I lent a friend an early release of my own font Atwin, which is a digital interpretation of Franco Grignani’s Gemini Computer. Sometime later, and to my surprise, I received this gift in the post.

It is a white enamel mug decorated with the phrase “Greetings Earthlings!” with black text typeset in Atwin. The letters are cut out with a CNC vinyl cutter and stuck onto the mug. The cutter has introduced its own minor deviations from the glyph outlines, for example the counter in R has a small step in its outline made by the cutter that isn't present in the digital design. Weeding vinyl cut letters and transferring them onto an object can be a little bit tricky sometimes, and we can (just about) see that the crossbar on the first G is a little bit wonky.

The designer tells me that the cutter software ignored the kerning in the font file, so the unkerned type had to be adjusted by hand. Good job!

It is a source of great joy to receive things made with your own type.

It’s not possible to get the whole phrase in one shot, here we can see the right/hand part