Close your eyes and describe the future. Try it for a second… Chances are that the images that are flashing in front of your minds eye are the images of pop-culture sci-fi; maybe you see the cyber-dystopia of Blade Runner, or perhaps you are seeing the gleaming “green mega-city” which is the favored trope of real-estate developers and capitalist tech companies alike. Perhaps these visions are accompanied with a mild sensation of dread… or disbelief… or something… an itch that’s hard to define. A feeling that something is not quite right. If you are felling this, then great — you are like us! Together, let’s dig a little deeper and scratch away at some of the underlying assumptions of our neon-chrome shiny, shiny ‘future’.

The Myth of Eternal Growth:
Some of the most pervasive images of the future are the ones created by corporations and industry. We are subjected to these constantly; whether it’s in advertising that promises a bright sparkly AI powered future or in real-estate ads that show images of sanitized street-scapes framed by gleaming glass eco-towers (don’t worry! it’s ‘sustainable’!) or alternately, in Hollywood films where our hero fights a few corrupt bad eggs who are spoiling the bright and abundant future for the rest of us. These are fantasies of perpetual growth and unlimited natural resources. These images are seductive in their perfection. Desirable, not because of their realism — but because they are consumerist lullabies, telling us to just go to sleep — we are all going to be alright. In this version of the future, capitalism and the corporate powers that be, have somehow innovated their way to abundance fueled by our collective consumption — all before the ice caps melt. This narrative is predicated on everything being… well… just like now, just shinier and more ‘future’ in an Apple-aestheticized way. Usually these fantasies center on cities, with very few depictions of the countryside, because it’s a more less unchallenged futurist truism that we will all be living in mega-cities. A truism that conveniently allows us to ignore the countryside and the decimation of the rural (more on this later).

In this version of our collective urban future, the mega-city is something akin to an indoor mall; clean, ordered, often magically sparse of people. Everything is blissfully the same. We’ll still have skyscrapers, they will just be taller, greener and more ‘future’. We’ll still have malls, coca-cola, Nike sneakers, access to clean water, bearable temperatures, free movement of capital and goods and probably not a lot of corporate taxation… just like now. Yet, most of these things we know are unlikely to continue in their present form: climate change is (surprise!) real and we already know that the supply-chains that keep mega-cities and modern late-stage capitalism going are going to be much more fragile — drought, natural disasters, mass climate migration etc., will most likely lead to an era of post-abundance more akin to the middle-ages; where everyone except the rich is hungry, disease ridden and living eight people to a one-room hovel. Yet, somehow we keep perpetuating this version of the future. A vision of the future that only serves the short-termist corporations eager to wring out the last profits before it all goes to hell.

The Myth of Sci-Fi Dystopia:
On the flip side is the Blade Runner dystopia. A neon nightmare where corporations have run amok, governments are shady and corrupt, the earth is in climate upheaval and the technology depicted is almost always in the service of suppression and violence. Most of this is sci-fi — and as such almost always based on extrapolating the present in to the future to give it an air of familiarity.

Down this path it’s easy to be tempted in to the mindset of sci-fi dystopia given recent events: from Cambridge Analytica, to state and corporate use of large scale surveillance programs to social media enabled shootings, toxic sludge, tsunamis, agrarian dust-bowls and so on. Indeed if we give in to this version of the future as an extrapolation of the present, then the future bodes bleak.

However, there is a two-part problem with taking sci-fi as an indicator of where we are headed; One; sci-fi needs a plot and drivers to take that plot forward. Sci-fi, being a narrative genre specifically centered around technology, is prone to using technology as a character in itself, with definite characteristics: it is typically either good or bad, either something that aids our hero or threatens to undo them. Yet technology, though never neutral, is rarely on an ethical binary and is much more complex and multi-faceted than so: the iphone put unlimited access to information in our pocket but also played havoc with our attention spans. Penicillin saved millions, but is also complicit in the rise of super-resistant bacteria. Bacteria that in some sort of Faustian bargain may, in turn, wipe out millions and so it goes, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut. Consequently, an explicit ask on our participants for our course is to not think in terms of mono-narratives and binaries but instead explore multiple applications and their consequences, good or bad, of a given technology.

Secondly, we treat future-casting not as bounded by extrapolation. Extrapolation is a useful tool for anchoring a believable future in a recognizable present, but when treated as a plot driver it’s almost inevitable where we will end up: doom and dystopia. Yet our collective culture is full of dystopian narratives which haven’t quite come true — in the book 1984, George Orwell reacts to authoritarian tendencies he was seeing in society circa second world war. Today, surveillance exists, but so do various strategies of counter-surveillance at all levels: from the grassroots to the institutional. Future-casting then needs to unbound itself from the idea of prediction and extrapolation and align itself to the idea of telling contra-narratives to the immediately obvious. Through this stated goal, not only do we believe that we can tell more accurate and multi-faceted stories, but also that we can propose futures that are outside of the dreariness of dystopia. Stories that can reveal alternative applications of tech and hence strive toward narratives of actionable societal progress, rather than acceptance of the worst parts of the status-quo.

The Exclusion of the Political:
Moving our gaze from sci-fi and back in to the realms of advertising and corporate future vision videos, we see the refusal of dealing explicitly with the political.

As discussed before, sci-fi has a tendency towards over-simplification; the world is a bad place, and hence the politics are bad. In corporate vision videos on the other hand, politics are conspicuously absent—or only political through the things they omit rather than what they explicitly include. But politics, despite being out of vogue, is one of the key measures of societal progress and one that is much more pervasive and impactful than the iphone will ever be. Feudalism, democracy, fascism and socialism are factors that have shaped our mortality rates, our standard of living, our rights and freedoms, our technological progress and so on. However, it’s almost impossible to discuss these factors without discussing the technologies that likewise enabled or counteracted them—our societies are shaped by technology, usually organized by public and private agents under some sort of ideology and law—and vice versa.

Yet the future narratives told by corporates almost always tells a story devoid of politics — or one where technology just simply lives alongside the status quo. According to the Microsofts, IBMs and other tech giants of the world the future holds just more of the same; albeit more efficient and seamless. We will toil at the same office buildings and look at the same graphs (now on holo-screen!), power-suite clad women will step out of futuristic looking airports and order taxis on ever more convenient devices. We will be able to unlock our doors using only our voices and we will all be able to shop in ever-more novel ways, with ever more novel delivery mechanisms. The world is sleek, measured and organized with the cold rationality of efficiency and consumerism.

What they omit from these films is any kind of dialogue with the societal processes and phenomena that shape our lives beyond consumerism: what is the form of government? What are people’s attitudes to gender and sexuality? Will we still have gendered bathrooms? What about the glass ceiling? Is the woman exiting the autonomous car about to walk in to a boardroom full of old white men, who are paid more than her? What about race, ethnicity, geo-politics and so on (and no, including a brown person in the narrative does not count as engaging with geo-politics or ethnicity). One could argue that it’s not a corporations job to be political, but that ludicrously underestimates the influence of corporations on our lives today. And although these videos are of course meant to be nothing more than ads, our worry is that this lack of imagination extends itself up in to the boardrooms and down in to the public. We simply come to expect that ‘convenience’ is the best technology can offer us and is at the core of what ‘users need’, rather than dream bigger about how technology can radically and truly empower people and progress societies forward for the good of all of us. If we are to move past the myopic needs of the user, and in to a more expansive idea of societal needs, we need more practitioners who are trained to think about policy and progress, rather than just the market.

The Exclusion of the Other:
With the exclusion of the political and the narrow focus on the homogeneous ‘user’, future narratives also often erase differences and ignore or exclude whole swathes of people or phenomena that don’t fit neatly in to the narrative. As an example, when have you last seen the countryside dealt with in detail in a futures video or article? Dealing with the countryside forces us to deal with inconvenient problems like climate change, overpopulation, rural blight, deforestation and dust-bowls as well as the huge swathes of people who still don’t live in mega-cities—and importantly don’t fit in to the corporate narrative of endless growth. This tendency to exclude anyone who doesn’t fall in to the ‘affluent western-centric middle class’ consumer bracket means we rarely deal with the futures of the poor, the discriminated against nor people of different genders and sexuality, blithely assuming that they are somehow ‘taken care off’ instead of explicitly and methodically including them in our narratives.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has a tendency to find new and interesting ways of enforcing the status-quo while pretending inclusion. The afro-futurism of Black Panther, while it’s important to celebrate the societal and cultural significance of the film as well as it’s attempt at an new aesthetics— it was also the story of a CIA-backed African nation quelling a black uprising. Likewise heroines in sci-fi are most often sultry and over-sexed, clad in futuristic protective garb which just also happens to cling tightly to their bodies (while male heroes tend to favor body armor with more shapely pectorals). Or we see the stereotype of the (almost always female) sex-bot — the ultimate neoliberal, misogynist fantasy: willing, unfeeling, always for sale. Contrast that with Fathers, which has a clear queer agenda. Or the writing of Ursula K. LeGuinn — most notable the Left Hand of Darkness which explicitly toys with the idea of a non-heteronormative society—or her (for me, personally) formative essay: A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be that explores a different, less masculine, form of innovation. Thankfully some of these tendencies are starting to be revoked, with the inclusion of alternate futures: afro-futurism, Chinese Chaohuan (a Chinese acceleration of technology-centered Magical Realism), Gulf or Khaleeji futurism and even woke Space Opera — yet most of these exist primarily in the realms of entertainment and fiction, rather than policy and progress.

The Exclusion of Reality:
You may have noticed a theme during the course of reading this article: the tendency to refuse the world as it really is within certain aspects of the future casting discipline. It often refuses to take the mess of humanity seriously; distilling everything down in to neat utopian or dystopian visions while cutting out the pieces that don’t fit the narrative.

On the other hand, much of future casting refuses to take the reality of technology seriously. In almost all depictions of technology we only see the device itself — not the system that supports it. Asking Alexa to read the weather out loud or to play Ariana Grande disguises an intricate network of technology, fiber optic cable, server farms, foxconn-esque factories, natural resource extraction, labor, geo-politics and global supply lines. Likewise, everything you see in a sci-fi film or vision video will also need to rely on an equally complex, future version of a supply-chain with all the geo-political realities that we have today. Will the chips and circuitry in Tom Cruise’s next Mission Impossible laser doo-dad come from conflict minerals mined in the Congo? Yes, probably. Will our seamless shopping experiences be reliant on large-scale global trade networks and the exploitation of cheap labour? Possibly. Some believe automation will take the place of cheap labor, yet the question of what then becomes of ‘cheap labor’ is still unanswered. Hence, as future-casters we have to move from the fetishization of the object, and start fetishizing the network of relationships that our objects are embedded in: supply chains, politics, economics, ecology, culture and so on. These are the stories that we need to tell: we need to tell stories not of how the object or technology looks or the details of what it does—but rather how does the world look like with the object or technology in it.

The course we teach aims to create future-casters who can make these stories come to life. We need futures-thinkers and practitioners of all ideologies, disciplines and vantage points, who are ready to take a much more nuanced stance towards technology rather than just simply being subjected to it. At the end of the day, the future must be ours, as all of humanity—and the shaping of it must be a collective, grounds-up imperative, rather than left to careerist politicians and non-democratically elected corporate leaders. The only way we can do that, is by actively taking control of the narrative of our collective future. We sincerely hope you will join us in Copenhagen, July 15th to 19th 2019.

Read more about the Summer School and all the other available courses, the course itself here—and you can enroll directly here.

Why is the future so predictable? was originally published in CIID Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Paul Finn from Central St. Martins shares his approach to teaching graphic design and typography.

Paul Finn is the Platform Leader in Information & Systems on the BA (Hons) Graphic Communication Design and teaches graphic design and typography to both students and professionals. We talk to him about owning one’s learning, practical exercises to enhance your understanding of typography and the role of graphic design education in society today.

