Sarah Bell Maps

High Alpine Semibold has an unapologetically high ascender with no accompanying adjustment to the x-height. The descender was kept rather short as well, allowing uppercase to maintain its towering command. For moments when you designers feel like reaching ultimate heights, I’ve added many alternative characters; uppercase crossbarred characters have alternatives with daringly high crossbars, and stemmed lowercase characters have longer-stemmed alternatives. Many further glyphs are included with this font to accommodate multiple languages.

By the time I publish this, I will have just finished presenting at the 40th annual North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) conference. NACIS is a large community of map enthusiasts who meet once a year to share and learn about cartography projects. This year’s conference is being held virtually due to the current pandemic crisis.

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About the BellTopo Sans Font I designed the BellTopo Sans font, originally inspired by the typefaces on the antique U.S.G.S. maps of the late 1800s and early 1900s. To read more about the inspiration for BellTopo Sans, read the first post I wrote about it when the font was in beta. The font has undergone

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While making my own USGS-inspired maps, my search never returned the exact type of font I was looking for. The fruitless search was serendipitous however, because it provided the push to make my own. It was designed for map labels that are no larger than 80-100pt, but usually much smaller. I decided to name it BellTopo Sans with the plan to create a serif version.

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) holds a marvelous annual conference, and this year’s was in Tacoma, Washington just 90 minutes down the road from my house. I gave a talk on the techniques I use to draw mountain topography with colored pencils. The first few minutes give a little background of my PNW

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