Budmo

I released Budmo on December 7, 1998. At the time, there were no free digital options for classic light bulb marquee lettering, so I created one. The basic letterforms were loosely based on early twentieth-century Futura knockoffs, giving the design a straightforward sans serif structure. The challenge was spacing: it wasn’t enough to simply place circles on top of letters. I judged the placement visually and built the letterforms so the bulbs would sit evenly across the shapes.

The first release included two free styles: Budmo Jiggler, a filled style with bulbs, and Budmo Jigglish, an outlined companion. These required manual work in applications like Photoshop if different bulb colors or effects were needed. On June 8, 2010, I expanded Budmo into a layered system with three additional, non-free styles: Budmo Honk (outline layer), Budmo Solid (letterform layer), and Budmo Bulbs (bulb layer). I created these by copying the original Jiggler font and stripping out the relevant shapes for each layer. This system allowed designers to stack the layers, colorize bulbs independently, and apply glow effects.

Over time I refined the family, reworking accents, adjusting spacing, and introducing class-based kerning. Maintaining chromatic fonts meant changes had to be made on the combined layer font; otherwise, the separate layers would fall out of alignment. At one point I experimented with filling counters in letters like B and R, but I reverted to the original open-counter design shortly afterward.

Budmo spread quickly and has remained one of my most widely used typefaces. I’ve seen it applied in pride parades, commercial signage, and even fabricated into physical metal marquee signs with working bulbs. At the time of this writing, KFC is using it in Japan, and I recently saw it displayed in a Nagoya shopping mall as a practical marquee light sign. Jiggler and Jigglish remain freely available, while the layered styles continue to be offered commercially.