Hi, I’m Matthew 👋

👋 🤓 🖥 🔤 ✍️ 🏃 🗽

I’m a designer, writer, and runner living in Brooklyn, NY.

Currently at High Tide as an associate design director, I am also the founder of Morning Type, partner at Tipofili, and maintain the Type Foundry Directory. Previously I was working closely with Louise Fili as an associate partner.

I’m a designer, writer, and runner living in Brooklyn, NY.

I basically grew up in a tourist trap along the beach in Florida where my dad airbrushed T-shirts.

When I wasn’t being a little shit with my skateboarder friends, my dad was was teaching us how to weld, build skate ramps, make things with our hands, and generally cultivate out curiosity.

I studied design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where I also ran cross country and track. After graduating, I moved to New York to join Louise Fili’s studio, where I spent nearly six years designing brand identities and packaging for award-winning restaurants and food brands, eventually becoming the studio’s first associate partner. During that time, I also co-founded Tipofili, a type foundry with Louise Fili and Andy Anzollitto.

In 2020, I started Morning Type, my independent type practice and foundry, where I develop retail and custom typefaces and maintain resources like the Type Foundry Directory.

I’m currently an associate design director at High Tide, a small full-service studio working across strategy, design, and experience for clients ranging from early-stage startups to legacy brands.

Oh wow, you want the whole story? Rad!

You see that guy down there? The guy with the spray gun, standing on home plate at Fenway Park?

That’s my dad!

His name is John Smith. (No, seriously.) But most people know him as Smittee. He’s an artist and craftsman, and I attribute my desire to make things to him.

Throughout my childhood, that’s what we did. He built us skate ramps, I helped him build an artificial, life-size oak tree, he taught me how to weld steel, and for as long as I’ve been alive he’s been an airbrush artist—mostly working on large-scale murals.

Not only is my dad an artist, but my whole family is. I’m the youngest of four, so I like to say I had the luxury of either following in their footsteps or learning from their mistakes.

My brother, Zachary Smith, has always played a large role in my creative endeavors. We’ve been attached at the hip since we were kids. (He’s also a lettering artist and illustrator.)

When I was 10 years old, we moved from Massachusetts down to Florida, just south of Daytona Beach—New Smyrna Beach, to be exact, the “shark bite capital of the world,” if you will.

After school, I started taking the bus to the beachside where my dad worked, airbrushing T-shirts in a tourist trap on the corner of Flagler Ave. (That’s the main street that leads directly to the beach.) I was in middle school at the time, and rather than spending my time doing homework, I was learning to skateboard.

Either through inevitability or sheer annoyance, I eventually became friends with a few of the other local kids who skated and were a bit older. (That’s them below.) As it usually goes when you befriend people older than yourself, I completely looked up to these guys and wanted to do everything they did.

They worked at the ice cream shop on Flagler, where I’d always go to bug them. One day, they gave me a copy of That’s Life, Foundation Skateboards’ full-length video. It was probably the first skate video I ever owned, and it had a heavy influence on how I wanted to skate, how I wanted to dress, and who I wanted to be. Hell—what sort of middle schooler pre-orders a pair of tight purple corduroy pants? Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of those.

I spent most of my days in an alleyway sandwiched between two local surf and skate shops. I was either building obstacles to skate or playing pranks on tourists. My friends and I epitomized the definition of little shitheads. I didn’t care much for school at this point, but this is when I started fostering my interest in graphic design.

Prior to moving to Florida, my dad worked at a sign shop where we spent a lot of time on weekends and during the summer. This was where I was first exposed to programs like Photoshop and OMEGA Composer, but I was too young to really get into it. (I was far more interested in Neopets at the time.)

After moving to Florida, if I wasn’t skating, I was messing around in Photoshop. While our school had a graphic design class, they stuck me in chorus instead.

Teachers caught wind of my skills, so I used graphic design to barter my way through school. I made posters and graphics in exchange for free lunches, skipping classes, and paying my way into school field trips.

As I entered high school, I started falling out of love with skateboarding when a broken arm left me with a cast that extended well past my elbow. I found it difficult to make art or design, which forced me to reevaluate some of my priorities.

