Making Type: Amy Hood of Hoodzpah

A glimpse at what influences the studio's delightful typefaces and inspiring design work

Typography by Hoodzpah

A digital collage of overlapping newspaper and magazine mastheads in pastel pinks, golds, blues, and oranges, with varied serif and script typefaces. The layout evokes a retro newsstand display, featuring titles about culture, arts, dining, sports, and local news, framed by bold horizontal stripes.

Since 2014, I’ve been helping people find and use fonts across Adobe’s applications and along the way I’ve picked up a lot of tips—from finding the perfect font to laying out designs seamlessly and intelligently. I launched Make type work  so I could share some of those tips and (hopefully) help other people feel more confident working with type.

I also have a deep admiration for the people who put in hours behind the scenes to create quality typefaces that bring our designs to life. “Making Type” is a new series in which I celebrate type designers and ask them questions about design, process, and life beyond fonts.

I’m beyond stoked to have interviewed Amy Hood of Hoodzpah for the next installment. Sister duo Amy and Jen, and the rest of the team at Hoodzpah have been making some of the most inspiring design work around, and they also happen to design delightful typefaces.

I’m an unabashed fanboy of the studio and can’t stop buying their merch: bumper stickers, posters, mugs, hats (you get the picture) and fell down a rabbit hole on a personal project a few years back, and ended up buying their mega bundle of fonts. I was so glad when Hoodzpah typefaces became available on Adobe Fonts.

I talked to Amy about her type journey, influences, and life beyond the screen.

A wide banner featuring layered, high‑contrast typography in white, pink, and orange on a black background. A circular portrait of a woman with long blonde hair appears left of center, alongside a stylized logo of a shining, faceted diamond comprised of bold black-and-white lines.

What was the initial spark that got you into type design?

Amy Hood: I was always the go-to kid in class who could do amazing lettering. You know at the beginning of the school year when you’d put your name on your desk or your paper covered books? Everyone would ask me to do theirs. It was social currency! Even having had braces for five years, I had a place in the ecosystem thanks to my artistic skills.

Flash forward to the early years of running our brand studio, Hoodzpah and constantly hunting for fonts but not quite finding what I needed. I started Frankensteining fonts—adding serifs, making custom ligatures, drawing my own lettering, and live tracing. That eventually led to fully custom wordmarks, which became the thing most of our brand clients come to us for.

Retro-inspired Redondo Ave is an organic, casual, sumptuously-extra script font.

A collection of brightly colored, retro‑style grocery and deli labels arranged on a black background. The group includes illustrated stickers and tags for items like habanero sauce, tart lemons, Roma tomatoes, pickled ginger, blueberries, peaches, avocados, fresh orange juice, and deli‑made foods, using playful hand‑lettered typography, bold shapes, and warm, saturated colors.

How does your client work influence how you approach making fonts?

Amy: I think being a designer who is also a type designer is a superpower because you don’t think about type in a vacuum, you know the applications and needs innately from your daily design practice. I’m acutely aware of when there’s a gap for a new font, because I spent hours searching for and not finding it. That’s the most amazing thing about type design. Even though fonts are more ubiquitous than ever, there’s still room for more—and nuance. However, that never stops me from having my annual “Do we really need more fonts” crisis of self. LOL.

A lot of your fonts have a very SoCal vibe; do you find inspiration in your surroundings?

Amy: Always! I love going to Palm Springs and seeing all the midcentury goodness. And all the historic signage on Sunset and Fairfax in Los Angeles, or Sunset Beach, and other communities. Southern California is such a melting pot, so I find it an endless source of inspiration.

Beverly Drive Right is a retro script font with a low x-height, exaggerated cap height, and two style sets.

A typographic poster, with a black script typeface on an orange background, listing Los Angeles neighborhoods. Place names—West Hollywood and Malibu, Los Feliz and Inglewood, Boyle Heights and Venice, Koreatown and Bel‑Air, Downtown and Echo Park—are arranged in a midcentury-inspired layout with stacked pairs separated by star icons and thin horizontal rules.

You’ve been live streaming some of your font-making process (which is very fun to watch); how do you know when to call a font “finished”?

Amy: That is always the issue! As soon as I think I'm done and I've done language support and all the tedious punctuation, I inevitably get struck with all these ideas for extra ligatures, and “hey, what if I add a full extra style set?” At some point I just have to set a deadline for myself and announce it publicly to stop the madness and just finish. Every font hits that stage where it could be a million different things. It's a superpower to commit to a direction and save all your other great ideas for the next font.

Congrats on the recent app collab with Fort Foundry. Can you give us any hints as to what new fonts you have in the works?

Amy: I’m going to be going hard on script typefaces this year! I have two new scripts coming, plus a super fun personality-rich sans that has the vibe of midcentury Italy. We love it so much we already used it on the cover of our book,  Freelance and Business and Stuff! You know you're on the right track when you're already using your own fonts.

“Freelance and Business and Stuff,” featuring Hoodzpah’s latest font Molfetta.

A book cover titled "Freelance and Business and Stuff," featuring bold black sans serif typography and ornate decorative framing. The design includes small, illustrated icons representing topics such as marketing, communication, pricing, project workflows, finances, branding, contracts, and growing a creative business, arranged symmetrically for a vintage, instructional handbook feel.

I’ve loved watching Hood Fonts grow, and keep spotting them in use. Do you get excited seeing them out in the wild?

Amy: It’s truly the greatest thrill! I love seeing how people apply them and customize them. It's a bit of stolen valor, because I feel in some way I play a part in the beautiful designs people make, even though they did all the heavy lifting, but I always feel proud when I see them out.

How do you stay creatively satisfied?

Amy: I think the key to creative satisfaction is having a rich life outside of making—filling yourself up with friends, experiences, taking in new culture, and hobbies you're not good at. All those things help keep you grounded. I also always take time to celebrate the wins. It’s easy to just go and go and go and then start to feel burnt out. Celebrate that font release. Celebrate seeing that font in the wild. Celebrate the small progress. It’s part of the fun.

Kensington, a collaboration with Fort Foundry.

A decorative storefront sign for “Hazel’s, West London’s Little Garden Experts" on a chalkboard‑style background with lavender details and peach sans serif type. An ornate floral border frames details listing plants, prices, and opening hours. Playful botanical illustrations—flowers, mushrooms, and leaves—and a garden quote by Rudyard Kipling: "Gardens are not made by singing: Oh, how beautiful and sitting in the shade" create a whimsical, vintage garden‑shop aesthetic.

Thanks again Amy for taking the time to answer my questions. You can find Hood Fonts on Adobe Fonts at Hoodzpah, and on their website.

This article first appeared on Jake Giltsoff’s  Make type work  blog.