the Wichita Font
If You Can't Be One, Type Like One
April 15, 1997
Those darn rockstars are so
unpredictable. You never know what
they're gonna do next. I never expected
M. Doughty, singer, guitarist and
lyricist for Soul Coughing, to draw a
font for me as fast as he did. I guess it
helps that I have some of the best font
scouts in the rockstar industry working
for me.
In this case my font scout was Nicole
Blackman. Nicole tracked down Doughty
in some hip New York club (probably the
Knitting Factory where he used to work
in his pre-rockstar days) and told him
he had to make a font for me. Then she
gifted him with some of her homemade
chocolate truffles. With an offer like
that, how could any rockstar refuse to
draw the alphabet?
The truffles worked their magic, and
within a week of Nicole telling Doughty
about my Rockstar Font Project, he
mailed me an alphabet straight from
his room at a Radisson in Pittsburgh.
It's a simple font... bold, clean and
whimsical, not unlike Doughty's voice.
It's distinctive and charming, cartoony,
but not too over-the-top wacky.
Doughty's penmanship turned out to be
every bit as playful and endearing as
his smoke-encrusted voice box.
I don't know what Doughty wanted his
font to be named. As easy as it was to
wrangle up this font, I've found it darn
near impossible to track the man down
for an interview regarding the latest
goings-on in the Soul Coughing world.
As I hear it from his publicist, he's off
gallivanting around Europe. Soul
Coughing is huge in France. All good
rockstars are huge in France.
So with Mister Doughty rocking the
Frenchies, I was left here alone to
name his font. In honor of the great
tradition of naming fonts after cities
(i.e. Monaco, Geneva, Chicago, Shakopee,
etc.) and also inspired by Doughty's
ever-present geographical references
in Soul Coughing songs, I've decided to
call this font Wichita.
Wichita was drawn by M. Doughty. It
was converted to font format by me,
using my patented Alphabetician's
Soopersecret Fontmaking
Technique(tm). In addition to your
standard ABC's and numbers, this font
also contains a few special dingbats
which come in handy as shorthand when
cranking out Soul Coughing set lists.
Special characters in this font go like
this:
(option-m = "Mister Bitterness")
(option-s = "Soft Serve")
(option-b = "Bus")
(option-w = "White Girl")
(option-c = "Chicago")
Enjoy this font and use it often.
And give me ten dollars.
Thanks.
-chank