Prison Break

The first drawing of the letter forms appeared as sketches back in 2011. At the time I was trying to find a typeface that represented a gritty, New York City aesthetic to make a 'zine about a fictional character called ‘Mr. Rubbish’ who was on a series of misadventures throughout Gotham. Bold and tall like skyscrapers with sharp edges. Like the movie poster for Mean Streets, but mean-er. Lubalin/ITC-inspired, but with a more brutal form. Ten years later, in the dark days of the pandemic with time and no job to bother me, I rediscovered the sketches and quickly scaled it to a basic character set. With everything as bleak as it was, making things was my escape, my Prison Break. In 2025 (with the assistance of Sean Fermoyle), we formally finished this typeface, and can now offer it to the public for wider use and visual consumption.

Designer(s): Justin Fines (demo-design.com), 2025