Ben Kiel
Partner Typeface Designer at XYZ Type
Missouri, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Kiel is a partner typeface designer at XYZ Type with 13 years of experience crafting type, teaching, and solving problems at the intersection of design and technology. After earning an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading and several years at House Industries, he now teaches at Washington University and Type@Cooper while leading XYZ Type with Jesse Ragan. He pairs typographic craft with hands-on tooling—contributing to fonttools (including WOFF2 docs and internal validations) and scripting animated specimens and DrawBot flipbooks for projects like the Recursive variable family. Based in Missouri, Ben blends Python-backed engineering, UI-focused specimen work, and academic practice to deliver production-ready font systems and compelling visual demonstrations.
14 years of coding experience
University of Reading
Github Skills (7)
fontface10
fonts10
documentations10
python10
documentation10
opentype9
ui-design8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
arrowtype/recursive
Aug 2019 - Mar 2021
Recursive Mono & Sans is a variable font family for code & UI
Role in this project:
UI Designer
UI DesignerContributions:123 commits, 30 PRs, 59 pushes in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the visual presentation and user interface aspects of the "recursive" font project, focusing on the creation of visual specimens and animated demonstrations. Their work involved DrawBot scripting to generate flipbook-style animations showcasing the font's variable features. Key contributions include the development of dynamic text elements and bar charts within the DrawBot environment to visualize the font's characteristics.
google-fontsmonofonttype-designvariable-font
fonttools/fonttools
Dec 2015 - Jul 2022
A library to manipulate font files from Python.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Technical Writer
Back-end Developer & Technical WriterContributions:6 reviews, 49 commits, 14 PRs in 6 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Ben contributed to the documentation and internal workings of the `fonttools/fonttools` repository, a library for manipulating font files in Python. Their contributions focused on updating documentation related to the WOFF2 format and refactoring references to "robofab" with "ufoLib". They also added essential dependencies to the setup, and addressed internal validations. The user demonstrates expertise in Python, with a focus on file format specifications.
pythonfontphoneticsfontswoff
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