hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

Drop #659 (2025-06-03): Typography Tuesday

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A Pressing Matter; Free Mono Font: Comic Shanns Mono; Free Marker Font: Empty Marker

I tried to temper the somewhat serious discussion in the first section with some fun freebies in today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop.

TL;DR

(This is an LLM/GPT-generated summary of today’s Drop using Ollama + Qwen 3 and a custom prompt.)

A Pressing Matter

Photo by Katya Wolf on Pexels.com

We’ve touched on the topic in this section lightly in prior Drops. However, as this particular summer starts in the U.S., there’s going to be the need and opportunity to distribute flyers, communications, posters, etc. for $REASONS. To that end, there’s an old-school typography technique that can help folks engaging in those activities be a tad safer when they do so. Plus, you may be able to get even more creative than you might in a pure glowing-rectangle context.

Every color laser printer manufactured since the 1980s (and many other printer types) secretly embeds invisible tracking information on every page you print, creating a digital fingerprint that can trace documents back to the exact printer and time of creation. This tracking system, known as Machine Identification Codes, uses microscopic yellow dots roughly every inch across each page, encoding the printer’s serial number, date, and time of printing. The dots are so small—about 0.1mm in diameter—that they’re invisible to the naked eye but easily detectable under blue light with proper equipment.

The real-world implications of this surveillance became starkly apparent in 2017 when NSA whistleblower Reality Winner was identified and prosecuted partly through these tracking dots. The yellow dots on leaked documents she printed revealed both the specific printer used and the exact timing, which FBI agents combined with office print logs to narrow their investigation to just six people. This case demonstrates how printer surveillance isn’t theoretical — it’s an active forensic tool that law enforcement agencies routinely use to trace printed materials back to their sources. Beyond yellow dots, newer printers employ even more sophisticated tracking methods, including steganographic techniques that hide identifying information in microscopic variations in text positioning and toner density.

For concerned folks everywhere, this surveillance capability poses particular risks in the current environment where surveillance powers have expanded dramatically. Printer tracking represents just one component of a comprehensive surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition systems, geofence warrants, and data broker information sales to law enforcement. When your printed materials can be forensically traced to specific devices and times, it potentially fully compromises security and privacy by mapping relationships and building timelines of activities.

The solution lies in returning to analog printing techniques that predate electronic surveillance capabilities. Letterpress printing offers genuine security advantages because it involves no electronic components that can embed tracking information. This relief printing technique transfers ink directly from raised surfaces (which you can even carve yourself!) to paper under pressure, creating documents that cannot be forensically traced through digital means. Modern letterpress is surprisingly accessible through university art departments, community print shops, and maker spaces, with complete home setups available for $200-400. Learning these analog techniques isn’t just about security. It’s about reclaiming control over how we communicate.

Letterpress Commons has tons of resources for how to get started, and remember to think twice before distributing printed communications generated by modern technology.

Free Mono Font: Comic Shanns Mono

Comic Shanns Mono is a monospaced, open-source font built for coders who want something friendlier and more accessible than standard coding fonts. It’s based on Comic Sans, but redesigned with strict monospace metrics so everything lines up perfectly for code, terminals, and ASCII art. It also adds extra characters, such as like math symbols and box drawing. This makes it useful for more than just coding. The font may be more readable for some folks and has some dyslexia-friendly features, plus it’s available in multiple formats and variants, including Nerd Font patched versions for extra symbols.

It reminds me quite a bit of the Comic Code font we noted a couple years ago.

Free Marker Font: Empty Marker

There are times when even I break free of my monospace and sans-serif bubbles to use an “artsy” font (usually for presentations), and I definitely have a use for Empty Marker in some upcoming narratives for $WORK.

This completely hand-drawn typeface (O_O) captures the organic irregularity and expressive flow of real marker strokes. Each letter preserves the natural variations and imperfections that occur when drawing with an proper IRL marker, creating typography that feels more alive and personal rather than mechanically perfect. It’s available in two carefully crafted weights, Light and Bold. So, there’s also some flexibility to create visual hierarchy while maintaining a consistent hand-drawn character feel.

As noted in the section title, Empty Marker is completely free for both personal and commercial use, with no attribution required, though the creator appreciates credit to @acubensdesign when possible.

FIN

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