Lettering artist with 33 years of experience at Photo-Lettering, who more recently released several fonts through ITC and his independent foundry, BA Graphics.
After Bob's untimely death in 2007, John Bomparte, a friend and colleague wrote:
Throughout his career at the legendary Photo-Lettering, Inc. (one that spanned four decades), Bob created original typefaces and tailored type by modifying, revising and filling out families, fashioning pieces of type for hand-lettered jobs, as well as being involved with the updating of a number of well-known logotypes.
Bob was blessed with natural teaching abilities; and those in social and professional circles who had the good fortune to know him considered him not just a type designer but a mentor and a friend. As one such person close to him put it, he was a "graphic technician... back when computers were not even in site for graphic arts, he would take on any intricate & complex graphic project that others would shy away from and come up with a solution that achieved a masterpiece. I'll always remember someone saying 'this can't be done' and Bob saying 'let me see it' and a short time later, there it was --done & perfect. I would like to think that attitude rubbed off on me.
Along with this gift for teaching and explaining the complex, Bob exhibited a level of professionalism that was unsurpassed. A number of years ago when the need came to make the transition from the traditional to digital way of creating fonts, he rose to the challenge admirably. Towards the last few years of Photo-Lettering, Bob played a vital role in the conversion to digital, of many of the typefaces within the collection, notably those fonts that carry the prefix "PL". More recently, Bob Alonso released several fonts through ITC, Adobe and his independent foundry, BA Graphics.
Bob was on the cutting edge of his best work, and in the circumstance of his untimely passing, left a measure of unfinished designs. However, the spirit of his typographic talents and his fine sense of humor lives on through the many much-loved, and popular fonts he has left us: fonts such as Cookie Dough, Equate, Elephant Bells and Pink Mouse, to name a few.
