Digital Font, Bungee

Bungee is a uniquely colorful, open-source digital font by type designer David Jonathan Ross that can be adapted for horizontal or vertical text. Its design explored emerging font technologies—both chromatic layers and vertical text—that were beginning to be supported by web browsers and apps. Ross released Bungee in 2016 on both Google Fonts and on djr.com, his eponymous website, under an Open Font License (OFL) allowing anyone to freely download, install, and modify the font for personal or commercial use. Version 1.2.1 proposed for Cooper Hewitt’s collection was released in 2023 with updates to the color fonts.


While living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011 and working at Font Bureau, Ross became inspired by stacked letters on the vertical sign of a liquor store at the end of his block. He researched and photographed extant vertical urban signage, particularly theater signage. The three-dimensional letters on those vertical signs, which had to be visible during the day or at night, often had neon lightbulbs in-lined down their centers, or a letterform’s outline enclosed lightbulbs. Shadows and dimensional elements reinforced their verticality, and the letters often used color. Ross integrated these physical elements into the digital Bungee typeface, which comes together as a kind of toolkit. Letterforms in chromatic shades, inlines, outlines, hairlines, and ornaments are available for layering, as are separate glyphs, kerning, and spacing in both horizontal and vertical orientations in order to build text. Bungee’s colors are evocative of Coney Island’s signage, in a nod to the typeface’s playfulness.