What We Do
JamraPatel is the design studio of Mark Jamra and Neil Patel. With over 55 years of combined experience in type design, we create innovative typeface systems in many scripts for use in under-supported language communities in North America and abroad. These are multi-font type families designed and produced for use in everything from printed matter to mobile devices. Our process involves extensive research, dialogues with authoritative experts, and doing what is necessary to create useful designs that are respectful of the needs and cultures of specific language communities. And we acquaint ourselves with the environments, both physical and technological, in which our work will eventually perform.
To facilitate that performance, we also create language-specific keyboards and apps in consultation with authorities within the community itself.
Our advocacy for under-served writing systems includes developing long-term relationships with community leaders and literacy activists, building equity in language support, collaborating in the development of script encoding proposals, and acting as liaisons between language communities, standards bodies and technology companies.
Mark Jamra
Mark is a type designer and former professor of graphic design at Maine College of Art & Design in Portland. He has designed and produced typefaces for 40 years. He is the proprietor of TypeCulture, an independent digital type foundry. His lettering and typefaces have been shown in numerous exhibitions and have received awards from the Type Directors Club (TDC) and the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). Mark has lectured, conducted workshops and taught graphic design, type design and history at colleges in the U.S. and Europe. He has also been a typographic consultant to the Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories in Bristol, England and to URW Software & Type GmbH in Hamburg, Germany.
Neil Patel
Neil’s entry into the field of type design was an unconventional one. After spending a decade as a photolithography process engineer in the semiconductor industry, he decided to change careers into something more self-directed. As an engineer, Neil’s specialties included sub-micron printing and optical proximity correction. The parallels of this skill set to traditional printing and photographic reproduction led him to discover type and lettering. Using this unique background along with his strength in analytical problem solving and system level thinking, Neil has developed custom type solutions for clients such as IDEXX Laboratories, NCR and Cartoon Network. Neil Patel is the designer behind Tetradtype, an independent digital type foundry.
The web fonts used on this site are Expo Sans Pro and Expo Serif Pro, designed by Mark Jamra and served by Adobe Fonts.