David Bergsland —I’ve been around a long time. This blog contains the musings of an artist, writer, & believer who’s been around far too long and knows less than I did at the end of the 1960s—when I was sure I knew everything. I believe the Lord has called me to write, so I do—trying to be obedient. Where it will lead is unknown except to the Lord Jesus. It is all Him—as I am finally convinced that what I do without the Lord is a waste of time at best. I definitely do not want to waste your time.
Here’s a little history
As a hippie in the late 1960s who was graduated by University of Minnesota with a BFA in Printmaking in 1971, I have been an artist and designer since 1967 (as far as I can recall in that distant past).
I actually started my design career immediately after graduation by working as an illustrator for an occult publisher in St. Paul. I also spent several wasted years as an ego-maniacal heathen fine artist until I found my true calling as a creative called by God to design and write. I didn’t meet the Lord until 1974, but that’s another story for another time. Anything beautiful and truthful I have done came from the Holy Spirit, by grace.
David Bergsland —typographer, author, font designer, teacher
Graphic Designer since 1979
This took a while as I was taught at the University of Minnesota that commercial art was prostitution. There was a lot of that type of baggage to clear out. I finally began in West Virginia under an art director named Pik who is still an inspiration. The man could draw marker roughs that were accurate enough to spec type and take measurements—and draw them as fast as I can write. This is where I began falling in love with type and typography.
I began to see my artwork as a service to my employers, clients, readers, and so on. This understanding transformed my career, was much more fulfilling, and allowed me to begin getting the focus off myself [though I still have a long way to go].
In 1983, after three years freelancing in Albuquerque, I became the art director for Albuquerque Printing, one of the largest commercial printers in the city. Here my love of typography really flourished with an immense library of press type and a top-notch graphic art copy camera.
Teacher since 1991
After nearly 8 years as art director, I was given the opportunity to teach commercial printing at a large community college, named Albuquerque TVI at the time with about 25,000 students. I taught all aspects of printing from art to stripping, platemaking, printing, and bindery. It quickly developed into one of the first all-digital printing/publishing degrees in the country with an all PDF workflow by 1993.
Writer since 1994
After four years of developing digital publishing course materials, Delmar Publishing, out of Thomson Learning [now Cengage], asked me to write Printing in a Digital World. This was the first textbook on the all-digital workflow for printing [AFAIK]. I wrote six books for them on digital printing, FreeHand, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and typography.
Font designer since 1994
As a new owner of Fontographer, frustrated with the fonts available, I designed all the fonts used in Printing in a Digital World. First Makambo, then MyFonts asked to sell my fonts. Monotype began selling them on all of its sites a few years later. I’m now selling over a hundred fonts in several dozen families on these two sites, plus FontSpring and YouWorkForThem.
On-Demand Publisher since 2002
I started releasing my new unpublished course materials through Lulu in late 2002 or early 2003. Until then I had been distributing them to my students as PDFs since 1996. My publishing house, Radiqx Press, went full-time in 2009. I am currently writing font design books using FontLab and Fontographer, on-demand publishing books, books about using InDesign as the center of your writing & publishing work, and various Christian books—both fiction and non-fiction. I cover my Christian fiction at my other blog: Reality Calling.
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