Building on decades of experience as a designer of fonts for comic books, video games, TV shows and movies, John Roshell’s Swell Type takes inspiration from the real-world signs and scenery of California to build fun, friendly, functional fonts for your graphic design and branding projects.
80 Weights + Variable Font
3 Weights
45 Weights + Variable Font
24 Weights + Variable Font
25 Weights + Variable Font
25 Weights + Two Variable Fonts
40 Weights + Variable Font
SWELL TYPE fonts are available at
In the Works
Beachwood: inside the numbers
The third big source of inspiration for Beachwood came into play when it was nearly finished. I noticed the street sign numbers looked a lot like uniform jersey numbers. Sports is a big part of LA’s history and culture, so I thought, how can I make this the ultimate uniform number font? Warning: we’re going […]
Signs point to Beachwood
Five years ago I had the mind-bending experience of visiting the Mendenhall Museum in Buellton, an incredible collection of road signs and other car memorabilia. It sits only about 45 minutes north of me, but it felt like a time machine that took me back 70 years: I was especially fascinated by these road signs, […]
Design Hero: Fred Gehrke, creator of the first football helmet logo
I’m finishing up a new font, and decided to test it out on social media by telling the story of one of my first design heroes: Fred Gehrke, who designed the first football helmet logo. He’s a hero in my mind because he saw a cool possibility where nobody else did, and then just went […]