The R Shirt

Awhile ago. I picked a font for a reason I’ve since forgotten.

The typeface, Cyan, is unremarkable.

Not a great body font and not a great headline font. I probably used it in a presentation once or twice, found it to be poorly kerned, and then moved on. However, the R, the lowercase R, somehow caught my attention.

During another forgotten moment, I decided to use the R as my avatar for Twitter. White on black.

There was no pomp and circumstance. I don’t recall what I was replacing; I just wanted an R that I respected on Twitter. The R was unchanged for years until a never finished weblog redesign attempt forced me to ask friends, “What do you think about the R?”

John Gruber, “It’s you. It reminds me of a slightly untucked dress shirt.”

Done. It’s my R.

Many more years passed, and the Cyan R showed up on different websites and services, it was adorned with leaves on the newest design of the weblog and began to show up in my avatar in various Slacks. Given its prevalence, I felt guilty about how little I invested in it, so I hired a former design co-worker to nip and tuck the R.

He came up with three versions: Super Cyan, Slant, and Rook.

Returning to friends with opinions, I shared all three new Rs, and there was universal support for Super Cyan which is the R you are looking at right now.

Until now, you probably hadn’t given the R a single thought. That white splash in the orange square somewhere near the top, right? It stands for Rands. I get it. In my head, it doesn’t stand for Rands. It stands for the words within the blog. Some of those words have turned into thoughts. Maybe those thoughts have turned into lessons and inspiration. It stands a self-organized community of leaders over 7,000 strong that continues to grow daily. It stands for the results of caring deeply about a thing… for decades.

Many of the past charity shirts hid an R somewhere in the design. Kyle has a Rands coffee cup. There’s a whispy R rising from the coffee cup the Zone shirt. This charity shirt is all about the R.

As with all prior shirts, all profits for this shirt go to First Book which gets books into the hands of the disadvantaged.

Thanks for being a part of the community.