Mr Chumley font came to me while labeling freezer bags. Yup, freezer bags—is that weird? I bought a pack of sharpie permanent marker pens for labeling freezer bags. Yea, I do that. I know it's not very rock'n'roll, but there it is.
Don't mix your Tikka with your Stroganoff
Nothing worse than thinking you're getting Chicken Tikka when you're getting beef stroganoff. Not that I have anything against Stroganoff, that's a tasty meal.
Sharpie to the rescue
I'd pull out the Sharpie each week to write on the bags. Looking at those scribbles got me to thinking. I could use this pen for creating a typeface. It gave me the idea of creating Mr. Chumley. Strange how ideas can come from anywhere, they can creep up on you in the most mundane situations.
When an idea strikes you've got to act
So that's what I did, I grabbed a pile of paper and the Sharpie marker and sketched out the letter forms. Doodling at first, and discounting the idea of a script font. A style emerged—a bold style. I dumped the idea of serifs as the pen was too bold.
Experiments are part of the fun
Restricting pen strokes to a fat pen mark made me work harder. I decided to draw outlines and fill them in with the pen. It also led to a lot of experiments. Things didn't always work out as expected—but that's part of the fun.