Mark Simonson

Mark Simonson (b. 1955) is an American independent font designer who works in St. Paul, Minnesota. Simonson has described his fonts as often being inspired by lettering styles of the past, such as the graphic design of the 1970s and Art Deco graphics. Simonson’s most popular font is Proxima Nova (1994, revised 2005), a geometric-grotesque sans-serif design used by companies such as BuzzFeed, Mashable, NBC, Wired and Mic. As of June 2016, it is the second highest-selling family on font sales website MyFonts. Simonson worked as a graphic designer before specialising in font design. He has credited his career as a font designer to his partner Pat winning money on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, as her success allowed him to take six months off from graphic design work to develop a library of fonts that he could sell. He has also written blog articles on the history of type design and the lettering styles used in films.