John Downer (born 1951) is an American sign painter, typeface and logo designer. Downer began his career as a painter of signs. Among his best-known digital fonts are Iowan Old Style, Roxy, Triplex Italic, and Brothers.
Downer studied at Washington State University and the University of Iowa. His work was featured amongst that of others in the 2014 documentary Sign Painters. He has lectured on type and sign design at conferences and at The Cooper Union.
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Typeface designs
Iowan Old Style - Venetian old-style serif
Roxy (Font Bureau) - stroke-modulated sans-serif
Triplex Italic (Emigre)
Brothers (Emigre) - chamfered display wedge-serif influenced by nineteenth-century lettering
Paperback (House Industries) - text serif face with optical sizes
SamSans - humanist sans-serif
Vendetta (Emigre) - inspired by old-style Venetian serif fonts but with sharpened serifs
Council (Emigre) - condensed display wedge-serif, capitals-only
Ironmonger (Font Bureau) - angular all-caps display alphabet inspired by lettering on buildings
Simona (Design Lab) - serif, similar to the work of Fournier and Bodoni
Proprietary typefaces
Gonnick [for cartoonist Larry Gonnick]
Screenmax (bitmap serif typefaces at 7 pixel x-height in Roman, Italic, Bold and Black)