Biographies
Jonathan Hoefler
President
Jonathan Hoefler is a typeface designer and an armchair type historian who specializes in the design of original typefaces. Named one of the forty most influential designers in America by I.D. Magazine, Hoefler's publishing work includes award-winning original typeface designs for Rolling Stone, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire; his institutional clients range from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to the rock band They Might Be Giants. Perhaps his best known work is the Hoefler Text family of typefaces, designed for Apple Computer and now appearing everywhere as part of the Macintosh operating system.
Hoefler's work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution) in New York. In 2002, The Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) presented Hoefler with its most prestigious award, the Prix Charles Peignot for outstanding contributions to type design. Hoefler and Frere-Jones' collaboration has earned them profiles in The New York Times, Time, and Esquire.
Tobias Frere-Jones
Principal, Director of Typography
After receiving his BFA in 1992 from Rhode Island School of Design, Frere-Jones joined Font Bureau, Inc. in Boston. During his seven years as Senior Designer, he created a number of the typefaces that are Font Bureau's best known, including Interstate and Poynter Oldstyle & Gothic. He joined the faculty of the Yale School of Art in 1996, where he continues to teach typeface design on the graduate level. In 1999, he left Font Bureau to return to New York, where he began work with Jonathan Hoefler. Since working together, the two have collaborated on projects for The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Nike, Pentagram, GQ, Esquire, The New Times, Business 2.0, and The New York Times Magazine.
He has designed over five hundred typefaces for retail publication, custom clients, and experimental research. His clients have included The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Cooper-Hewitt Museum, The Whitney Museum, The American Institute of Graphic Arts Journal, and Neville Brody. He has lectured at Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art, Pratt Institute, Royal College of Art, and Universidad de las Americas. His work has been featured in How, ID, Page, and Print, and is included in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In 2006, Frere-Jones became the first American to receive the Gerrit Noordzij Prize, presented by the Royal Academy of The Hague in honor of his unique contributions to type design, typography, and type education.
Carleen Borsella
Chief Operating Officer
Carleen Borsella joined H&FJ in 2002 with ten years of marketing and management experience in the financial services (JP Morgan Chase) and entertainment Industries (Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG). As Chief Operating Officer, Carleen supervises all aspects of the business, and is charged with continuing its growth and development. As Director of Licensing and Marketing, she oversees all of H&FJ's promotional activities, and directs H&FJ's Enterprise Licensing program which is responsible for providing customized licenses to corporate end-users.
Carleen holds both a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Management and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and International Business from New York University's Stern School of Business.
Romeo Ruz
Sales and Marketing Manager
Romeo Ruz comes to H&FJ — and NYC — by way of Japan, Hawaii and the Philippines, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a minor in Industrial Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University. Romeo manages all of H&FJ's retail sales operations, working daily with clients to arrange font licenses, provide estimates, and answer the myriad unexpected questions that arise regarding font licensing and usage.
Andy Clymer
Typeface Design and Development
Andy Clymer earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in graphic design from San Diego State University before returning to school to quench his thirst for all things typographic. While studying to receive his Master of Design degree in Type Design from the Type & Media postgraduate course at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art) in The Hague, The Netherlands, Andy became increasingly drawn to the notion that type designers have had for centuries of building one's own tools for the job — mechanical bits and pieces, historically, and now bits and pieces of software. In developing typefaces for H&FJ, Andy balances his interest in new methods of design and production with a fond respect for tradition. In his free time he can be found taking photographs and searching for proper Mexican food.
Sara Soskolne
Typeface Design and Development
After ten years working as a graphic designer in her home town of Toronto — a period during which her interest in type gradually increased in inverse proportion to her interest in anything else — Sara decided it was worth crossing an ocean for and moved to England to study typeface design at the University of Reading, where she received her MA in the subject in 2003. In addition to designing the beginnings of a super-family of typefaces, which she is definitely going to finish one of these days, she has also written a study of the evolution of the sans serif lowercase in the types of the nineteenth century, which she is definitely going to publish one of these days. 2005 saw her return across the Atlantic, joining not only Hoefler & Frere-Jones, but also Tschichold & Benguiat & Peignot & Lubalin & Ruzicka & Licko — the distinguished fellowship of typeface designers with unpronounceable last names. (Sos-kol-nee.)
Brian Hennings
Designer
Combining the methodical reasoning of a machine with a predisposition to seek out the unknown, Brian puts his unique abilities to work as a graphic designer at H&FJ, where his process of working with new fonts generally involves running them through the wringer with the zeal of a grand inquisitor. Prior to joining H&FJ in 2008, he spent seven years quadruple-dipping his chips in the print, online, broadcast and environmental design bowls of New York and Atlanta, figuring out exactly what it is that bends or breaks a typeface under the demands of a multidisciplinary design practice. Despite his best efforts, we're proud to say that Brian has yet to crack any of our fonts, not that he isn't continuing to try.
Brian holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from the University of Florida, and a Master of The Pit degree in Barbecue from Pitmaster University in New York.
Steve Gibbs
Fictional Character
Despite the fact that there is nobody named Steve Gibbs at H&FJ, the 'gibbs@' e-mail address attracts hundreds of pieces of correspondence every day. A review of this e-mail, most of which deals with investment opportunities, exciting holiday gifts, and various solicitations of a personal nature, is useful in separating the wheat from the chaff in our own mailboxes. Additionally, owing to an unexpected surplus of telephone extensions in our New York office, we've assigned Mr. Gibbs his own direct line, to which unwanted telephone solicitations are promptly dispatched with extreme prejudice.