TypeThursday is dialogue about letterforms. Join us for our live TypeCrit sessions.

New York City January 4th
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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Paul — super happy that we get a chance to catch up.

Paul, you teach at Central St. Martins, tutor designers at the BBC in typography and on top of that, manage to have your own practice as well. And of course, you were my tutor when I was at BBC News back in the day.

Your teaching was really instrumental to me, so think I’d like to talk about your approach and your philosophy in terms of teaching. But before we get ahead of ourselves, why don’t you talk a bit about yourself and your interest in type?

Paul Finn: Hello! And thank you for inviting me to this and your kind words! I have always had an interest in type, from drawing lettering as a child / teenager. I was in bands so would design the band logo and I was into skateboarding and loved the visual language around skateboards. Everything; logos / graphics / fashion — H Street, Deathbox, Independent, New Deal etc, and the magazines. I think a lot of what those designers did was to really exemplify the idea of type being image and letters being form.

I also believe that students need to take ownership and authorship of their own learning. This lets them take charge and discover and expand and ‘become’ — it may sound a little idealized but there you go!

In college the Designers Republic were my all time heroes. I studied Graphic Arts & Design at Leeds Metropolitan University from 1997–2000. The Designers Republic were not far away in Sheffield and they designed some great flyers and posters that you’d see around Leeds — so a huge inspiration for us as students. We went to Rotterdam and Amsterdam in our first year and I saw some amazing Dutch graphic design; from 75B to Walter Nikkels and Ootje Oxenaar. And we also stumbled on MAMA in Rotterdam… that blew me away. I bought a great book which I still love called ‘Typography: When Who How’ by Friedrich Friedl,‎ Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein. In the second year we went to New York, and I bought another great book ‘Josef Muller-Brockmann Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design’ by Lars Muller and began to understand who influenced The Designers Republic.

Ulrik: Yes, I always loved Jim Phillips and his work for Santa Cruz. The ‘Screaming Hand’ logo is iconic and was probably one of the things that attracted me to design—although I had no idea that you could do that for a living at the time.

So what about today? How do you spend your time today?

Paul: Ha! Sorry that was a bit of an indulgent trip down memory lane! Well I run my own little design company called Fitzroy & Finn. Fitzroy is a mountain in Patagonia, Argentina that my wife and I walked up — and it was when I was up there that I had a bit of an epiphany and realized that I wanted to teach and set up my own studio. I had worked at the BBC from 2001–2005 designing the websites for BBC Radio 3, Radio 1, Radio 5 Live, Radio 4. It was great but I was beginning to get a little restless.

I think that the old guru style of teaching is outmoded — I like to think that students are future colleagues.

I really enjoyed my art education so wanted to return to it, but on the other side — it also balances my Fitzroy & Finn work, in the sense that both feed into each other. I ended up teaching on the Foundation course at Central Saint Martins for 7 years, which is often where people discover graphic design / typography for the first time. So it’s really a exciting course to teach. Lots of good energy and rawness, which is so inspiring to be around.

Two years ago I moved to teaching on the BA Graphic Communication Design at CSM, leading the new Information & Systems platform — it is super exciting as I am writing the curriculum for a newly revalidated course: writing project briefs, running workshops and teaching with some great colleagues. Phil Baines is the professor of typography and I am currently running typography workshops with him which is amazing (he wrote a good book called ‘Type and Typography’ with Andrew Haslam).

I sound like a hippy — but I am of the opinion that when you are comfortable, you are confident and that makes it easier to do what you’ve got to do.

Ulrik: I have always enjoyed your teaching style, as it always felt to me that you took a less traditional approach to teaching. Let’s talk about your philosophy to teaching.

A New Structure for Education

Paul: Well, I think that the old guru style of teaching is outmoded — I like to think that students are future colleagues (I think that Norman Potter author of ‘What is a Designer’ said something along those lines). I like to play music in the studio, get people standing up, occasionally when the need arises getting rid of the tables, standing in circles and what not! I sound like a hippy — but I am of the opinion that when you are comfortable, you are confident and that makes it easier to do what you’ve got to do.

I also believe that students need to take ownership and authorship of their own learning. This lets them take charge and discover and expand and ‘become’ — it may sound a little idealized but there you go!

Ulrik: No I’ve seen it work. One of the things you did with me was to have me sketch out my own curriculum — what I wanted to learn — and then help me fill in the gaps and achieve that. I think you might have said the words ‘self-directed’ learning at some point?

Paul: When I did my teachers qualification I got into Action Research Methodology — which essentially is when you identify a challenge in your practise and challenge it! The designer Karl Gerstner in his Designing Programmes states: “to describe a problem is part of the solution”. The idea is you identify the areas that you need to explore for yourself. Again it means ownership.

And that is it: you can show students things to get them excited or hooked, but equally they have got to get involved, to take control of their own learning and engage properly in the subject. We need to be constantly looking / questioning / noticing and critically engaging with the world and the crazy amount of information that we consume each and every day.

UH: So what does that look like in practice for the students? You made me sketch out what I wanted to explore and then keep a journal and a blog documenting my explorations. Is it the same methodology with them? What kind of tools and processes do you give them?

This is to represent and instill a shift in the role of the graphic designer; from conveyer of information to creator, content producer, author and publisher

PF: Students keep sketchbooks. These evidence, support, situate and validate their idea development — and at the same time records and documents their experimentations and research. They provide analysis, reflection and evaluation.

At CSM, I have been running two simultaneous projects with my group — one on a Tuesday and one on a Friday, over a period of 5 weeks. The Friday project is typography focused: the first 3 weeks is made up of a series practical workshops — no computers — students are using paper / cutting / sticking / physically engaging and interrogating letterforms.

The workshops are tightly structured and each week they have follow up exercises that expand and develops on from the workshop. The idea is that over the course of the project we zoom out the letter to the word to the line to the text.

The exercises have been pinched from various sources! from Emil Ruder’s Typography to Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type to John Kane’s A Type Primer. One of my favorite tasks is from Willi Kunz’s Typography: Formation and TransFormation: each student is given a letter (upper and lowercase) in a sans serif and serif typeface, the instruction is simple: create new signs by cutting and shifting, you can cut and shift only once. It generates lots of amazing glyphs / signs / symbols…

The Tuesday project is more open. Essentially, a student begins with any object that can fit into a 5cm box — they then explode that object into pure information; exploring the material, shape, value, function, purpose, social, economic meaning which they respond to. Thereby they become content producers / curators / critiquers and situate their object within a complex array of networks / associations / industries and markets. This is to represent and instill a shift in the role of the graphic designer; from conveyer of information to creator, content producer, author and publisher—building on Michael Rock’s ‘The designer as author’ and Ellen Lupton’s ‘The Designer as Producer’ seminal essays.

UH: Another thing I enjoyed is your emphasis on the art and process of exploration. I see a lot of design education today that misses this part. Students are set a brief; “Create a visual identity for such and such” or a UI for this thing here — and they come back with good quality but un-original work and are then critiqued on their technical execution. I often lack them being able to talk fluently about influence and process. Their exploration stops at aesthetics and not at the broader cultural sphere of what they are designing.

We exist within an economic framework, so we have to adhere to it to survive, but equally should/could it be challenged from a design perspective?

Design’s Role in Society

PF: You have hit the nail on the head! That is the question: what is art education for? To teach them the Adobe CC suite so that they can create polished / professional design? Or to explore with them different ways of thinking, seeing and critically engaging within the world. It is tricky as here in England education is expensive — what is the return on investment? I don’t know — it is good for students to be switched on, engaged, committed, curious, but equally they have got be be employable. Or able to transition into the industry.

UH: Yes but I think we toe a dangerous line if we start to believe that an art education should strictly conform to economic logic. Yes, designers need to be employable, but their worth can’t be measured in “pixels produced”. It must be measured in the broader sense of it’s contribution to society—and that has to acknowledge the graphic arts as cultural work, as a shaper of meaning at both the micro and the macro scale. And so we have to teach students the tools and the responsibility of cultural discourse, not just how to find the rectangle tool in Sketch or Illustrator.

PF: Graphic design is a political, social, cultural act / gesture. It gets complicated quickly. The work of Metahaven is fascinating as they engage with the political act of design — can anything really be otherwise? We exist within an economic framework, so we have to adhere to it to survive, but equally should/could it be challenged from a design perspective?

Design thinking can be applied to anything; how we think around the problem, or what’s the problem behind the problem? But from a student’s point of view, they want to engage in the industry and profession—so how do we best equip them with the skills to do so.

There is a lot of thorny issues around interning and what that exchange involves: unpaid internships equate to experience, but that intern is contributing to something that generates income. A colleague of mine introduced me to a great book recently called ‘Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability and Reclaiming Education’ by Precarious Workers Brigade which explores exactly this question — well worth the read.

UH: Yes, I think it’s useful to equip them and to point them in the direction of industry, yet at the same time also emphasize that ‘knowledge of illustrator’ is not the only thing that they bring to the table in a professional context. Sometimes I sense a reticence from designers to take that kind of ownership.

Paul, we are heading towards the end here. I spoke to Karen Cheng who wrote ‘Designing Type’ a while back and we netted out agreeing that there should be more exchange of ideas between people who teach typography and type. So in that spirit, do you have any advice for other teachers out there?

PF: Sorry to have rambled on! It has been nice to discuss these topics with you, it feels like the beginning of a longer conversation. In terms of advice, I think by sharing, exchanging and discussing ideas / experiences of teaching with colleagues, friends and family we help to clarify, understand and ultimately improve on what we do. Teaching is continuous learning!

Check out Paul Finn’s work over at Fitzroy & Finn: Fitzroy & Finn

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We Can Teach Design Better. was originally published in Type Thursday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We talk to Jake Fleming, one of the founders of the type-themed hackathon Type Jam.

Type Jam just held it’s first event in September, challenging teams to create a font in just 48 hours, from concept to digitisation. We spoke to Jake about creating fonts as a newb, about the mechanics of orchestrating a hackathon — and finally we took a closer look at the top 3 winning typefaces.

TypeThursday is dialogue about letterforms. Join us for our live TypeCrit sessions.

Los Angeles November 2nd
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Seattle November 21st

Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Jake — welcome to TypeThursday.

Today we are going to be talking about your type-themed hackathon Type Jam where, if I’m not mistaken, you give teams of type-enthusiast 48 hours to come up with a typeface. Where did the idea originate?

Jake Fleming: Glad to be here chatting with you!

Yes, you are right. Type Jam follows a similar format of any hackathon or game jam really. People either team up or participate as individuals over a period of 48 hours to produce a limited character set related to a particular prompt using font software. Our aim was really to give people who were experienced in type design some time to explore new directions, while also providing a safe and inviting space for people who were completely new to type design to learn and hopefully, come out of the event with their first font. Oh and obviously there is toast, jam, coffee, and sweet prizes from our sponsors.

The event was about a year in the making, I guess. I’m a product designer, and I am currently teaching Product Design at a place called Tradecraft — but have also always been into illustration, game design, and type on the side.

About a year ago I started creating my first font in Glyphs. I’d attempted to create fonts in the past but always found the software a bit too complex for me to get any real momentum on a project. When I found Glyphs, it finally seemed accessible. As I was beginning to think that my font was in good place, I started thinking about how I could release it. One of my long time designer friends, Mat Helme introduced me to Mattox Schuler of Fort Foundry and Mattox was nice enough to give me some pointers on the process.

He mentioned TypeThursday and suggested I go. So I did. I met a bunch of people who really knew what they were doing and in turn, I quickly realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I found myself really wishing that I’d had the opportunity to work on my font around a bunch of people doing the same thing. At the same time, I’ve attended various types of hackathons in the past related to game design and software development. So the idea started to form from there. Then, talking with some of the amazing people at TypeThursday, it seemed like there was interest from enough people in the community and then… well, the rest is history.

