Though the names imply normality, more or less, “neither of these designs is your average text or display font.” So says George Ryan, designer of these two very original typefaces.

Intended to resemble the handwriting of a child, Kristen and her Not So Normal sister originated in an innocent encounter years ago. It seems Mr. Ryan, along with his wife, Ro, were dining one evening in a modest neighborhood café on one of the many nourishing sidestreets near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were living at the time. Being blessed (or plagued) with the typophile’s eye, George couldn’t help noticing the unusual form of the handwritten menu. “It was a curious cross between a child’s hand-writing and that of an adult,” he explains. Not being a graphologist, George couldn’t explain why he thought the menu text had that quality; it was just a sense he had. The image of that script stayed with George until, over a period of years, it evolved into these two unconventional offerings, named for one of his daughters.

ITC Kristen Not So Normal, though designed as an extension font (a child’s expert set?), stands well on its own. Both typefaces have no dominant ascenders or descenders, making them unusually flexible with respect to legibility requirements.