Preamble to the profile
MN Week was born out of the discovery of people I admired online. If I dug them enough, I would click on the About and find a Minnesotan. A few of these discoveries happened in quick succession and I didn’t have to be hit with a snowball to see a pattern.
One thing to note: these profiles are not journalistic, but more personal. I’ll leave the professional writing to the, uh, professionals. Enjoy discovering these talented people living in a place that celebrates music, food and creativity…
Chank Diesel is his name, which sets the mood for his font work from the get-go. In 2004, when I was just starting out in card designing, I came across Chank.com. I was hooked immediately with its presentation of type that had personality. It was an eclectic, professional mix of future, past, modern, whimsy and wacky. Being such a neophyte, I had questions about font licenses and how I could use the fonts I wanted to purchase. The friendly folks at Chank, as they are dubbed, were just that. They answered my obvious questions in a patient, and yes, friendly way. I forget why, but Chank himself sent me this CD holder, with RiverDog Prints hand-drawn on the spine. It is known as Googly Eyes in our house and we travel with it frequently. Now, onto the man himself…
Chank was born Charles Anderson in Canada and raised in Florida. It is written that his neighbors called him “Chanky,” after Spanky from the Little Rascals. His last name is now Andermack, a combination of his and his wife’s surnames (big fan of that!) Chank attended Macalester College in St. Paul. He designed fonts while working as Creative Director for CAKE, an alternative music mag. His music connections brought his fonts to many album covers. Chank.com began in 1996 and his fonts can be seen everywhere! He used to keep track of Chank font sightings on his blog and has a YouTube channel. You’ve seen a Chank font being a resident of planet earth.
Not only are there individual fonts for purchase or free fonts for download, you can Go Font Yourself by creating a font out of your own handwriting. Custom fonts for businesses are available to further your brand and identity. Chank also is a public speaker and runs font-making workshops, locally and around the country. He’s also a fine art painter with over 15,000 paintings to his credit. Passionate and critical, I imagine that Chank is a guy you want sitting at the bar for a colorful, intelligent conversation.
Many of you LOVE type as much as I do. I hope if you haven’t visited Chank.com before, you will do so immediately to inject some energy and fun into your projects! You can also contribute to Font Aid IV by purchasing the Coming Together font. All funds raised will go to Doctors without Borders to aid in earthquake relief for Haiti.
Tomorrow, Jessica Puckett from Plushroom Soup will answer some questions about plushies, pronto pups and the group Nelson.