Ulrik: This sounds amazing! So you just had the first event, right? What kind of people showed up?

Jake: Yep! The first event was in September. We were actually pretty surprised how many people were completely new to type design and font software. We thought it would be ⅔ people with experience and ⅓ maybe with none, but I’d say it was the other way around.

We did have a lot of graphic designers, product designers etc. We even had a type designer from Germany who found out about the event while in SF for a couple weeks. I believe most people had design experience, but not a lot of lettering artists and almost no type designers.

Ulrik: Wow! So you basically had 48 hours to take people from complete newbies to a relatively high fidelity font. How do you accomplish that? Did you have to disperse the people with more experience? How were the groups formed?

Jake: The groups were formed before the event for the most part. As the event approached we had a spreadsheet for people to figure out who was still looking for teams which we then distributed around. But again, totally surprised by how far teams got with such little experience.

Take a picture of a sign or two, derive rules from that limited character set and try to get as complete of a character set as you can in the little time you have this weekend.

We did provide some help, of course. To kick off the event, we had an amazing intro workshop by Winston Scully of Continental Type and then Delve Withrington of Delve Fonts and host of TypeThursdaySF was there through-out helping people when they got stuck, answering questions about the font software, helping define rules and constraints to make the process of type design easier and just generally providing critique. And then just really myself and my co-organizer Zac Halbert trying to be as helpful as possible and making sure things went smoothly.

Ulrik: You mentioned you gave teams prompts to help steer their work. What kind of prompts were people given?

Jake: We sent a prompt out to the teams the night before, so people had a bit of time to get inspired. The prompt that everyone was given was this: Go find inspiration from San Francisco signage. Take a picture of a sign or two, derive rules from that limited character set and try to get as complete of a character set as you can in the little time you have this weekend.

Ulrik: Cool. That makes sense. How did people handle the brief? Were they sticking close to the original or taking the original sign as departure and then making something new?

Jake: Some people tried to stay pretty close to their source, some diverged quite a bit. The beauty of constraining the brief to a single sign was you pretty much never had a full character set to work with, so inevitably you had to make up your own rules here and there. Some people started with cigar shop signs, some had a snapshot of a neon sign that had like 5 characters to work with, others went with some nice hand painted signage. The great thing about the semi-vague prompt was that the projects were all very different and people had a lot of fun seeing what others were working on.

Ulrik: Give me a sense of what those 48 hours looked like? What was the atmosphere at 6 hours? At 24? In the final 6?

Jake: The first 6 hours the atmosphere was pretty exciting. Everybody was talking and enjoying coffee and toast with JAM. After Winston gave his workshop, people started freaking out internally a bit I think. Font software is pretty intimidating. Even Glyphs which is pretty easy to use can be intimidating if you’re a newb. But around the 6 hour mark, people started getting a feel for the direction they wanted to go. They’d had lunch, sorted out their inspirations and settled and gotten to work. So the rest of that first day was pretty quiet. Everybody was heads-down.

The next day when people started trying to translate sketches from paper into software, it got a bit hectic and again I think people were a little overwhelmed.

By the end of that second day, people were in crunch mode trying to complete that character set. A lot of the teams’ submissions really came down to the wire. Luckily, all participating teams were able to submit. I think it was a bit of a rollercoaster, but overall it was really fun and people got a lot out of it. There were a number of people who literally said something along the lines of, “I didn’t think I would ever make a font. It always felt too hard.” Most people came away from the event with some version of a usable font.

Ulrik: How did the groups work? Was it mainly one person jamming in Glyphs with multiple backseat drivers? Did people sketch together? I think when I am drawing, it feels like a pretty solitary thing, at least until I come up for air. How did people work? And what worked best?

Jake: I think each group was different, but it definitely seemed like the groups that got the farthest were pretty good at dividing up the roles. The initial sketching process happened together. Sure, it’s kind of a solitary process—however, we made sure people were coming up for air frequently and exchanging ideas. As the team homed in on a direction, the faster-moving teams seemed to have a nice split of roles. Some people were sketching the rest of the character set, and 1 or 2 others were in software translating those sketches.

Ulrik: Were there frustrations? Where there any toast-tantrums?

Jake: If only there were a toast fight! People definitely got frustrated. Design is hard. Type design is mysterious to most people who haven’t thought about it too much. I think morale was pretty high during the event though. Nobody threw anything. No tantrums, no toast, nothing. Honestly, I wish there was more drama.

Ulrik: Ha! Next time you’ll have to find a way to turn up the pressure!

Let’s talk a bit about the winning teams and their fonts! I saw the winning three on the homepage, but maybe you can talk about what made them special?

Jake: Sure. I’m really impressed with the fonts the winning teams produced. We had help with judging from Winston Scully (Continental Type Co.) and Kyle Wayne Benson (Very Cool Studio). Those dudes know their stuff. Honestly, I still consider myself pretty new to all of this stuff, but in short the judging criteria basically came down to these 3 things:

1. How complete is the character set?
2. Do the characters feel like they belong to each other?
3. How original is the approach?

The winning team was comprised of Michelle Adams, Amy Zhang and Dianna Xu. All new to type design and font software I believe. Their font is this pretty interesting rune-like design meant for one or two words at a time. Definitely wouldn’t set the bible in this thing. The Illustrator file the team started in is insane looking. Grids everywhere. So, so griddy. Love it.

The second place team’s inspiration was a sign found on a cigar shop and had some pretty fantastic features. The curly-qs on the “S” and the very sharp terminals on some of the other characters, along with these insane fat balls on others. This team was comprised Tad Wagner and Tommi Sharp, two regulars of TypeThursdaySF and current students at Type@Cooper West.

In third we had a pretty interesting, slightly rounded, geometric sans-serif with an almost complete character-set. This team was only one person; Tom Caruthers. And he was a complete newb too.

Ulrik: Cool! And you can play around with them on the Type Jam website, right? There is a little sample tool up.

What is the plan for the future of Type Jam? Any events lined up?

Jake: We’re hoping to hold another Type Jam in the near future. The positivity that people came away with from the event and the amount of people that we were able to expose to the world of type design was really refreshing. I think we even pulled some people into TypeThursdays here in SF.

But at the moment there is no date for the next Type Jam set in stone. It probably won’t ever be a monthly event like TypeThursday, but we hope it will at least be an annual if not bi-annual or even quarterly event. If you’re interested in getting updates on when the next event will take place feel free to sign up on the site for those!

One thing that I forgot to mention is one of the goals of the event was to benefit the amazing place that hosts TypeThursdaySF every month, San Francisco Center For The Book. All humble proceeds are headed their way.

You can sign up for updates on the next Type Jam event on the website: gettypejam.com

Check out Jake’s product and illustration work on his site: here

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We get a sneak preview with the team behind an innovative new way of creating and selling fonts

We speak to Lizy Gershenzon and Travis Kochel from Scribble Tone along with James Edmondson from OH no Type about their vision for how to empower type designers to experiment more, take more risks — and get paid for it in the process.

TypeThursday is the meeting place for people who love letterforms. Join us.

Los Angeles November 2nd
New York City November 2nd
London November 9th
San Francisco November 16th
Chicago November 16th
Seattle November 21st
Philadelphia November TBA

Ulrik Hogrebe: Welcome Travis, Lizy and James — super excited to have you here. You are working on a pretty interesting project called “Future Fonts” which is — and please rebuke me harshly if this is an inaccurate comparison — kind of like a Kickstarter for type.

But before we dig into the depths of that, maybe you’d like to talk a little bit about you as a team and where the inspiration from the project came from?

James: Go ahead T-bone!

Travis: Lizy and I started thinking about this a few years back, as a way to get some of our in-progress typefaces out there and as a way to get some feedback from the market during the process. Instead of waiting till the typeface is complete and released in to the world. We didn’t really do much with it until this past summer, when we started thinking it could be fun to open it up to other designers, and create more of a marketplace and community.

James: Yes, so the idea is for type designers who are working on a font to upload some specimens on to Future Fonts — and go into detail about how complete it is, and where they see it going. They’d include things like the extent to which the character set, metrics, kerning etc. are completed, and set a price. From there, people can buy it, which gets them free updates in the future. Buying early gives users the option to save some money, while supporting the development.

Travis: Ha! Exactly — good point. We should have mentioned that to begin with!

So we had been kicking these ideas around and then we saw James doing his awesome 50 days of unfinished fonts project, and thought he‘d be the ideal designer and use case for the platform. So we asked him to come on board and help with the branding and messaging of the project. Lizy and I are good at digging in and building stuff, while James is awesome at building a voice and a community. Working together, I think we’ve been able to really divide and conquer allowing us really push what we’re good at.

There is nothing more fun than starting a typeface, and for that reason, it’s easy to pile up a ton of ideas over a few years. Some of them deserve to be dusted off, and some of them definitely don’t, but maybe that’s for other people to decide, not me.

James: Yep, I totally agree. A lot of people and foundries have been trying to figure out the best way to do a something similar. Various experiments like Ghostlines, which is a way of subscribing to a typeface’s development, and offering feedback. And Swiss Typefaces has their “lab” for more experimental ideas that cost less than traditional retail typefaces.

I think what sets Future Fonts apart is that it can be a marketplace — a sort of common ground for type designers and type users to exist together and communicate. For me it solves the problem of what to do with my folder of unfinished stuff. There is nothing more fun than starting a typeface, and for that reason, it’s easy to pile up a ton of ideas over a few years. Some of them deserve to be dusted off, and some of them definitely don’t, but maybe that’s for other people to decide, not me.

It’s kind of weird how we treat font releases like they’re still cast in metal. We wait until they’re perfect, and there’s an enormous pressure to make sure there aren’t any mistakes.

Lizy: Also, coming at it as a designer that uses type, we have used typefaces with very limited character sets on brand work. Type is a design tool that can be useful long before the final release.

I think our creative processes are more exposed because of social media, github, etc. and we are more familiar with the idea of software being released in versions. With all that in mind, it just seems like good opportunity for Future Fonts to be new platform to release type.

Travis: Yeah, it’s kind of weird how we treat font releases like they’re still cast in metal. We wait until they’re perfect, and there’s an enormous pressure to make sure there aren’t any mistakes. I think we’re trying to relieve a bit of that, and make it a place designers can feel safe to take risks and experiment with ideas.

Ulrik: Can you talk about the pricing and the commercial side of things a bit?

Travis: Essentially the designer is selling a version of the typeface. They make some updates, describe what’s new, and upload the new package, and keep iterating. After each version, the price would go up a bit, although we’re leaving the exact pricing up to the designer.

Lizy: There is no commitment to finish the typeface. The designer establishes goals in the beginning of the project, but they are not required to finish it. The customer is buying the version as it is. If they update it, the customer gets free updates along the way.

Travis: With that in mind, we do plan on vetting the designers and typefaces pretty thoroughly, especially in the early days. While we want to encourage new designers to be a part of Future Fonts, we want to make sure anyone putting work on here is serious about their work, and that if their project got a fair amount of backing, they would continue to work on it.

Ulrik: So where are you in the process at the moment?

James: I came on later in the project, after Travis and Lizy had been working for a few months already. Like Travis said, I’ve taken over as the graphic designer, Lizy is head of UI, and Travis is development, and lately T-Bone has been sending over some pretty exciting early versions of the website for us to play around with.

Travis: We’ve got a working prototype, with most of the core functionality built. Lizy’s been focusing on ironing out the rough spots in the interface. I’d say maybe a few months to go? It always ends up taking longer than expected though. In the meantime we’re also starting to recruit designers to come on board so we can launch with a nice catalog.

