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When he is not atop a Mayan Ruin in Central America, Harry keeps Font Bureau up and running on a daily basis. He is the person most likely to answer the phone whenever you call Font Bureau. My background is kind of odd. As the son of Mike Parker, who was then Director of Typography at Mergenthaler Linotype, I met many prominent typographic figures at a young age. I did not study design in school; when I spent two years working for Bitstream in the early 1980’s as a ‘Super Gopher,’ I realized how little I really knew about type. After working at several other professions (Mechanic, Truck Driver, Short Order Cook...), I joined the Font Bureau in 1992. The most critical, and least tangible, part of my job is figuring out how best we can help someone who calls needing our typographic help. Sometimes the questions are straightforward licensing or pricing issues, or requests for marketing materials that I can handle myself, but the art of it is in knowing when the caller should be connected to one of the Font Bureau’s Design Staff. Probably the most valuable tool that I have is my knowledge of Font Bureau’s retail library, knowledge that I have gained since the we began to sell type directly to users in 1993. I have grown confident enough to be comfortable offering suggestions about what fonts might be a good pick for a given project or typographic situation. | 