and bold, but the line stopped them from looking like ordinary chunky display type.
I made a mental note of it, which is my highly organised system for storing ideas.
That simple graphic device—a wobbly line running through the letters—became my starting point for Mr Blue Sky. You can see Mr Blue Sky in the image below.
Getting away from brush fonts
The other motivation was more practical: I wanted to make something that wasn’t another brush font.
I naturally gravitate towards painted lettering and handmade scripts.
I love making them, but I wanted to push myself in a different direction and see what happened.
Drawing every glyph in Procreate
After eating a copious amount of popcorn, I got to work in Procreate.
For this sort of font, Procreate beats pencil and paper. I can redraw, resize and undo without sacrificing a sketchbook or turning my tiny London flat into a police incident room, with sheets of A4 taped to every available surface.
Trust me, I’ve done it that way before.
You start with one letter on the wall and suddenly it looks like you’re trying to solve a murder.
Speed matters at this stage. I don’t want to spend so long perfecting one drawing that I become afraid to change it. I want to try several versions, compare them and keep going until the character feels right.
Cleaning the artwork
Once the drawings were taking shape, I moved them into Adobe Illustrator.
I needed to trace the Procreate drawings and turn them into vectors.
Illustrator can do this. Technically. In much the same way that a spoon can dig a hole.
I’ve made my own presets to make the job easier, but it’s still a total pain in the arse.
These days, AI would probably do a better job. Back then, it hadn’t arrived to steal the work, drink the coffee and take all the credit.
Anyway, before I wander completely off the point, Illustrator was where I refined the outlines, corrected awkward shapes and made the placement of the characters more consistent.
The letters still needed to feel handmade, but they also needed to work as vector type shapes.
Illustrator offers plenty of creative freedom, particularly for experimental and illustrative lettering.
Its weakness is precision.
When I need to finesse curves or judge how one glyph works beside another, dedicated font-design software gives me much better control.
I’m not grumbling too much. Illustrator and Glyphs both have their strengths; they simply solve different parts of the problem.
Why I now draw directly in Glyphs
These days, I normally move an idea from Procreate straight into Glyphs.
Glyphs lets me draw and refine the outlines while checking spacing, alignment and character relationships inside the actual font.
Its drawing tools also give me more control over curves than Illustrator.
Illustrator still wins when I want complete visual freedom. Glyphs wins when those ideas need spacing, precision and finesse.
Every font teaches you something about the next one—usually after you’ve discovered a needlessly complicated way of doing it first.
Turning the drawings into a working font
Drawing an alphabet is only part of making a typeface.
The characters then need spacing, kerning and testing across real words.
This is where the cheerful drawing stage becomes a long series of tiny decisions.
Make coffee.
Move something by two units.
Decide it was better before.
It isn’t glamorous, but it’s what turns a collection of drawings into a font people can actually use.
What makes Mr Blue Sky
The line running through the characters is the detail that gives Mr Blue Sky its identity.
It cuts through the weight of the letters, breaks up the heavy shapes and gives the typeface a slightly constructed appearance.
Without it, Mr Blue Sky would still be bold, but it would lose the idea that makes it recognisable.
What kind of design suits Mr Blue Sky?
Mr Blue Sky suits brands that want to feel bold, cheerful and approachable without looking overly polished.
Its rounded proportions and unusual internal line give it a playful personality.
The heavy Gothic structure keeps it strong enough for a prominent logo or headline.
There’s a nostalgic edge to it, but it doesn’t belong to one particular decade.
It could work particularly well for:
- Food and drink packaging
- Music, entertainment and events
- Children’s and family brands
- Independent shops and cafés
- Playful editorial design
- Clothing and merchandise
- Posters and campaign graphics
Pair it with a restrained sans serif for prices, ingredients, dates and supporting copy.
The line through the letters needs enough room to remain visible—particularly on packaging, small social-media images and anything viewed as a thumbnail.
Why is it called Mr Blue
The name came after I’d finished designing the font.
I’ve grown rather tired of people borrowing—or simply ripping off—my font names.
I now look for unusual, music-related names and research them before committing.
It hasn’t stopped the copycats, obviously.
Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra was part of my childhood.
I’ve always loved the song, and its bright, slightly eccentric optimism suited the bubbly shapes of the typeface.
Naming a font after a well-known song probably isn’t brilliant for my SEO efforts.
The song already occupies an enormous amount of space on Google, so I’ve willingly made the job of finding my font more difficult—A triumph of sentiment over marketing experience.
Several other names went by the wayside:
- Cornpop, a reference to the popcorn packet that inspired the lettering.
- Make It Pop, a nod to my years in marketing—and a phrase I’d be quite happy never to hear again.
- Pop Will Eat Itself, or PWEI, another musical reference from the 1990s. Brilliant name, but far too hardcore for such a cheerful typeface.
Mr Blue Sky felt lighter, happier and much closer to the font’s personality.
It stuck.
What does Mr Blue Sky include?
Mr Blue Sky contains 337 glyphs in one bold display style.
The download includes:
- Uppercase and lowercase letters
- Numbers
- Punctuation and symbols
- Western European language support
- Central European language support
- South-Eastern European language support
- OTF and TTF font files
- Mac and Windows compatibility
The broader character set means Mr Blue Sky can handle much more than a few English-language headlines.
If your project requires a particular language or accented character, check the specimen before getting too far into the design.
What can you use Mr Blue Sky for?
Mr Blue Sky works best when it has room to make a bit of noise.
Its heavy letterforms and dividing line make it particularly suited to:
- Posters
- Packaging
- Logos
- Editorial headlines
- Album artwork
- Book covers
- Merchandise
- Social-media graphics
- Short slogans and campaign messages
This isn’t a font for setting the small print on the back of a shampoo bottle.
Use it for the part people should notice first, then let a quieter typeface handle everything else.
Take a closer look at Mr Blue Sky.
Mr Blue Sky font FAQs
Does Mr Blue Sky include uppercase and lowercase letters?
Yes. Mr Blue Sky includes uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation and symbols.
Does Mr Blue Sky include stylistic alternates?
No.
Does Mr Blue Sky contain ligatures?
No.
What weights or styles are available?
Mr Blue Sky comes in one bold display style rather than a family of different weights.
Which font formats are supplied?
The download includes OTF and TTF files for desktop installation.
What languages does Mr Blue Sky support?
Mr Blue Sky contains 337 glyphs and supports Western, Central and South-Eastern European character sets.
Does Mr Blue Sky work at small sizes?
Mr Blue Sky was designed for display typography. Its chunky shapes and dividing line work best in headlines and other prominent text.
What licence comes with Mr Blue Sky?
The standard purchase includes a one-user Desktop licence for creating static artwork.
Webfonts, apps, digital advertising, electronic documents and broadcast work may require an additional licence.
Written by Simon Stratford, an independent type designer and graphic designer based in London. These are my opinions, reached after too little sleep and too much coffee.
You can also follow my antics on @itsmesimonok, or leave a comment below. Despite all the opinions, I’m actually quite nice.