Designed by John Downer, Council is a dingbat and wood type font family. This typeface has 3 styles and was released by Emigre.

Council was influenced by some capital letters, planographically printed, on a sweet tin I purchased an antique store. The tin is the shapes and size of a hat box, and it was made in the early 1900s for John G. Woodward & & Co. of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The lettering is fascinating to me both for its competent style and due to the fact that of its strong resemblance to wood type. The lettering is neither completely consistent nor slavishly executed, however it has the basic appearance of being composed instead of drawn. Strangely enough, however, while this lettering style has a number of the screen characteristics of wood type, it appears not to have actually been copied from any one known wood type font style of its day. It is a meticulous synthesis of typographic and lithographic perceptiveness. In my evaluation, its thick, compact appearance seems to be the outcome of a commercial lettering artist's unabashed admiration of xylographic poster types. I regard it as an example of mimicry in the very best sense of the word.

My deal with Council started in 1996 and concluded this year. I attempted to establish the primary font with as much fidelity to the percentages of the characters on the candy tin as was affordable while sticking to particular established typeface production requirements these days. (This typeface is kerned, for example.) Of the full-size capitals in the face, just those I discovered in the name and place on the candy tin owe their shapes to one specific source. Hence, the A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, J, L, N, O, R, S, U, W, and & & all have models. I ought to point out that the D is uncommon since it is the only letter with a convex side in my alphabet. This disparity exists in the initial and is one I chose to protect. The S, by comparison, had a squarish type I didn't favor, so I differed it in my typeface. The balance of the upper case and little caps, plus the figures, punctuation, financial symbols and miscellaneous recommendation indications represent my effort to fill out the font.

The Word Brandings were included later on. There are no stacked letters to be seen on the sweet tin, and just one raised letter, however given the narrowness of the characters in my typeface, I thought that short stacks or other plans of characters would be useful as a companion set. Zuzana Licko arranged them into two volumes.

-John Downer

Font Family:
· Council Regular
· Council Word Logos One
· Council Word Logos Two