About

Requisite Bio Page

 

I’m Dan Rhatigan, and I run this joint. There’s plenty to be discovered about me if you just look around, but here are a few assorted details to enhance your understanding of who I may or may not be:

  • As a full-time gig, I am the Director of Inventory Strategy & Curation at Monotype, because I really can’t stop thinking about fonts. On the side, I run a small type foundry called Bijou Type.
  • Before that, I worked for The Type Founders, and Type Network, and for a few years I was the Senior Manager of the Type Development team at Adobe. 
  • For quite a while, I was a type director for Monotype, looking after their New York and London offices. I first got involved with the company while working on a joint project between Monotype and the University of Reading, researching and designing non-Latin typefaces, primarily those used in India. I’m pretty glad I was able to shift over the type-design world full-time.
  • It’s easy to realize that I’m a pretty serious typography nut if you spend time talking to me, but my tattoos of various letterforms may be an even clearer sign that I’m REALLY INTO IT.
  • On the side, I publish a zine called Pink Mince. I’m extremely proud of it, and it most definitely has nothing to do with my day job. Why don’t you order a copy and see what you think?
  • The Young SparkyI was born in 1970 in scenic Staten Island, the unglamorous, semi-suburbany part of New York City. I grew up the youngest of six kids, and I have 25 first cousins. Can you tell we’re Irish Catholic?
  • I lived in New York City for most of my life, with a few stretches in Boston and London for a change of pace. I now live in Portland, OR, because it has more trees and elbow room than New York, and after COVID that seemed like a really great idea.
  • I moved to the U.K. to do the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading, which was one of the better decisions I’ve made in my life. I loved the hell out of it, and finally figured out what I should have been doing with myself all these years.
  • My past academic escapades have included 12 years of Catholic school, a BFA magna cum laude in graphic design from B.U. (and I’ll be the first to admit that I used the demands of an art program as an excuse to shirk more serious academic interests I might have pursued in another life), two cracks at a master’s degree in design (a year at B.U. and a year at Pratt Institute, neither of which challenged me the way I’d hoped), and a couple of years teaching design and typography courses at the City College of New York.
  • At some point during my late twenties, I was infected with HIV. I don’t exactly know how, but it goes without saying that I regret all the times that I thought I was acting safely enough, but wasn’t quite. It’s a stinky burden to carry around. I’m very lucky, though, that I am in excellent health and I have the resources at my disposal to stay that way.
  • If you’re just here cruising, or being a voyeuristic lurker, then you may as well just cut to the chase and tell me. I can probably use the ego boost.
  • And I’m a big ol’ ’mo, in case you’re wondering how to tailor those flirtatious remarks.
  • The stuff on this web site is just a glimpse. There’s more to me than you’ll ever see revealed here. Never forget that.