James: Yeah, the recruitment is a super crucial part of the process. We want to represent a diverse cross section of folks and champion designers and work that we love.

Ulrik: Cool. So on the flip side of that, how does a designer judge that their typeface is ready to be put on Future Fonts? What should they be thinking of if they want to apply?

James: It has to be useful to someone, but as Lizy mentioned earlier, the state at which a typeface becomes useful can be extremely early. Maybe having just having numerals is good enough for Future Fonts. Most likely, a full alphabet would suffice. That’s something that can be drafted in a day or a weekend, so we are excited about the potential for people to play.

Travis: I think James summed that up well. It really depends on the intentions and target use of the typeface, and we’re going to be keeping a close eye on what goes on Future Fonts. We’ll probably revise the ‘minimum requirements’ once we see how people are actually using it a little more.

The feedback mechanism is something that is very interesting to us. (…) We’re hoping it can help bridge the gap between the makers and users of type.

Ulrik: What are your thoughts on the feedback mechanism between type designer and type buyer?

Lizy: The feedback mechanism is something that is very interesting to us. We’re hoping it can help bridge the gap between the makers and users of type. It is something we have considered since the beginning. At this initial stage, I think it will be a better tool for the near-professional or professional type designer, and not necessarily for the super naive beginner.

However, even if you are not an expert I think it will be a helpful educational tool for type users to get a better sense of what design considerations go into a typeface (e.g. spacing, hinting, etc.). I think things like setting type can be intimidating at times, and hopefully by making the process more transparent, it will help better educate designers on how to use type.

James: As an educator, I feel that the best learning happens in a classroom, around other students that are enthusiastically studying the same thing you are, so I’ll usually advocate for that. However, the idea of a “classroom” is changing.

Travis: Yeah, in the future I can see a lot of opportunities to build out an environment that’s better for complete beginners, but I do think this has the potential for anyone to learn regardless of level.

Ulrik: I think it’s a great idea. And definitely a great resource for the entire type community. Speaking off, is there anything you need from the community now?

James: Just to subscribe for updates, and join when we launch! That will probably be the hardest part.

Lizy: The response has been really exciting so far and we feel really fortunate to have support and friends in the type and other creative industries. It definitely helps us keep focus and momentum as we build it out.

Ulrik: Ok, thanks everyone. I don’t want to take up more of your time. Any parting words for our readers?

James: Just that I love Travis and Lizy, and they’re super fun to work with. We are in the golden age of type design, but still we are only scratching the surface at what can be done. I hope Future Fonts can encourage people to have fun with type.

Lizy+Travis: We love you too James! This has been a really fun project so far!

Sign up to get notified when Future Fonts launches and follow them on instagram: here and here

Check out James, Lizy and Travis’ other work here: OH no Type and Scribble Tone

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An Interview with Nikki Villagomez of Culture+Typography

Nikki Villagomez is a self-professed type geek and urban explorer cataloging urban typography and lettering she finds in cities across America. We talk to her about her favorite discoveries, the taming of the urban aesthetic and of course, manhole covers.

TypeThursday is the meeting place for people who love letterforms. Join us.

Philadelphia October 12th
San Francisco on Oct 19th
Chicago October 19th
Seattle October 19th
Los Angeles November 2nd
New York City November 2nd
London November 9th

Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Nikki — I am super pleased that you could join us today. I’ve been digging around your blog and really enjoy what you do. I feel you have taken a type spotting — a favorite pass time of type designers and enthusiasts everywhere and elevated it to the next level. But maybe you’d like to explain a bit about what you do and what your background is?

Nikki Villagomez: Thanks for taking the time to look through my blog!

So, my “day job” is Director of the Creative Studio for Dixon Hughes Goodman, the largest Accounting firm in the Southeast. My job is to manage the firm’s brand and the Creative Studio team. On the side, my “passion project” is researching how culture affects typography. I started my blog shortly after taking on this in-house role 7 years ago. On my blog, I compare pictures side by side from different parts of the world and discuss the typography, illustrations, and graffiti.

UH: That’s such a great passion project. Can you talk a bit about your process?

NV: Yes! So when I started my blog, I think I had about 60-ish pictures that I’d taken in the course of my own city and type explorations. Not that many and my goal with my blog was to post 5 days a week, 2 pictures a post. So, I burned through my pictures pretty quick!

Then, one Sunday morning, I was drinking my coffee and scrolling through Twitter and saw @FriendsOfType tweeted: Keep those submissions coming! #citytype @designmuseum #fontsunday. I quickly learned that the Design Museum in London hosts #FontSunday every Sunday. They assign a theme and ask people from all over the world to contribute to this theme. This particular Sunday, Friends of Type was curating the tweets for the theme ‘city type’, so typography specific to your city. I randomly tweeted at people if I could use their pictures on my blog and so on that Sunday, I went from having about 18 pictures left to over 300 from all over the world. Since then, I have just been adding to my library of images; from ones I take myself on my speaking engagements as well as ones that people send to me.

UH: Cool. It’s such a great project — both speaking as a type nerd but also as one who is interested in local cultures and how they manifest in general. Looking through your blog, the images touch on so many things; the history of a place, the history of type, the type manufacturing process — with everything from letters chiseled in stone to bent in neon — all the way to how a particular culture is expressing themselves in an area in the moment.

What do you look for when you are out and about? What makes a truly good find for you?

NV: A true gem for me is a sign or unique lettering that is specific to a city. For example, a manhole cover that says the city name is very unique as opposed to a manhole cover that says ‘Bingham & Taylor’ or ‘Bell South’, those aren’t so unique (It only took 3 question for me to bring up manhole covers, ha!). I like to look in unexpected places like the bottom of industrial foundation beams (usually stamped with the contractors company name), concrete stamps, graffiti and wayfinding signs.

UH: Ha, yes — I figured that would come up. So apart from the city type — or maybe as an extension of — you have an obsession with manhole covers? Talk to me about that.

NV: Well, things came full circle for me when Design Museum reached out to me to host #FontSunday and they asked me to pick a theme. I went with manhole covers because, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s been one of my passions for a while. So, one glorious Sunday, my Twitter blew up with tweets from people all over the world sending in pictures of manhole covers. I was happy to know it wasn’t just me looking at these pretty little things! It was such a wonderful experience and I had so much fun and it’s just fueled my obsession ever since.

I admire their designs, they are like beautiful coins in the ground that get trampled on, trucks drive over them, most don’t even notice their intricate detail. I have always been drawn to little details. Manhole covers epitomize that. They are all very different even though their basic size and shape are similar. Some have really intricate illustrations and others have ornate patterns. They are fascinating to discover. The best are the manhole covers from Japan since often their illustrations are in color. In researching the history of manhole covers and coal hole covers, I have found some which date back to the 1800s.

UH: I like the idea of these manhole makers imbuing the low with the high, if you follow me. Like their is a particular London or English ‘brand’ called Stanton Warrior which was created by Stanton Ironworks. I like the idea of these iron workers putting so much craft and pride into these objects.

NV: That’s right, it’s completely unexpected and a lot of the designs are just beautiful. They have to be utilitarian and functional but at the same time, they are visually pleasing. They don’t have to be, someone is taking the extra time to make them that way.

So anyway, after the first manhole cover experience, I wanted to relieve it again. I just needed the right opportunity… I had a major life event this past August — I turned 40. So, instead of going on a big trip or buying a tricked out car, I put out a call for submissions on my social media. I asked for everyone to send me a picture of a manhole cover with 1 piece of career advice to be included on a poster titled 40 Covers: A project dedicated to manhole covers and people who are 40, turning 40 or have turned 40. So basically, anyone. The first 40 submissions made it on the poster and it was a great way to celebrate my love of manhole covers and giving back to the career that has done so much for me.

UH: Some of the other things you are into are things like graffiti and general street ephemera. Tell me a little about how you see those things? Are you able to read an area’s culture through this stuff?

the culture that lives in a city is like a virus trying to stay alive…

NV: Absolutely. The typography I find on the streets walking around a city varies mainly depending on the economic status of the city. If it’s a wealthy city, I see more neon signs, murals painted from commissioned artists, newer signs advertising businesses. It’s harder to find interesting historic typography in the revitalized areas (typically the downtown areas) because it’s been covered up or removed. It’s easier to find interesting typography in the cities that don’t have as much money or where revitalization hasn’t occurred…unless the city really celebrates their history (like Baltimore, MD and Charleston, SC). A lot of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places so the signs have to be saved/restored.

On a similar vein, most cities, I have found, don’t celebrate graffiti. It’s viewed as a distraction and they look to cover it up as soon as possible. In Miami, for example, they celebrate their graffiti. They have an entire neighborhood called the Wynwood Arts District that recruits graffiti artists from all over the world to paint murals on the walls. The business owners take a sense of pride if a street artist tags the side of their building. The Banksy that is in Miami is covered in plexiglass to protect it. That’s an example of one city and how it’s handled so different there.

UH: Is this something you see a lot? A sort of taming of the urban aesthetic?

NV: Yes, as old businesses move out and new ones move in, they bring their new signs and designs with them. I have a quote from my book that is “the culture that lives in a city is like a virus trying to stay alive”. I mean ‘virus’ in the most positive way possible — there are the small locally owned businesses that struggle to keep their doors open when big box stores move in.

You can’t put a price on the history of a sign that has been hanging there for 80+ years. The best example I have for a ‘virus staying alive’ was found on the main street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Crawford’s Bar & Grill. Crawford’s used to be Crawford’s Mens Wear and before that it was a locally owned butcher. The new owners moved in a few years ago and instead of rolling out a new design for the restaurant, they paid respect to the history of the original logo and celebrated the butcher aspects still inside the building all these years later. It’s amazing.

UH: That is beautiful. Not to be overtly nostalgic but of course, that kind of stuff is literally the ghost of an era and it’s sometimes a shame to see it rolled over by modernist sans-serifs etc. (not that I don’t like those).

Also I see local differences in manufacture and craft disappearing; you’d have local sign-painters and metal workers, and their styles would be unique from place to place — whether it’s Copenhagen artisans where I am from or New York ones, you can see a difference. Cultural preferences and proclivities. And that’s being erased by modern printing techniques and branding. Sigh… OK, it’s impossible not to be somewhat nostalgic.

So what are some of the more exotic things you have seen? What has surprised you most?

NV: I loved being in Albuquerque and seeing the signs along Rt. 66. Lori O’Hara, who was on the AIGA New Mexico board when I flew out there to speak, took me around the Nob Hill area and we just walked around exploring and looking at their amazing signs. They are all in really great condition and the colors are so different from what I was used to seeing in Akron, Ohio(where I lived at the time).

I think what has surprised me the most is going into a city with a pre-conceived notion of what that city is going to look like and then what it actually looks like. For each of my talks, I ask local creatives to send me pictures of the typographic landscape that they think makes their city unique.

The weeks before speaking to AIGA Orlando, I was expecting to receive a lot pictures of Disney World. I didn’t receive one (until the night before I boarded my flight). What I discovered is that the locals don’t want to be associated with the tourist traps. Same thing happened with AIGA San Antonio. I was expecting a lot of pictures of the Alamo…I didn’t receive one. They don’t want to identify with the monuments and what others know about the city or what the media makes their city out to be. There have been some really neat discoveries along the way like these.

UH: Amazing. So are you planning anything for the future? More manhole projects? More typography projects in general? Or is there some place you are dying to visit?

NV: Yes! My long term goal is to take my talk international. I haven’t been to Europe yet and would love to be able to speak there and research the culture and typography. I am currently making my way through the AIGA chapters with my speaking engagements so that’s another goal. On October 5th, I gave my 30th AIGA chapter talk to AIGA Chicago. I will continue to research manhole covers as I make my way through each city!

