I'm a font snob.

Not in any self-conscious, discerning way - I don't curl a derisive lip at Arial (Helvetica is another issue), but I really enjoy looking at a piece of good design and figuring out why what font was used for what, and what makes a good font. Maybe a better moniker would be "Font Aficionado".

I used to work for a big design/branding agency as their in-house Mac guy, and looking back on that incarnation of myself, I'm keenly aware of what a knuckle-dragging primate I was, stomping around in an Australopithecan way amidst a sea of fabulously well groomed Homo Sapiens. Like any clever primate, I kept my eyes open, and learned a good deal about what good design is, and how it is far more influential and crucial than you might imagine at a first blush.

What I'm working my way up to in a roundabout way is my new-found love affair with fontifier.com. It's a site where you download a template, write (or draw) in a sample of your handwriting, scan it, post it to their magic font-creation machine, and end up with a font comprised of your own illegible scrawl. In my case, it's an experience analogous to scratching the outline of a bison on a cave wall, but it's still an awful lot of fun.

Tragically, my first attempt - Random Serif - is unimaginably awful. I seem to have hands comprised exclusively of thumbs, no, toes, so you can imagine the horror of a font designed by a man with absolutely no artistic bone in his body. Hopefully my next font - Random Sans - will be better...