Mary Catherine Pflug is an apprentice type designer, publication designer, and honors student studying International Business in the Honors Program at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She began her design training while in high school and at just 18 years old, she developed her first typeface, Dumpling. One of the youngest designers to have a published typeface, she says, “I crafted Dumpling during my final semester at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. There, I was in the visual art department. Neil Summerour was my graphic design teacher during my two years there, and he saw that I had a propensity for type and encouraged me to explore it.”

Neil has been her mentor, role model and friend ever since and continues to publish her typefaces through his foundry, Positype. Mary released her second typeface, Couture, through his foundry in 2015. The product of over a years worth of research, her sophomore creation is an academic revival of Corvinus by Imre Reiner.

“In general, the people who make up the community of type designers are dedicated and particular,” she said in an interview with Rollins College. “I commend the drive to improve and innovate with the goal of perfection. Perhaps this is most often achieved when designers can realize the perfection in imperfection, giving a necessary human touch to a world of increasingly cold, rigid, and ‘too perfect’ digital elements.” A designer who consistently draws inspiration the world around her, Mary strives to constantly advance the status quo. She does so as a board member of SOTA, the organization that organizes TypeCon, and as a marketing intern at Garden & Gun Magazine. Possibly most impressively, she founded The Independent, the award winning, student magazine at Rollins College, in order to provide a high-quality platform for student writers and thinkers.