Once summer arrived—and before I discovered running—I thought cycling was my newfound passion. On a dinky road bike from Walmart, I started waking up at 3:30 a.m. to beat the Florida heat, riding 24 miles with a headlamp strapped to my handlebars and an iPod Nano tucked into my shorts.

This led me to join the cross-country team my junior year (mostly because my best friend convinced me to). I came to realize that I was not only pretty decent at running, but that I also really enjoyed it. In those first two years, I dropped my 5K personal record (PR) from 21:XX to 17:08. This was a pretty solid time, but not quite fast enough to make the state championships or garner college recruitment attention.

Being recruited as an athlete wasn’t a top concern of mine—mostly because I had my sights set on attending an art school.

That said, I knew I wanted to continue running, so I zeroed in on the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which had both cross-country and track teams.

In over my head, I enrolled at SCAD and walked onto the cross-country team (which just means I didn’t receive any athletic scholarship).

With zero financial plan and no family finances to fall back on, I quickly found myself in a pickle—just one quarter into my freshman year.

After only a couple of months, I already owed the school something like $8,000. It was too late to apply for federal financial aid, and we didn’t qualify for any loans, so my only option was to drop out.

I packed my bags and went back to Florida. Rather than looking into more affordable college options—or even getting a job, for that matter—I trained my ass off. Every week, I sent my training logs to Patrick Reagan, SCAD’s head coach at the time.

By the time fall rolled back around, I’d squared away my debt to SCAD, applied for financial aid, and found myself fit enough to land some athletic scholarship. (Thank you, Patrick, for believing in me and giving me a shot.)

When I first enrolled at SCAD, I was studying film—a callback dream career from my skating days—but when I returned, I realized film wasn’t for me and switched to design.

My brother eventually moved to Savannah, and we started a tiny club to connect with a few other professionals in the area.

It was mostly Matt Yow, Sam Stratton, Chase Turberville, John Oates, sometimes William Kesling, and us. We created it because we wanted a place to nerd out about type and lettering.

Matt had already been independently running Twin Forest when Sam joined around 2015. Shortly thereafter, they hired me to create an illustration/design system with hundreds of bear variations for Daybear.

Since the project went well, I asked Matt and Sam if I could intern with them in the fall, which led to me staying on as a designer.

In 2016, Matt Yow encouraged me to apply for a job opening at Louise Fili’s studio. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t in my favor—I hadn’t yet finished school and wasn’t able to accept the job.

As my time in Savannah came to a close, I wrapped my last two seasons at SCAD with school records in the 8K (24:44) and the marathon (2:34:56). Not bad for a kid who walked onto the team. (Thanks again, Pat!)

Then, in 2017, Louise reached back out and asked me to come in for an interview. We hit it off, and within a few months I was moving to New York. I moved to Brooklyn on July 4th and literally started work the next day. It was wild.

During my time at Louise’s studio, I had the opportunity to design brand identities for award-winning restaurants, develop specialty food packaging, and eventually became the studio’s first-ever associate partner.

We even launched Tipofili, a joint type foundry between Louise, Andy Anzollitto, and myself—which we continue to run together to this day.

At the beginning of 2020, I also started Morning Type to serve as my own foundry. (A slow burn, but retail fonts are coming in 2026.)

In 2023, after nearly six years of working with Louise, I departed the studio in an effort to work on larger projects spanning a wider range of industries and disciplines.

I joined High Tide as a senior designer and have since moved into an associate design director role—helping lead projects, land new business, and provide mentorship.

I’ve had the opportunity to create work for legacy brands like New Balance, design identities for young startups like AZAK that are literally reinventing the wheel, art-direct album covers for Grammy Award–winning artists, and even illustrate the memoir of prolific author Francine Prose.

Outside of work, I’ve been a mentor through Alphabettes, AIGA, and Type Crit Crew. I also love teaching and have led various workshops over the years, constantly searching for ways to make education more accessible.

I think that’s kind of it for now. Thanks for reading!