My con­tri­bu­tion to the world of spread­sheets is called Axel. It has been writen about quite a bit already, like here, but the nam­ing still seems to need explain­ing. As the illus­tra­tion shows, Axel saves space while still being leg­i­ble, mak­ing it a wel­come typo­graphic alter­na­tive for those poor peo­ple who have to work in Excel and other spread­sheet apps every day. So these users tell me. But one of them, Dan Reynolds, thinks it could have been even bet­ter by being called Axl.

All my type­faces have four-letter names: Meta, Info, Unit. ITC Offic­ina came ear­lier and is the excep­tion. I wanted to name this one Exel, but the peo­ple at FontShop in Berlin were a lit­tle afraid that the big com­pany in Seat­tle might take excep­tion to the obvi­ous ref­er­ence. I don’t think that would have been a prob­lem, but then I am not the dis­trib­u­tor. Axel is homo­phone with Excel, and it has four letters.