“It was incredibly expensive, like $1,700 for three days, and there was an intensive weekend course called something like Experimental Typography. Now this is 1994 or 1993, so these concepts were fairly new. The teacher was P. Scott Makela, who died fairly young but was brilliant and part of that whole David Carson school. Not really knowing anything about the course, I registered, and paid the massive amount of money. The workshop turned out to be three people and the teacher in the class, and it was basically a three-day intensive experience. We didn’t even sleep. It was just three straight days of type design. They had state-of-the-art computers, at that time Macintoshes, and I had never had facilities like that. Makela gave us an assignment and over the weekend I designed the whole typeface. I wasn’t even on drugs.”
Makela was impressed enough to suggest sending the font to Carson. Goren, flattered and flush with doubt, copied it to a disc and sent it through the mail. A few months later, she bought a copy of Ray Gun; Morire was emblazoned all over the pages, fully credited and even used on the cover. Carson had previously left a voicemail expressing interest in the typeface, but had never guaranteed its inclusion. That was the nature of things: fast, inspired, and without pretense or hierarchy.
