I released Bailey’s Car on December 7, 1998. The name came directly from an incident I witnessed in Mississauga: the burning wreck of sprinter Donovan Bailey’s Mercedes. I went home and turned the event into a quick novelty font. Using Alien Skin, I applied a filter to an existing typeface—likely in violation of its license—and produced a fiery text effect. It was a low-effort experiment, not intended as a serious release.
The result was a crude design that I now consider a poor font. Over time, it found its way onto nearly every free font site, and it became part of the visual culture of early GeoCities-era homepages. Its notoriety was reinforced years later when it appeared on a list of the worst fonts ever made.
Bailey’s Car was always free for commercial use. It never received updates or technical fixes and was eventually removed from Typodermic’s catalog. In August 2020, I placed it in the public domain, leaving it as a curious relic of late 1990s web design.