Ulrik Hogrebe: Fantastic! I am looking forward to seeing more of it. Thanks again Nikki — really great to chat to you. Best of luck in the future.

Check out Nikki’s blog: Culture+Typography

You can buy her book and her poster here: Culture+Typography: How Culture Affects Typography (Amazon US) // 40 Covers Poster

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An Interview with the owner of Signal Foundry, Max Phillips

This week, we are talking to Max Phillips who set up his own foundry Signal in 2011. We talk about his new releases and the process behind them, the decision to redraw some of his old work and what it takes to run a foundry in today’s competitive environment.

TypeThursday is the meeting place for people who love letterforms. Join us.

Los Angeles October 5th
New York City October 5th
London October 5th
Philadelphia October 12th
San Francisco on Oct 19th
Chicago October 19th
Seattle October 19th

Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Max, really happy to have you here today — and congratulations on your new typeface releases and the launch of your new website. You run Signal Foundry and today we’ll talk a bit about what it entails to run your own foundry. But besides being a type designer, I believe you wear quite a few hats — do you want to start by telling us a bit about yourself and what you do?

Max Phillips: Sure. I was originally trained as a painter, to the extent that I was ever trained to be anything at all. I learned just enough to know I was never likely to be much good, but it started me drawing, and that’s come in handy. Some of my design office and agency clients come to me specifically because I can draw.

I started designing posters for my actor friends’ plays when I was a teenager, and my general design practice has pretty much developed out of that, though it moved from the cultural to the corporate world when I was still in my twenties and has (largely) stayed there. Today I still make most of my living doing branding, print collateral, the occasional website, and even a few UIs, but my principal passion has been letters — I started trying to design alphabets when I was 14 or so — and I’ve been concentrating on that more and more in recent years. I started Signal to have a structure for pursuing that specialty. Right now I divide my time between doing design work for my own clients, providing lettering, logo development, and bespoke typeface design for other studios and agencies, and retail typeface design.

UH: Cool. Am I correct in thinking that you are originally a New Yorker, and now reside in Dublin?

MP: I’m still a New Yorker. You don’t stop being a New Yorker just because you leave New York. But Dublin’s my home now, and I’d like to think I’m part of the Irish design community.

UH: Ha, yes — got it. I want to return to Dublin for a second at the end of this interview, as I’ve heard good thing. However, before we do that do you want to talk a bit about Signal and your new releases?

The idea behind Pressio was to draw a very black, extra-compressed typeface and then make the regular widths by squashing it down vertically. Then after I was done with that, I decided I’d try to make lighter weights by hollowing out the insides. So the whole thing was done backwards…

MP: Always. I’ve just brought out two new families that have been in the pipeline for years; Pressio and Center Slab. And I’ve redesigned and expanded two older families, Center and Vibro, adding two new weights to the former and a new lower case to the latter — Vibro was an all-caps titling face when I first designed it.

Pressio’s my biggest family so far: 20 styles, in four widths and five weights. It originally came out of lettering for a rejected corporate logo, and I thought the sketches would make a nice little exercise, and they just kept growing, and really haven’t stopped yet. The idea behind Pressio was to draw a very black, extra-compressed typeface and then make the regular widths by squashing it down vertically. Then after I was done with that, I decided I’d try to make lighter weights by hollowing out the insides. So the whole thing was done backwards, in terms of usual type design practice. This generated shapes and effects I couldn’t have planned in advance. If Pressio is interesting, and I hope it is, that’s why.

And as I said, it’s still growing. There’s a stencil companion in the works, and I’ve decided it needs some italics, too. So I’ll probably wind up with 60 styles in the next little while. Well, maybe not a little while.

UH: Ha, yes — don’t I know it. Experimenting with the process and letting it drive the aesthetic is a really interesting take on designing typefaces though.

Speaking of process, I want to dwell a bit on the typefaces that you’ve redrawn — tell me about the decision making that goes in to redrawing a typeface?

MP: “Decision” may not be the word. I didn’t exactly decide to add a full lower case and a set of dingbats to Vibro, which hadn’t made me much money to begin with. It was more a matter of the idea getting a grip on me and not letting go.

With Center, I thought the 1.0 version looked pretty good, and started adding serifs to make a slab companion. And I couldn’t figure out why the slab version didn’t feel the way I wanted it to. And eventually I realized it had to do with basic decisions I’d made about width and contrast, and that if I wanted Center Slab to work right, I had to adjust the basic skeleton, the relative widths of the letters, the structure of the arches — the works.

Once I’d done that, of course I had to go back and apply all those refinements to the sans. Meanwhile, I could see by the way the sans was being used out in the world that it would be improved by adding a couple of weights and adjusting some of the weights that were already out there. So that added up to a bunch of work. And of course, this work’s all being squeezed in between your client work, because clients need what they need when they need it. And your kids need to eat.

…I would really like to make as many different kinds of letters as I can in whatever time I’ve got left on Earth

UH: Yeah, it’s tricky. But you’ve got to find the time though.

So maybe, we should take a step back. What makes a Signal typeface? Do you have a particular approach or set of inspirations?

MP: I’m inspired by damn near everything in the world of letters, and by a lot of things that aren’t in the world of letters, like architecture and sculpture. And I would really like to make as many different kinds of letters as I can in whatever time I’ve got left on Earth. I’m not one of these people like van Krimpen who have a single ideal letterform in their heads that they keep approaching from different angles. I’m not a genius like van Krimpen, either. As for my approach, I just try to get to a feeling of rightness. Clarity, harmony, and balance, but with a little edge of tension to keep it from being too bland and soapy. There’s no philosophy behind it, or none that I’m aware of.

UH: I’m always interested in how people approach it. Some come from a very conceptual place like Dries that I spoke to recently — and some let the craft guide them. It’s such an interesting discipline from that aspect, having this singular medium but such a variety of expression and approaches.

Tell me a bit about Signal? How long have you run it?

MP: I started Signal around 2011 or so. Like I said, I’ve always drawn letters, but I began getting serious around then and finally managed to publish my first typeface, Spinoza, with FontFont. It was well received, and it gave me the idea that type design was something I could actually do.

UH: So, you tested the waters first and then set out on your own? What advice do you have for other “aspiring foundry owners”? What should they be prepared for?

I think the demand for typefaces is greater than it’s ever been, and the demand for custom typefaces is growing even faster than that.

MP: When it comes to running a foundry, I’m at the beginning of the journey. I’m in no position to give advice.

I will say that the type world is incredibly competitive right now, and you’d better be fully committed if you want in. I think the demand for typefaces is greater than it’s ever been, and the demand for custom typefaces is growing even faster than that. But there’s also a lot of people entering the field. Programs like KABK, Reading and Type@Cooper are producing all these highly skilled young people, and a bunch of them are starting their own foundries. I think there’s something like 1200 independent foundries out there, and the number is growing by the week. And it’s genuinely great to see so much talent and focus out there, and so many good new faces.

However, most of these foundries are making very little money. It’s hard to establish yourself when there’s such a crowd of other people, some doing very fine work. There are other pressures, too: the threat of Spotify-style subscription services from huge corporations, and the trend on big resellers for 90% discounts. All of this is pushing prices, and the perceived value of a typeface, lower for many people.

Making typefaces is only half the job. The work of marketing is the other half, and without giving that your full intensity, your work just sits on a server somewhere.

UH: How do you deal with all of this?

MP: You just do the best work you can, and then do your best to let people know about it. Making typefaces is only half the job. The work of marketing is the other half, and without giving that your full intensity, your work just sits on a server somewhere. You have to sell and just keep selling. But you’ve got to do everything with conviction. If you half-ass it, there’s no point. And I suspect, in the long run, it’s the work done with conviction that people respond to.

But I do feel incredibly lucky to being able to spend my time doing something I actually can do with full conviction. And one of the things about setting up your own foundry, creating a brand for it, writing about the work, designing the website, is that it’s a chance to focus on why the hell you’re doing this in the first place. It’s very clarifying, and very satisfying when at the end of the process — and the website was a pretty long process — you can look at it, out in the world, and think: Ah. Yes, that’s what I meant. That’s why I’m doing this. And that keeps you pointed in the right direction.

UH: Fantastic Max. Personally I believe that for a designer type design carries it’s own reward solely through the process—and it’s inspiring to talk to people who are truly passionate about it.

I think we have almost come to the end of out time, but since we are on the subject of passion anyway, I just want to return to the Dublin design scene which I gather is really booming at the moment?

MP: Very much so. There’s so much strong work coming out at the moment, and I keep meeting young people fresh out of school who are already well along their own paths. You can get a good bird’s-eye view of current Irish graphic design at 100archive.com, which showcases some of the best work being done here, and provides a forum for writing about the profession.

I suspect that design education’s very good here, and that a lot of this energy comes from people like Clare Bell at DIT, David Smith at IADT, and Conor Clarke at NCAD . Whatever the reason, there’s a lot of first-rate studios in Dublin now, a lot of new initiatives, and a lot of opportunities for collaboration. And that makes it a good place for Signal.

Ulrik Hogrebe: The role of formal education in design communities is always really interesting to me, and one I often fear is undervalued. I’d be interested in knowing what sets Dublin apart and how education is helping drive the community. That sounds like an interview for another day though.

Max, it’s been a pleasure. I just want to thank you and wish you the best of luck in the future. I personally think the new website is beautiful and the releases are exciting and look great.

Check out Max’s new releases on his beautiful new website: Signal Foundry.

And keep up with the latest from Signal here: Signal Foundry on twitter.

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An Interview with Tim Brown and Bram Stein of Adobe Typekit

This week, I talk with Tim Brown and Bram Stein of Adobe Typekit. They shared the opportunities inherit in variable fonts for web designers, developers and type designers — and dispel some common misconceptions.

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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hey Bram and Tim. Great to have you both in for this.

I am thinking today is primarily a deep dive on variable fonts, and then we’ll see where things take us.

But maybe we’ll do a quick round of intros. Tim, you are the newer of our guests — why don’t you start?

Tim Brown: Sure thing, Ulrik. I’m a designer, writer, speaker, and toolmaker. My special interest is typography. I’ve been making websites since 2002? And practicing typography for about that long as well. Right now I’m called “Head of Typography” here on the Adobe Typekit & Adobe Type teams. I help people hone their typographic skills, and I advise Adobe software designers — and Typekit partners who are external to Adobe — on typographic UI/UX. Especially exciting when you consider variable fonts!

UH: Cool. It’s super cool to have you here. And Bram we had you on in May talking about your project the Typography Inspector. What have you been up to since we spoke last time?

Bram Stein: Good to be back, thanks for having me on again. I’ve been quite busy actually: I’ve been working on a book called the Webfont Handbook, which came out earlier this month. It covers a lot of the things you need to know when using webfonts; licensing, hosting, text-rendering, subsetting, performance optimization, and of course, also variable fonts.

UH: Amazing — keeping busy then! So is the book a personal passion project? Or what prompted it?

BS: I’ve always wanted to write a book about webfonts. I registered a domain name for the book back in 2014 because I wanted it to be an online book. Unfortunately I never really had the time, and it lingered as an idea for several years. Until I talked to Tim, who encouraged me to send a proposal to A Book Apart. To my surprise they were very interested in the book, and now it’s a real thing. Thanks Tim!

UH: Ha! Fantastic— I’ll move on to the variable font stuff in a second, but just so I can queue it up in my own shopping cart, who is it intended for?

BS: It’s intended for both developers and designers. Basically anyone who works on the web and uses webfonts (which most sites use). If you’re interested, you can buy it on the A Book Apart website.

UH: Great. I’ll have a look. In the meantime, let’s get back to the matter at hand. So I can’t really think of a better combination of people to have in to talk about Variable Fonts than you two. Personally, I don’t know nearly enough and I think I have a lot of misconceptions that I want to clear up.

