08/27/2021
Meet: Ranchstyle, a typeface & research project I have been working on since 2018 in collaboration with PSY/OPS Type Foundry.
When I moved to N. NV I noticed a lot of ranches nearby. Reno is surrounded by rural communities, where ranches span thousands of acres. I was teaching an intro to Graphic Design class at the time and we were reviewing branding. Branding originates back to the Egyptians, but it is also a bit more recent with the cattle ranchers of the 1800s in the Southwest US. One of my students was from a ranching family in Gardnerville NV which is south of Reno.
I made the connection of branding (in the modern sense of the word) and cattle brands, and this Inspired me to investigate more into the vernacular and history of the practice. This brought me to what is the current rendition of Ranchstyle, which encompasses the visual language of livestock brands in Nevada. So far there are 900 characters, 90 pictograms, 15 stylistic sets, 8 types of barbed wire, and endless combinations of symbols and characters. 4 additional weights are forthcoming and a few more stylistic sets. Check it out here: https://www.psyops.com/ranchstyle/
