Could you please introduce yourself?
Hi, I'm Jimbo Bernaus, a Barcelona-based lettering artist & graphic designer. I have over a decade of experience in lettering and a passion that dates back to childhood—my journey led me to co-create the Shoutbam studio, which helps others unleash their creative potential through lettering practise and tutoring.
How did you get into your professional career?
I just got super obsessed with letters early on. A little backstory: when I was a child, I just didn’t enjoy school that much, especially like math or physics. So I started drawing letters, including during my exams. I remember leaving some exams in blank because I just didn’t know the thing. I was always busy drawing letters.
I loved all things anime and manga, but instead of drawing characters' faces, I was drawing their names. Back then I just didn’t understand what that meant until I discovered lettering and calligraphy. Someone told me that I could make a living out of it, and then I was like ‘aha, so yeah, you actually like letters, so maybe you should give this a try.’
What “a-ha” moment shaped your typographic life?
I have two aha moments. The first was when my typography teacher, Mark, encouraged us to explore the new momentum in calligraphy and lettering. He said ‘Let’s learn together’ and provided resources and learned alongside us, which was super motivating. Some of us from that class still work in lettering professionally.
The second key moment was during my Erasmus in Tallinn, Estonia, where the education system pushed me to experiment. We did calligraphy performances, treated letters as illustrations, and I started taking on clients. That experience in Estonia completely transformed my approach.
Why should anyone consider making their own custom fonts today?
I'm just going to give you a straight up answer: simply because it's never been so easy to actually create a font.
I think that’s why everybody should do it because you don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to have any fundamentals (of course, they'll be important if you really want to digg in). With tools as easy as Fontself, I think you have no excuse. It’s better to just get started and create your own fonts for fun, because even your family members could be enjoy your custom designs on their own projects, like on their Word documents.
You also feel so accomplished when you create your first font and you’re like, ‘I did this myself.’ It feels really good, so why not try it out now?
What's your experience with font creation tools?
It started in university where I had my first experience with the font editor FontLab, which had a steep learning curve and is a little bit complicated. Then I tried Glyphs, which I also used to create a couple fonts, but it is also complex and the learning curve is way slower.
Then, about eight years ago, I installed Fontself’s plugin for Illustrator & Photoshop and I was amazed at how easy it was. I was just like, wait, what? I can just drag & drop characters into a panel and that's it!?
And two years ago, I discovered Fontself for iPad, and since I use the iPad Pro for work, it made font creation incredibly simple.
Fontself on iPad is definitely the tool that I'm using now and that I want to teach people from now on.
What surprised you about Fontself on iPad?
What I like the most is that it really uses the capabilities of my Apple Pencil and iPad. When I first tried, it was just really natural to come up with letters in handwritten styles, lettering, or calligraphy.
One thing that stood out as well was how I can easily edit my letters, all the vector points one by one. There’s even this little magic wand feature that cleans up the Bezier points & handles, and I’ve tried such capabilities in other tools—they just didn’t do such a good job. That magic wand in Fontself actually works pretty well.
And at any time you can visualize your letters as preview texts as you design them. It’s just very intuitive.
Any rituals that help you get into the creative flow?
Every morning starts with a cup of coffee. After showering, I head to the coffee shop near my studio—I just work better outside my closed space. I think that when I see people passing by, I don’t know what it is, I just produce way better. In the first two hours I do all the creative parts of my job, I write scripts, brainstorm ideas, or sketch.
And after that, I go back to the studio to produce videos or get to work on other things. This routine makes a huge difference.
What’s the best way to deal with creative blocks?
Step away. Stepping away is a very important part of what we do because creative people are complicated beings, and sometimes it just doesn’t come to you.
When you hit a creative block, step away—take a walk, see friends, play sports, or go to the mountains. Do things that make you happy without thinking about work. For me, creating brings joy, but sometimes I need a break to enjoy other activities. That contrast is essential.
How do you see the type & lettering industries evolve in the next 5–10 years?
A very important thing is happening right now. There’s a lot of creatives who are super afraid of Artificial Intelligence. I feel like if AI is here to take away some of the tedious things that we’ve been doing manually, creativity is never gonna be taken away. I certainly use AI sometimes to produce a couple ideas or just bounce off ideas.
But I think the future is going to be about doing things that AI will never be able to do, so for instance I recommend to show things like your process. I actually often enjoy the process more than the final result of my work, and I’ve decided to show it more in the future. People appreciate that because art is not just the final thing, it’s the path that takes you there.
Which creatives would you love to learn more about their typographic process?
There is one person in the lettering space that I’ve always been a fan of who is Gemma O’Brien. She’s an Australian illustrator and lettering artist, and she’s just super impressive. I wish that at some point in my career, I could actually talk to her because I think like her brain just works in an incredible way.
The second one that would be a person that sadly passed away, Akira Toriyama, who is a Japanese author of my favorite series Dragon Ball. I’ve been always super inspired by Dragon Ball.
And then the third person that I would like to meet is also Japanese, his name is Hideo Kojima. He’s a creator of Metal Gear Solid, my favorite video game ever. I learned a lot of storytelling from him, and I think he would be such an interesting person to talk to.
What are your current top 3 favorite music tracks?
The band I’ve been listening to the most is Nothing But Thieves, a super energetic group from the UK. I saw them live a few years ago, and it was an amazing experience. One of my fav songs is Sorry:
Next is Unknown Male 01 by Biffy Clyro, one of my biggest influences.
And lately, I’ve been obsessing over My Own Summer, by Deftones. Their music is dark and grungy—not exactly mood-lifting—but I like the contrast. While Biffy Clyro and Nothing But Thieves bring positive energy, Deftones provides a grounding balance, which is great for creativity.
Watch the complete interview
Oh, and one more thing...
Jimbo created a gorgeous custom app icon & splash screen for Fontself on iPad. These easter eggs are exclusively available from his Instagram profile @jimbobernaus. Check them out!
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