The Sutro fonts are part of my long infatuation with slab serif designs. It started in the 1960s in Kansas City, with wood type and Rob Roy Kelly’s amazing collection.
My slab serif affliction was super-charged in the late 1970s when Roger Black hired me to make a font for New West Magazine. Roger wanted a bold version of a typeface from the Nebiolo foundry called Egiziano. I got some xerox samples of the font in the mail, but no complete character reference. I only had 2 and a half days to do the whole job and have it in L.A. Monday morning.
Analog. Pen and ink. Over 40 hours without sleep. The result was what you might expect. Funky. Some very condensed letters, huge lower case e’s, etc.

Nevertheless, that crazy project was the origin of the series of fonts called Sutro.