3IP Type Foundry  is a division of Three Islands Press (3IP), a small digital publishing company in Rockport, Maine. We currently represent the work of three type designers who specialize in historical type, fine text type, authentic-looking handwriting fonts, and a few offbeat/display creations.

Swedish type designer Lars Bergquist describes himself as "a living fossil from the age of lead type." He was born in 1936 and trained originally as a historian but left university life and went into publishing—of encyclopedias and reference literature—learning that side of typography from the bottom up. The bottom line being Linotype machines like Jurassic Singer machines, smelling of hot lead and oil, and flatbed presses behaving like demented mangles. He later used to say that he was a typographer who had gone all the way from cuneiform to digital.

Bergquist began dabbling in type design at a late stage; because of his background in history, he specialized in text type with historical roots and even flirted with blackletter. After retirement, he built a second career as a type designer under his proprietary Timberwolf Type label. Two things put an end to this: medical problems leading to some close encounters with sawbones of a specialist kind, and the discovery that he'd produced so many fonts for different foundries, that he was actually competing with himself.

Although the Timberwolf Type operation has wound down, good typefaces have a life of their own. Meanwhile, Bergquist has reverted to the study of history, in rocking-chair mode, and old hobbies like epistemology and photography—and type-watching, of course.

View fonts by Lars Bergquist »

Patricia Lillie was born in Ashtabula, Ohio, in 1958. In 1976 she moved to New York where she divided her time between Parsons School of Design and CBGB. Upon leaving art school, she became a really good waitress. After a particularly hard day of pouring coffee and serving sticky buns, she decided it was time to buckle down and focus.

Since then she has, among other things, written a few picture books, created a few picture fonts, and designed a few display faces. In 1986, Ms. Lillie left New York to return "temporarily" to Northeast Ohio. She's been there ever since.

A recent box from Amazon contained one book on type, one book on knitting, and one book on working with a rescued dog. That pretty much sums her favorite things. Just don't ask her for a refill on your coffee.

View fonts by Patricia Lillie »

Brian Willson grew up in Austin, Texas, in the 1950s and '60s. He bounced around the Austin music scene a while before snagging a Radio/TV/Film degree from The University of Texas in 1979. The next year he became a father and promptly high-tailed it with his little family to coastal Maine, where he worked as a broadcast and print journalist for many years.

Willson founded 3IP in 1989 to self-publish a book of pretentious nature essays. Soon after, he found himself tinkering with type design, and 3IP has since become known for its library of authentic-looking handwriting fonts—many of them modeled after historical penmanship—and antique text simulations.

In his free time, Willson enjoys birding, hiking, cycling, and nature photography. For the past year or two, he's been fiddling around with fiction. And from the distant shores of Penobscot Bay, he remains a rabid Texas Longhorns fan.

View fonts by Brian Willson »