I released Mufferaw on April 7, 2003. It began as a commission for a German comic book team who asked me to design a custom typeface for their web comic. I produced a design that I thought suited their needs, but it was rejected. Rather than discard the work, I kept it and gave it a name tied to my Ottawa Valley roots. The name comes from Joseph Montferrand, known locally as Big Joe Mufferaw, a French-Canadian folk hero celebrated in stories by Bernie Bedore and in a song by Stompin’ Tom Connors.

The family included two weights, three widths, italics, and outline styles, all drawing on comic lettering. From its release, the regular style of Mufferaw was offered as a free font, while the expanded family was sold commercially. That balance of free and paid distribution helped it circulate more widely than it might have otherwise.

Mufferaw received a technical update on May 25, 2021, which removed obsolete characters, corrected curve irregularities, and adjusted the spacing of the ellipsis. A further revision on November 13, 2024, modernized the internal name tables for software compatibility, refined outlines again, and added a section symbol (§). It remains in distribution under the same free/paid model.