Dutchman Jos Buivenga already had an impressive following when he and his foundry, exljbris, joined MyFonts in 2008. For years, his online friends and fans were able to witness and comment on the development of his typefaces on his website and download the beta versions at no cost at all.

When he transformed his free site into a one-man foundry, he debuted his first commercial typeface in an unprecedented, and ultimately, very successful way. With this typeface, Museo, Jos became the first designer to offer several weights in an extended font family for free. “I had to take into account that most people who knew me, knew me for my free fonts,” he said in his Creative Characters interview, “so my guess was that it would be best to offer more free than paid weights.”

His generosity paid off. Museo became a sensational best seller on the strength of the paid fonts alone and the typeface was named one of MyFonts Top Ten Fonts of 2008. “I decided to offer the three middle, most common weights for free. And that was received better than I could have imagined.”

And with that, his foundry took off. His sophomore font, Museo Sans, proved to be even more successful than its predecessor. It too was named one of our Top Ten Fonts of 2008. The true indicator of the success of this typeface, though, is the incredible longevity of its stay on our Best Sellers list. Released in 2008, the font is still a best selling typeface.

Considering the enormous success that the self-taught designer has seen, it’s amazing to think that his career started off with just simple intrigue. “I just wanted to know,” he says, “what it would feel like to use a font of my own on my first Mac.”