This past July I went to visit my parents for my birthday. That house still contains a lot of my belongings–mainly my extensive manga library and figurine collection, but also all my old notebooks, sketchbooks, paintings, drawings, prints, art supplies, etc.
It’s a good thing I’m a 100% digital artist now, since there’s no way any of that would fit in my apartment!
Anyway, while searching around for a notepad to take some notes on, I found an old Alvin graph paper notepad from college. A cursory flip-through revealed that it still had plenty of blank pages available. It wasn’t until I got back home to my apartment that I realized…
This was the notebook I originally tried to design mousetrap in!
Yup, insane as it may seem, my first draft for mousetrap was made in pencil on paper! And yes, originally mousetrap was going to be a super-tiny serif font.
Once I was at a computer and testing out the design, I quickly realized why there aren’t any super-tiny serif fonts: it’s because they look horrible! I split my original concept into two separate fonts: mousetrap (super-tiny) and Pixolde (serifs).
In the end, the design from this early sketch didn’t make it very far, but it’s still a real trip to find a 10+ year old notebook like this! Perhaps I’ll do something with the other designs I had in here.