Dennis Ortiz-Lopez

Dennis Ortiz-Lopez is an East Los Angeles born Graphic Designer who began his career from a Compton, California home base in 1967 creating typographic posters and alphabets. Typography came easily thanks to the excellent mechanical drawing classes offered by Compton Junior College and the typographic tutelage of George Turnbull and James Van Eimeren at California State University at Long Beach. Shortly after marrying, the Ortiz-Lopez / Tartt-Lopez team moved to New York City and attempted to reignite their design career with only partial success. Dennis Ortiz-Lopez was destined to be a Typographer, it was what he excelled at, and Typography was the most rewarding. He began with elaborate revivals; fonts with ornamentation such as shadows and outlines created photomechanically from pen and ink originals usually rendered at a cap height of 24 – 36 picas. This became the foundation of his 2" Film Font Phototypositor™ Library. His typographic library blossomed again when he was hired by Rolling Stone Magazine as their staff Typographer. His ability to create a complete font practically overnight enabled The Rolling Stone Design Staff to resurrect any Typestyle they desired — the Secret behind their Award Winning Typographic Resources. This was a Partnership that began in 1979 and ended in 1996 during which dozens of Fonts were created, first in pen and ink and then, in 1990, in digital form. The acquisition of a Macintosh™ II combined with Altsys Fontographer™, Adobe Illustrator™ and Adobe Photoshop™ gave him the power to increase his production and the number of his Fonts. After Rolling Stone Magazine, Mr. Ortiz-Lopez went on to teach at the School of Visual Arts for 3-1/2 years and at the same time serving as a production artist and Letterer beside Master Graphic Designer Paula Scher at CBS Records. Paula has since achieved her own level of Typographic Excellence as one of the Partners at Pentagram Design. Here is what Ms Scher has to say about Dennis Ortiz-Lopez: “Dennis Ortiz-Lopez has designed absolutely beautiful faces for me. I have worked with him for many years and he is an excellent Fontographer. Give him a try!” Dennis Ortiz-Lopez is a recipient of various awards, including awards from the Type Director's Club, the Art Director's Club and the Society of Publication Designers as well as having taught Hand Lettering at The School of Visual Arts, Montclair State University and New Jersey City University. One of his most controversial assignments came in December 8 – 9, 1980, when John Lennon was murdered. Annie Leibovitz was the last to see him alive and had taken the last photos of John with the intent of using the photos not only for the feature pages but at John's insistence, the Cover as well. John had insisted that the pictures would only run if the now famous nude would run on the Cover. Rolling Stone Owner and Editor, Jann Wenner would have it no other way and made certain that nothing commercial appeared in the Classified ads and the ads that did were replaced with Dedications and Statements of Love and Emotional Memories. It was a fitting and Loving Farewell to an Old Friend. In addition to his typographic skills, Mr. Ortiz-Lopez is fluent in English and Castilian Spanish as well as being a translator of Biblical Period Hebrew and Aramaic. One of his favorite skills is involved in the rendering of Hebraic religious artwork in digital form. Currently the Foundry has over one hundred Latin Fonts in Serif and Sans Serif formats available, as well as 40 or so Hebraic Fonts all of which are either formal or decorative styles, available in OTF and TTF encoding. His entire Commercial Font Collection is available for sale from MyFonts.com™ in OTF and TTF encoding for his Hebrew and Latin type styles.