A screenshot of Fontcase, a grid of tiles representing fonts, and the logo, a suitcase lined with red felt, and silver letters inside

Fontcase, a font manager

I always dreamed of an iPhoto-like experience for my typeface collection.

I used to be a big user of Suitcase on MacOS 9, and I never thought that the default font manager on OS X was that good.

I always dreamed of an iPhoto-like experience for my typeface collection, and I was reaching a point in my career where I felt reputable enough to start pushing this idea among the developers I knew.

I pitched the idea to Sophia from Sophiestication, but she was afraid that Apple would come up with a better Font manager soon enough.

A screenshot of Fontcase, a grid of tiles representing fonts, and the logo, a suitcase lined with red felt and silver letters inside

I then pitched the idea to Pieter Omvlee, and he immediately liked it. Fontcase was a good match for his other designer-focused app, DrawIt. We started building Fontcase together, and finally released the version 1.0 in 2009.

TODO: alt

Fontcase won an Apple Design Award this year. The awkward part was that I was already an employee at the WWDC, and so I was the first (and possibly only?) Apple employee to receive an Apple Design Award on stage 😂.

A podium with a large screen behind it showcasing the app, and two small people in front of it, one of them being me. In the foreground, there are shadows of the participants’ heads.
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