In the acknowledgements section of my book, I thanked “my colleagues at Adobe Fonts for what in hindsight were some of the best years of my professional life,” and I meant it. The friendliness of the team, the healthy work-life balance, and the chance to work on a product I genuinely love... oh boy. Many places I worked since those Typekit days got one or two of those things right, but never all three. And it was something I didn’t fully appreciate until several years had passed. In all honesty, I’m not even sure I really understood it until I wrote that sentence for the book.

This bit of scene-setting exists because I’ve got an announcement to make: I’m very proud to be joining the Adobe Fonts team as Senior Staff Designer, and today is my first day as an employee. In fact, today is the first day I’ve been an employee of anywhere in... checks notes... 18.5 years. Crumbs!

I’ve actually been contracting for the team since last June, so in many ways, today is just another day, but stepping into life as an employee represents a huge change for me personally, and debating whether or not to leave behind independent life was something I mulled over for quite some time. All ‘roles’ I’ve had in recent years, including the first time I was at Adobe over a decade ago, were technically just contractual arrangements that went through my company. The last time I was an actual employee — i.e. on the payroll of a company that wasn’t mine — was all the way back in 2007 at Carsonified.

For all of those 18.5 years, I extolled the benefits of independent life to anyone who’d listen, encouraging many creatives not only to go freelance, but also to set up a company through which to put their client work. (And if you’re thinking of going freelance, I’d still recommend having a company as the optimum way to operate.) However, for me personally, at this particular time in life, at this particular juncture of my very non-standard career, and at this particular moment in the evolution of what it even means to be a ‘designer’, full-time employment — and specifically, full-time employment on this team, working on this product, at this company — is way more alluring to me than life as an independent designer.

In my opinion, it’s impossible to talk about starting a job at a big tech company in 2025 without mentioning AI, and Adobe’s approach to AI is one of the big reasons I decided to make this move. While every other big tech firm working on AI has unceremoniously hoovered up anything and everything posted publicly on the internet, Adobe has only ever trained its LLMs on data it has permission for. Plus, with its Content Credentials Initiative, the company has led the way in establishing a standard for labelling human- or machine-created content. Having the chance to help (in some small way) shape the way AI affects the world of typography — and as part of a team that very much cares about doing the right thing — will be an honour.

Over the last year and a half that I’ve been contracting for Adobe Fonts, we’ve already made a few fair changes. (I can’t believe they let me sneak the Typekit-era “Every font you need, everywhere you need it” tagline back onto the homepage!) Bigger changes are coming and I’m so excited about it all, and I’m once again grateful to the team for their trust. Happy fonting!