Maybe we start with just a basic definition of what variable fonts are? Tim?

TB: A variable font is, as John Hudson put it, “a single font file that behaves like multiple fonts”. Imagine a type family as you’ve always known one to be — it has a Regular, an Italic, a Bold, maybe a Semibold. Many typefaces today have different widths — so, a Condensed, or an Extended, in different weights.

What variable fonts do is turn those many individual font styles into “design spaces”, which affords efficiency and flexibility. Any point or range in a variable font’s design space is accessible to designers. Need something more bold than Semibold, but not as bold as Bold? You can find it. Need something condensed but not as condensed as Condensed? You can find that too.

There’s a lot more to this, but I hope that gives you a general idea. Also, thanks so much for having me and Bram here. But there are lots of people besides us thinking about variable fonts, and experimenting. In fact, some of the folks behind these ideas have been writing and designing for this moment for decades. Adobe pioneered Multiple Master technology back in the ’90s. And folks like David Berlow and Erik van Blokland have been experimenting with digital type for years, pushing the boundaries and helping us all understand the potential of a variable space.

…you could serve a single file that contains the entire design space for only a slight increase in file size. This will have an enormous impact on performance…

UH: Right. Of course. It takes a village, right? So unpicking what you just said, there are a number of things at play. So you have the font itself — as in the lines and points of it. Then you have the file technology and then I guess you also have the means of controlling the font — which I am supposing is the CSS support or standards that need to be baked into “the web” to allow us to use these fonts in the first place. Is that accurate?

TB: Right, there are many parts to this. There are the fonts themselves, which adhere to a specification (this is what the big announcement was last year — the new OpenType specification that included variable fonts). Then there are rendering engines that make the fonts visible, and browsers & design software that need to support those engines. And finally people need ways of designing with variable fonts, via instructions like CSS and software UI.

UH: Got it. And can you tell me a bit about its origins? Or it’s purpose, really?

TB: I think Bram can speak to the immediate advantages best, and in terms of the origins (in conceptual stuff decades ago, and in collaborative spec work more recently), the best thing to do is read the announcement from 2016 which I mentioned before.

BS: I love talking about this. I look at variable fonts from a completely different angle. Of course, I’m also very excited about the possibilities variable fonts open for design, but my primary focus has been the performance benefits.

Instead of serving a font family as separate font files (like Tim said earlier: regular, bold, etc.) you could serve a single file that contains the entire design space for only a slight increase in file size. This will have an enormous impact on performance; serving one file is going to be much faster.

I think what’s really interesting about variable fonts is that it has a little for everyone: type designers, developers, and designers. That’s probably also the reason why we’re seeing such fast adoption. Everyone is excited about it.

UH: Cool, so I get the efficiency part of it. So now I am going to just barrage you with all my misconceptions, if that’s cool? So for web designers, I now also essentially get a responsive font, right? So kind of like an inflating and deflating balloon, my font choice will react to my viewport?

BS: That’s certainly possible, but that is just one possibility in a range of options. You can do a lot of other useful things that aren’t dynamic. What if you find the default bold slightly too dark? Without variable fonts you would need to use a typeface that has a semibold. With variable fonts you can just make it slightly less bold by tweaking the weight axis. Depending on the font you could tweak a lot of these small details.

TB: The dynamic, flexible stuff is really interesting, though. It’s going to take a while, but what I like about variable fonts is that they’re forcing us to think about the web differently. Forcing us to rethink things we thought we had already figured out. I remember hearing an analogy from my friend Chris Armstrong, about how the web is like states of matter. He said fixed, static design on the web is like ice, and flexible, fluid design is like water. When Ethan Marcotte got us all thinking about responsive design, you can think of that like putting containers around the water.

I took this analogy and ran with it in an article about CSS Locks. And while this article is about line spacing, the conceptual model underneath is very applicable to variable fonts. Suppose you wanted a variable font to flex as part of how your design responds to conditions it meets. How exactly will it flex? You must decide. You must determine how much of the design space will be part of that flexibility, and the rate at which the flexibility happens. You must decide what other aspects of the design — outside of the font itself, or the element it applies to — influence and are affected by that flexibility. It’s mind-bending. Extremely interesting to me.

It’s maybe worth pointing out that the type designer can choose which aspects of their font are variable. They can choose what to expose to the user’s control and what not to expose.

BS: Oh, that’s a good point. That’s where variable fonts can really shine. I was mostly reacting to the balloon metaphor and some of the display type examples we’ve seen where text gets squished and stretched. Cool, yes —but the most useful applications of variable fonts are probably more subtle.

UH: Yes, I’ve heard others say that this will finally give web designers the same kind of control that print designers have and take care of the “between breakpoints problem” which many developers and designers deal with; at the breakpoint it looks great, but in between it’s kind of willy nilly how things appear.

As a type designer, I was initially slightly uncomfortable with the idea that anybody can decide what Bold is in my typeface. But actually we are saying that holistically, design will benefit because of the added control?

BS: It’s maybe worth pointing out that the type designer can choose which aspects of their font are variable. They can choose what to expose to the user’s control and what not to expose. There’s also a possibility for the type designer to give presets: this is what I consider bold, this is thin, etc. The format offers a lot of flexibility and control for type designers.

TB: That’s right. And in general variable fonts should help with the “in between” issues web designers face, though I wouldn’t consider it the same kind of control that print designers have. It’s nice to be able to better guide how a flexible design flexes … but it’s also very complicated. It’s more like the control a print designer has over an entire identity system, or a campaign that appears in many formats. Except on the web, of course, the formats are infinite.

I don’t think we could ask for a better situation, though. We have major companies behind the effort, and plenty of time to figure out what variable fonts should be like in design work.

UH: Ok, so in summary, we are saying everyone stands to gain. Consumers because they get better faster load times and on the flip-side of that, developers because they can optimize for performance better. Web designers gain more control and potentially also more means of expression and finally type designers gain an extra dimension to be creative in.

So, I guess the question is, what is uptake looking like? When is this coming to a website near me, so to speak?

TB: We don’t know, exactly. But because Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe collaborated on this, I expect pretty solid support across the board in the not-too-distant future. One thing to keep in mind is that although browsers may ship with support for variable fonts, whether they work is also dependent upon the OS having the right rendering engine available.

I don’t think we could ask for a better situation, though. We have major companies behind the effort, and plenty of time to figure out what variable fonts should be like in design work. These early days are ripe for experimentation.

BS: Chrome made an interesting choice: instead of waiting for OS to support variable fonts, they’ve decided to bundle the FreeType rendering engine with Chrome. If the operating system supports variable fonts, Chrome will use that, and if variable fonts are not supported they will be rendered using FreeType. So it’s likely that we’ll soon see widespread support for variable fonts on Chrome, including mobile and slightly older operating systems.

UH: Ok so finally, what if I am a type designer. Is there a way for me to get involved? Where do I start?

BS: You can start by creating variable fonts from your existing typefaces! Most of the major font editors already support variable fonts, or are in the process of adding support (Robofont, Glyphs and Fontlab). There aren’t many introductions for type designers yet, but Microsoft has published a good technical overview of how variable fonts work. Type Network has also published a proposal for several typographic axes, with visual examples. And for technical details, the I Can Variable Fonts notes are a good place to start.

UH: Fantastic! Those are great resources. OK, I think we are reaching the end in terms of time. I just want to thank you both for taking the time to clear things up for me. I feel you really helped me grok the possibilities inherit in variable fonts. Thanks again — I am sure we will speak again sometime.

TB: Great — and like I mentioned there are a bunch of others who are working on and thinking about this stuff, who’d I’d also urge people to look up and dive in to; Dan Rhatigan, Bianca Berning, Roel Nieskens, Nick Sherman, Andrew Johnson, Laurence Penney, Jason Pamental and of course everybody mentioned above.

You can find follow more of Tim and Bram’s work: on Tim’s website here and Bram’s here.

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This week we learn how to pair Latin and Kanji type with Tien-Min Liao, creator of the Bilingual Lettering project.

Tien-Min Liao’s project Bilingual Lettering explores how to pair Latin and Kanji type and achieve the same aesthetic and brand expression across cultures. Tien-Min explains why designers get it wrong today, the differences between the two traditions and techniques for getting it right.

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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Tien-Min, thank you so much for joining us.

So, you do a lot of work dealing with the pairing of Latin and Kanji lettering, and how you can translate the look and feel from one script to another. I’ll dive in to that in a moment, but before we do that, maybe you’d like to tell our readers a bit about yourself and where your interest in type stems from?

Tien-Min Liao: Thanks Ulrik!

OK, I am originally from Taipei, Taiwan. I came to New York to study graphic design after graduating from college in Taipei and now I am working in a branding agency called Siegel+Gale where I have had the chance to work on a lot logotype development and refinement projects, which is part of where I am coming from with my bilingual type studies.

I got in to typeface design while taking one of Jesse Ragan’s typeface design workshops at Pratt. And then a year later I got in to the Type@Cooper program, while still working at S+G.

After working in a branding agency for a while, and traveling between US, Taiwan and China, I started to notice that a lot of western brands didn’t make their Chinese/Kanji version logotypes as good as their original logotype and vice versa.

Ulrik: So what was it that drew you to type design?

Tien-Min: I remember when I was in middle school, I was fascinated by the custom logotypes for these Taiwanese pop artist’s album designs. That was the first time I noticed how much personality type can bring into a design. But before I took those typeface design classes with Jesse, I didn’t know much about the difference between things like typeface design and lettering.

Ulrik: Cool, and what was the experience like at Cooper? Especially working on the side? Was it a tough period, or was it nice to have job on the side where you could apply your learning?

Tien-Min: I was very busy at the time, working during the day and taking classes at night and on the weekend. The workload was pretty heavy, but I enjoyed it a lot! After I graduated from the program the first time, I went back to take the program again (most of the classes that is. I did miss a few…) but this time with different instructors. I felt like one year was not enough — and it was really fun to take it with a new set of instructors. Really, for me the first year was just the beginning —and after I finished the second year I felt more comfortable in terms of making my own design decisions when working with type — and at the same time I started to have more opportunity to work on some logotype refinements at S+G which also grew my confidence.

Ulrik: Wow! You took the course twice! That’s dedication. Right, so let’s talk a bit about your work in bilingual lettering. Can you explain the project to our readers?

Tien-Min: Well the project is a series of Latin-Kanji pairing studies for use in bilingual lettering and logotypes. I’ve also written some essays on my observations, process and synthesis, and documented all of it on my site.

Ulrik: Right, and I stumbled across it on your Instagram which I have been following for a while now and really find the work interesting. So tell me, what is the problem you are trying to solve with the project?

Tien-Min: Wow, thank you! After working in a branding agency for a while, and traveling between US, Taiwan and China, I started to notice that a lot of western brands didn’t make their Chinese/Kanji version logotypes as good as their original logotype and vice versa.

What people usually do is they choose an existing typeface (mostly a generic one) to pair with their original logo. So a Latin logotype gets a generic Kanji script and vice versa. However, this kind of treatment works only when both languages appear at the same time, When the translated logo stands by itself, the brand personality is typically not present at all because all you are seeing is the generic. It’s not designed to be a logotype. The other common thing that I often see is that even when someone has gone through the effort to draw a translated logotype, it is often badly drawn by designers who are not familiar with typeface design. For example, I often see wrong thick-and-thin strokes in Latin or Kanji logotypes respectively. So I was wondering if there is way to make both languages or scripts work together and be able to express a common personality at the same time. And that is really why I started this project.

Ulrik: That’s really interesting. I hadn’t really thought of that being mainly familiar with Latin script — but it makes sense. And of course, I am aware that companies like Toyota or VW are investing in families of typefaces across Latin, cyrillic and Kanji, so what you are saying explains a lot about the motivations for those companies to want a consistent brand across cultures.

