Ben Kiel
Partner & Typeface Designer at XYZ Type
Missouri, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Kiel is a partner and typeface designer with 14 years of experience blending design and technology, co-leading XYZ Type after formative years at House Industries. He holds an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading and teaches type at Washington University and Type@Cooper, bringing academic rigor to practical type projects. Ben pairs hands-on tooling skills—contributing Python-based font tooling and WOFF2 documentation—to polished UI work like animated DrawBot specimens for the popular Recursive variable font. Based in Missouri, he specializes in solving complex problems at the intersection of typography, implementation, and education, often translating intricate format and validation issues into usable design assets.
14 years of coding experience
Master of Arts - MA, Master of Arts - MA at University of ReadingBachelor of Fine Arts - BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts - BFA at Washington University in St. Louis
Github Skills (6)
font-face10
fonts10
python10
documentation10
opentype9
ui-design8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
arrowtype/recursive
Aug 2019 - Mar 2021
Recursive Mono & Sans is a variable font family for code & UI
Role in this project:
UI Designer
UI DesignerContributions:123 commits, 30 PRs, 59 pushes in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the visual presentation and user interface aspects of the "recursive" font project, focusing on the creation of visual specimens and animated demonstrations. Their work involved DrawBot scripting to generate flipbook-style animations showcasing the font's variable features. Key contributions include the development of dynamic text elements and bar charts within the DrawBot environment to visualize the font's characteristics.
font-familyfontvariable-fonttype-designfonttools
fonttools/fonttools
Dec 2015 - Jul 2022
A library to manipulate font files from Python.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Technical Writer
Back-end Developer & Technical WriterContributions:6 reviews, 49 commits, 14 PRs in 6 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Ben contributed to the documentation and internal workings of the `fonttools/fonttools` repository, a library for manipulating font files in Python. Their contributions focused on updating documentation related to the WOFF2 format and refactoring references to "robofab" with "ufoLib". They also added essential dependencies to the setup, and addressed internal validations. The user demonstrates expertise in Python, with a focus on file format specifications.
pythonfontsopentype
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