Thomas Phinney
Board Member at ATypI: Association Typographique Internationale
Portland, Oregon, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolThomas Phinney is a font specialist and type designer with over two decades of experience in forensic typography, product management, and education, currently serving on the ATypI board. Branded as “The Font Detective,” he consults and acts as expert witness on high-profile cases—helping courts and publishers determine document authenticity, point-size compliance, and other legally significant typographic details. He has led product and business teams at FontLab and Adobe, contributed to enterprise font services at Extensis, and worked on cutting-edge variable font and icon projects for clients like Google. An experienced teacher and writer, he runs workshops worldwide and has written widely about type, while his own typeface work spans multiple scripts. Based in Portland, he combines technical depth in font technology (including multi-axis variable fonts with thousands of glyphs) with practical legal and product-facing experience. A perpetual learner, he pairs academic grounding in typography with hands-on problem solving across design, engineering, and litigation.
12 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
MS Printing / typography, MS Printing / typography at Rochester Institute of TechnologyMBA Business, MBA Business at University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Stackoverflow
36reputation
5kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (101)
windows10
material-design-icons10
material-ui10
phonetics10
javascript10
react-components10
divider10
cjk10
dart10
science10
opentype10
fonts10
quality-assurance10
cross-platform10
android10
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
googlefonts/science-gothic
Jul 2019 - Aug 2022
Science Gothic, a libre variable font
Contributions:388 commits, 2 PRs, 369 pushes in 3 years 2 months
sciencegoogle-fontslibrefontgothic
tphinney/font-tools
Mar 2014 - Dec 2016
Contributions:30 commits, 5 pushes, 3 comments in 2 years 9 months
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