So tell me a little about the differences in designing Latin script and Kanji?

Tien-Min: Yes, some big corporates have the budget to invest in multi-language typefaces for use in throughout in their brand’s visual identity. But for most of the clients, although it might be hard for them to do custom typeface, I think at least they should be trying to customise their logotype.

When it comes to Kanji and Latin, the two scripts are really different in terms of structure and the density. As a script they can both can be divided into smaller units, but the way those units are put together is totally different. Latin script is arranged horizontally while every Kanji characters is built differently. Some are built with two units—one on top of the other—some are set side by side, while some are built with multiple units, so the density between each character varies. Compared to Kanji, Latin script looks relatively even.

Ulrik: Right, and am I correct in thinking there is a somewhat limited amount of Kanji typefaces to choose from as well — I think someone was telling me that because of the huge character sets, it’s relatively expensive to design a Kanji typeface?

Tien-Min: That’s true. There are not as many typefaces in Chinese or Japanese compared to Latin typefaces, but because of this fact, I think this should spur people on even more to do custom logotypes in Kanji.

Ulrik: Tell me a little bit about your process? How do you go about creating your pairings?

Tien-Min: I usually start with one script and sketch it on paper first. At first, there was a lot of failure trying too hard to force logotypes to have the same appearance. But it’s hard—traditionally Latin and Kanji are drawn with different tools so there are differing weight distribution rules that need to be followed. However after doing around 50 exercises, I started to figure out a systematic way to do it.

I use three methods to create complimentary styles. The first one is to create the structure based on traditional weight distribution and then extracting the traits from the other script as decorative element.

The second one is to imagine they are drawn with the same tools. However, this kind of treatment often makes the type look informal or a bit too stylised.

The last one is totally illustrative. Treating both as images and creating a more expressive lettering or logotype. Which one is the better approach really depends on the design subject. After deciding which approach to use, the next step is to make sure they are consistent in all visual parameters, such as color, tension, balance, contrast and so on.

For instance, Li-shu is one kind of calligraphy style; it was often found carved on stone from the Han Dynasty, so it is usually used to express seriousness, but it may also make things feel a bit old.

Ulrik: That’s a great approach. I think I’ve also read you saying that it’s not just making the Latin script and Kanji look the same, but also having them express the same thing across cultures? So if a logotype is meant to look modern and forceful in Latin, then the Kanji should echo that too? Is that always easy to do?

Tien-Min: Yes. I think they should express the same personality. I feel one must have cultural knowledge of both scripts to do bilingual lettering well and to really understand the cultural cues. For instance, Li-shu is one kind of calligraphy style; it was often found carved on stone from the Han Dynasty, so it is usually used to express seriousness, but it may also make things feel a bit old.

Ulrik: That’s fascinating — is it a stupid question to ask how many calligraphic styles there are? And how are they used? Do people change between them depending on what they are writing or… Is it like as a westerner I might choose a more severe serif if it needs to look serious, a lighter sans if it needs to look more modern?

Tien-Min: There are five big categories in terms of calligraphy. It’s hard to say which one is more modern. Sometimes it also depends on how they are drawn. It’s like blackletter can be used in both old and modern ways. Apart from calligraphy, there are also many different typeface catalogues like Song-ti, Hei-ti and and so on, just like Latin typefaces.

Ulrik: Got it. Ok, so if I am a type or graphic designer and want to learn more, how do I do it? Where do I start?

Tien-Min: I am not sure… most of the Kanji type design books and magazines are published in Japanese or Chinese. I haven’t seen a book or tutorial in English yet. If you are interested I have some very basic info on my site, although that is probably not enough…

Ulrik: Ha, yes — I was reading through some of that earlier on. It’s a nice primer though. However, sounds like there is a gap in the market for a book or instructional series — a project for you perhaps?

Tien-Min: Haha, maybe I can translate some really good books into English in the future if people are interested.

Ulrik: That sounds like a great idea! In the meantime, thank you so much for your time. I’ll look out for the book and in the meantime, I’ll follow along on your website and Instagram.

Best of luck in the future!

Tien-Min: Thank you so much for your time chatting with me!

Want to see more of Tien-Min’s work? Her portfolio is a treasure trove of type goodies: typeji.com.

Also, there is a wealth of pairing examples and more notes on process over here: bilinguallettering.typeji.com

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An Interview with Graphic and Type Designer Dries Wiewauters

This week, I interviewed Dries Wiewauters, a Belgium Type and Graphic Designer about his typeface ‘MAD’ released by Colophon Foundry. Dries also talks about his reinterpretation of a monoline font, his approach to type design and why it pays not to be afraid of making things that are just a little bit ugly.

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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Dries! Great to have you here.

Dries, I first discovered your work because I stumbled across your typeface MAD on Instagram and immediately fell in love with it. Since then I have been poking around your website and I really enjoy your style and take on type design. But before we get to that, maybe you’d like to lead the dance by telling us a bit about yourself and your background?

Dries Wiewauters: Thanks for having me and for the compliment. In terms of intros, well… I was born and raised in Belgium. Which is also where I reside. I studied at the LUCA: St Lucas Academy in Ghent, where I got a Masters in Graphic Design. Afterwards I continued the enrichment of the mind at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem, the Netherlands. At St Lucas I was experimenting with type. At the Werkplaats the experimentation evolved and manifested itself into “comments” on historical sources, which I feel is something that often happens in my type.

Currently I work as a designer in Belgium, with type design as a side dish. So type design is not my only occupation or even my main one. Really, I am a graphic designer and on top of that, I teach Type Design at the KASK, another Masters course for design in the city of Ghent, Belgium. Besides work I spend my time running and training for Ultra-trail marathons in the Alps or Spanish Pyrenees.

UH: So graphic designer, teacher, type designer and extreme runner? That’s a serious calling card. OK, we’ll need to focus though! Tell me a bit about what attracted you to type design? How did you find out that this is something you are passionate about?

DW: Well, at school we had to do a Masters project and I thought; since I am interested in type, why not try and spend this “free” year experimenting with this fascination of mine? So I made up the excuse of starting a private press and worked on a text face and some accompanying display cuts for a year.

I really liked the balance of making type and then using it in my own designs but felt that I needed some more time and space to develop a proper “language”—my own style or voice in terms of type. I was a big fan — and still am to this day — of Evert Bloemsma and heard that he had an aversion towards “The Hague” school and the theories of Gerrit Noordzij — although he still respects them immensely. So taking a page out of his book, I decided to go for a school which was less about type and more about the boundaries between disciplines.

I like to construct the puzzle that is a typeface by using other elements as the binding factors.

UH: That’s really interesting. So what are the differences between the Werkplaats approach and “The Hague” approach?

DW: The Werkplaats really isn’t a type design school. It has a broader field of focus than other, more specialized, programmes. So there was very little help with the craft aspect of type design. Luckily there was a participant — Hyo Kwon — who was in contact with a few Type & Media people that advised me on those things.

The KABK in The Hague on the other hand is a pure type design course that in one year shapes type designers based on historical references as the basis of their design approach. So using calligraphy, stone carving, etc., to explain the theory of type and why certain things are the way they are — i.e. the theories of Gerrit Noordzij’s The Stroke. Although I believe their approach is valid, I feel that all the Type and Media stuff has a similarity in vibe that I wanted to avoid creeping into my work. I like to construct the puzzle that is a typeface by using other elements as the binding factors. Does that make sense?

UH: Yes, totally. And I think that’s what I really like about your work. It has a sense of freedom and experimentation to it, which sits on top of the craft. And at the same time, you often have a strong conceptual frame. Maybe we should use an example for our readers? Do you want to talk about MAD a bit and how that came to be?

DW: MAD (Man Aided Design as opposed to Computer Aided Design) was a big project to finish. It was based on a holiday job that I did, where in the course of a few summers I digitized the entire floor plan of an automotive-factory. Quite tedious work, but it had me looking at AutoCAD drawings for the first time and opened up my eyes to the idea of old plotters and how line thickness was only fixed in the final stage of the production process — so you create an object and then you decide a line weight, which is this really weird and janky workflow in AutoCad. So I fiddled with some of these things and started sketching and just kind of had all these sketches lying around on my hard drive.

Later, at the Werkplaats we did a pitch for a furniture Biennial for which I wanted to use MAD to render different versions of their identity—the parallel being that furniture designers also render their idea of a chair. Something that this Biennial was filled to the brim with. The curator wanted to work with us but for all sorts of reasons it ended up not going through. However the sketches ended up on my site and caught the eye of Alex Lin from Studio Lin who asked me to do some different versions for a client of his.

Then the boys from Colophon Foundry asked if I wanted to expand it into the multi-weight family it is today with all the bells and whistles. But to get all the details how I wanted them, my perfectionist tendencies took over and it took a few years to finally get it finished. We ended up adding filled versions, which turned out to be some of my favorites. It gives it a friendly feeling when it is used for body copy.

UH: It’s funny that it took so long to perfect since the font is so loose and has all these quirks that make it look quite rough. But I guess that is the hard part? Retaining the imperfect feel, while making it perfect?

I believe that in design it is better to have something which is slightly ugly but has character than something that is overly bland.

DW: Well, you can’t really make a font that has no fill, as the CAD fonts do. So I wanted to make the font as slim as possible so that designers could add a stroke if they wish to do so. But to obtain the uniformity in the lines, it takes a lot of fidgeting on the 1000 UPM grid that all fonts are drawn upon.

There are a lot of differences between the original sketches of the AutoCAD fonts and the final forms, since a lot of decisions were made to improve legibility and the overall feel of the family. That is also the reason why I don’t see this as a revival but more as a re-interpretation of the formal style of monoline fonts.

But on a related note, I always prefer any font that I design –or use as a designer– to be slightly wrong. You could even say uncomfortable looking. I think when a font is too polished it looses it’s appeal to me. I believe that in design it is better to have something which is slightly ugly but has character than something that is overly bland. The risk is that it takes a good designer to spot this intended ugliness and use it in the correct way. Just like with my previous Colophon release — PDU — it is exciting to see how people use it. Some people will use the font for it’s formal qualities. And there is nothing wrong with that, but some people will also recognize the ugliness and use that to their advantage in an unexpected way. I am really looking forward to see some of those examples popping up in the near future.

UH: Im glad you mentioned your PDU font. Is this what you mean by making ‘comments’ on historical fonts? I believe it’s based on the idea of the Plaque Découpée Universelle (ed. a typeface based on a single stencil, originally invented by Joseph A. David in 1876). Can you explain that for us?

DW: With PDU I was intrigued by this seemingly universal grid by which you could create every letter of the alphabet. And even though the resulting shapes are ugly and lacking a lot of optical adaptations that one would normally make, it does have a certain flair. I wanted to explore the limits of the PDU grid and how far it could be pushed. Where are the extremes? But fair enough, I found that even many mathematical symbols can be made with it, although some minor bending of the rules was used to get a full character set.

When I met Eric Kindel in the UK and told him that I wanted to make a version of the stencil, he wanted to add one to his collection too, since the original that he based his article upon was broken. So we ended up doing a historical replica of the object itself as well.

In the end, the idea of the stencil proved to be a valid thing, but I see it more as an idea then a formal success. The final font can be seen as a strict historical recreation, but inside the open type features there lurk some quite quirky glyphs that can be activated.

UH: Cool! I guess I want to end with perhaps your take or your advice for people who are making typefaces out there, and what you’d like to see more of in the future? Does that make sense?

But some great designers seem to be able to cross the boundaries of design and pure type design. Granted, some only make type, but they have a background and an eye that enables them to see what is missing and what could be a great addition to the typographic landscape. Instead of just making yet another Times, Helvetica, Futura…

DW: Totally. Well, I like how in the current age a designer has the tools to do whatever they feel like. Custom fonts are almost ubiquitous now. Together with tax evasion, it’s something most big companies indulge in nowadays. But some great designers seem to be able to cross the boundaries of design and pure type design. Granted, some only make type, but they have a background and an eye that enables them to see what is missing and what could be a great addition to the typographic landscape. Instead of just making yet another Times, Helvetica, Futura, … as many type designers do. I.e make another version of a font instead of creating something unique.

So my advice would be to study the classics and see what makes them great, but to not get stuck in doing what everybody else does. See what you personally feel a need for and if it doesn’t exists, quickly whip something out for your project. If it ends up being a full font, great … if it is only used for one job or gets put on the back-burner? Fine either way.

For example, I am currently working with Ruud Ruttens for the design of the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent and we ended up making a font that feels classic at first glance but then is also totally friendly and at the same time totally aggressive, quirky but classy. For the simple reason that we couldn’t find a fitting voice for the museum in the existing typographic landscape. And there is a big chance that you will see it coming out with Colophon somewhere in 2019.

UH: Amazing! I am looking forward to that. Thank you so much for talking to us! And best of luck in the future.

Check out MAD and PDU in all their glory over at Colophon Foundry: MAD Sans, MAD Serif and PDU.

And have a gander at Dries’ other work on his portfolio here: drieswiewauters.eu

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Marina Joyce is a designer and printer and now the author of a new book “Designing for Print” aimed at picking up where design schools are failing today; teaching designers and others about the decisions, skills and considerations that need to go into putting something on paper.

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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Marina — welcome to TypeThursdays. You just launched a Kickstarter campaign for your new book “Designing for Print” which I am really excited about. We are going to be diving deep on that, but before we get going, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?

Marina Joyce: Hi Ulrik! I am pleased to be here and thank you for inviting me! It’s always fun to commune with design-minded folk. In terms of background, I am assuming you want to hear about the part that led to the book?

Ulrik: Yes please — a bit of background on how you earned your chops in the fields and how you came about the idea of writing a book?

Marina: Okay, cool. Well, in short, I bought a printing company when I was 27 years old. At the time, I knew nothing about printing, but I didn’t really know that at the time.

As I started to reach out to the community and talk about the book I started to get feedback. And the gist of it was “Wow, you have a unique POV because you are a designer AND printer”.

The longer story is that ever since high school I have been doing various graphic design jobs for any person, company or group that’s wanted to pay me. I became a single parent and ended up working for a holding company that wanted to diversify into real-estate related companies and I ended up being their “start-up” person. I started a new division for them on top of two new subsidiaries in four years. I was doing all the branding for all their companies — about 7 I think — and all the marketing at home at night working as a freelancer, while during the day I was President of a company. I’ve never actually written that down before and looking at it now, it seems pretty funny.

I thought to myself; I like printing. I know how to run a company. So… sure! And so I bought a print shop.

At any rate, the owner of the print shop I had been using came to me and said he was retiring and asked if I would buy his company. I thought to myself; I like printing. I know how to run a company. So… sure! And so I bought a print shop. My vision was the company would be a design-to-print company. I would be doing for my customers what I had been doing as my night job. I could take an actual computer disc at a time in LA where very few could (believe it or not there was such a time) and because of that, we grew like crazy. Ended up being a pretty good business model, all in all.

Then, a few years ago I was asked to speak to UCLAX students about ink on paper. It was an evening lecture with about 80 people or so. Afterwards, something like 78 people came up to me and they all said the same thing; “Teach a class! We need this stuff! We aren’t learning this stuff!”. I should say that I bear no ill-will towards UCLA. I went to school there, but can’t speak to what they are teaching now.

From that, I decided to write a syllabus thinking it would take an hour or two. Well, 6 months later I had the table of contents for a book. So I decided I might as well write it. At the same time, I was running a company and I have 3 kids so it hasn't exactly gone quickly. But finally, I finished the book last year and now I am kickstarting it!

But really, it didn’t grow out of me thinking I was special or super talented or any of that. As I started to reach out to the community and talk about the book I started to get feedback. And the gist of it was “Wow, you have a unique POV because you are a designer and printer”. Despite being somewhat thick skulled and extremely ADD, it eventually started to sink in and when I started talking about and promoting the book from that vantage point, things really started to click.

Ulrik: Ok wait — this is fascinating. So you went and bought a print shop as a 27-year-old without actually having worked in one before? How was that as an experience? What was the learning curve like?

…my reps taught me about coated and uncoated and what the different finishes were called. Now I was learning that paper comes in parent sizes and that there are literally 100s of different types. Then add inks, treatments, techniques, presses etc.

Marina: Overwhelming! The owner George was retiring because he had emphysema from smoking like 6 packs of cigarettes a day, so I remember walking in and there was just this cloud of smoke… Well, my dad was an auto mechanic and summers I would work in his shop, like when I was 12–14, just this little girl in tiny Sears coveralls… so I was used to men, loud tools, grease, etc. Which is kind of similar to a pressroom. But I really was just thrown into the deep end. The first thing I learned was how to do an estimate. And then it just avalanched from there.

When I was buying print in my old job my reps taught me about coated and uncoated and what the different finishes were called. Now I was learning that paper comes in parent sizes and that there are literally 100s of different types. Then add inks, treatments, techniques, presses etc.

In the beginning, I just had to take fake it until I made it. Customers and prospects would call and I would go pick up a sample and say “Sure, we can print this”. Then bring it back to the shop and my Pressman would say “No we can’t”. Then scramble to find a solution. I would call binderies and describe the sample. Literally going “It is 8.5 x 11. It has two staples but not through the spine. Through the front to the back” and the bindery person would say “okay, it is side-stitched.” That’s how I learned.

As my skills grew, I started to turn the shop around to what I had envisaged. When I was buying print for all those companies in the holding company, we used a “good” printer and we used a “cheap” printer. George’s shop was the cheap printer. So I had to re-engineer the quality requirements, upgrade presses, retrain employees to get with a more modern and higher quality standard and so on. It was an intense time. I would pick up my daughter from school and bring her to the shop where we would eat fast food. Then while I worked she would play some kind of reading game until I would put her to bed in my car which I parked in the shop. Keep on going till 1 or 2 in the morning, go home and do it all over again the next day.

Ulrik: Wow! That is amazing! I am seeing this as one of those training montages from films. Like Rocky, but for printing!

Tell me a bit about what the need is as you see it? I mean, I am backing your book, because I have literally no idea where to start — but is that normal? What are the typical things you hear from designers today?

You will learn about paper, ink, printing methods, bindery… and how to design for specific outcomes within those processes. This book is about decisions you need to be making in the design stage…

Marina: Well, it’s complicated. Designers, like printers, are fragmented as an industry. You have self-taught designers, in-house, freelance, 4-year college grads and trade school grads. Then you have agencies with a hierarchy of Creative Director, Sr. Designer, Designer plus a Production Department that cleans up the files. You have Web Designers who are asked to design a print project and don’t have a clue about how different print is from web. Then you have the amateurs and volunteers who are using MS WORD (shudder) to create brochures. It’s a mess. There is no industry standard certification path either. So really, I wrote my book so that wherever you are on that spectrum, you can go straight to the information you need and get advice, strategies and answers.

To answer your question; typical issues are that designers are not taught enough about paper to spec it. Then on top of that, their deadlines are too short. Designers don’t have time to email their printer and say “Hey, I’ve got this identity system… I want the whole thing to print on McCoy gloss, what do you think?”. Because the print rep would say nooooooooooooo! So instead they send over a job and call out McCoy gloss for business cards, letter heads, envelopes. And everyone at the printer is shaking their heads like WTF—and the client is wondering why this system is costing 4x their last system. So in short, designers need to know this stuff now.

Ulrik: Agreed! Speaking for myself as a web designer, you know — I want to do print. Print is tangible and well, sexy. And like most designers I am an avid collector of printed ephemera — but yeah, my working knowledge stretches to coated and uncoated. And really understanding what I can do with the medium is beyond me — like types of print, texture, embossing… erhh… I don’t even know what I don’t know. Is this the kind of thing that the book will cover?

Marina: Yup! The book covers strategy for specific project types where ink and paper significantly affect cost/outcome/turn-around time etc., for example, if you are creating an identity system. It covers things like choosing logo colors that will work in print and web (a huge problem out there since websites tend to come first and people then want to retrofit the hex code). You will learn about paper, ink, printing methods, bindery… and how to design for specific outcomes within those processes. This book is about decisions you need to be making in the design stage and I am not talking about speccing paper. So things like where elements are placed, how images are built, where the score is happening, deciding bindery up front…

Ulrik: Right — and what I really like is that you will actually print a bunch of this in the book — i.e samples etc., so you can actually see and feel it? Is that right?

…there is a covering up on the part of the printing community because we want your work and we are willing to repair it. But sometimes it’s irreparable and sometimes it simply cannot be done.

Marina: Yes, to a point. There are some processes that we have photographed because I wanted to keep the book at a price-point that made it affordable for many. Though, we are printing in 7 or 8 colors to illustrate spot vs CMYK vs high fidelity.

The thing is… printers fix designer files every day, all day long for those who do not know what they are doing. Then there are those who do, and their jobs sail through production! You might not know that your lack of knowledge is affecting your jobs or your relationship with your printer, but it is. I am not doing this to sound mean or slam the lack of knowledge. But there is a covering up on the part of the printing community because we want your work and we are willing to repair it. But sometimes it’s irreparable and sometimes it simply cannot be done; as in the design cannot be produced. I have seen it happen scores of times and then it’s not just a problem for the printer.

Ulrik: I see. So with that, let’s talk about the Kickstarter campaign before we round off. How has the experience been so far?

Marina: People love it! Everyone thinks it’s a great idea! But, not everyone is pulling the trigger. I think it is really going to take leaders in the community saying “You need to go buy this book” but luckily some are.

For example, Daniel Dejan has said some really nice things and so did Steven Heller. Which is just freaking amazing! I mean, both are such respected voices in the design community.

Ulrik Hogrebe: Ok, rounding off. With so much experience I can’t let you off the hook without a final question: top 3 best pieces of advice you give to people about the print process? And then I’ll let you go.

Marina: Hmm. Well, I happen to have a great book that is a really good investment if you want to know this stuff, but in the mean time…

1. Knowing how to choose the right printer for your projects is really important. My book covers that… but in the interim look at their samples and if something isn’t right move on. Talk to people who are doing the same type of work as you and ask for recommendations. Facebook groups are great for that.
2. Digital printing, offset, letterpress, large format and flexography are all different processes with different requirements. Don’t assume that a skill set learned for flexo projects (ie: labels) is going to work for a booklet printed offset.
3. Printers can get you swatch books and paper company promos. There is so much to learn from these! Take a lunch hour and sit down with a swatch book and really look at the different techniques showcased and how they work. Read the production notes and understand the processes.
4. And this one is important. Your monitor is not a proofing device. When you are designing for web, you hit preview and see the error immediately. When you are in InDesign and hit preview… that is not a proof. Proofing systems vary from printer to printer so get with your printer when you are between projects and learn about what they can and cannot do proof-wise. Find out what their proofs represent. Are they G7 or Gracol certified? That can make a difference!

Ulrik: Fantastic! Marina — thank you again. And good luck with the Kickstarter — as I said, I for one definitely need this in my life.

Marina: Thanks for the opportunity to talk about my book and my love for design and print. It’s been a passion my whole life. And thanks to TypeThursdays as a whole, which is super cool. I am definitely a fan!

Go get yourself a copy of the book through Marina’s Kickstarter here: Designing for Print on Kickstarter

Marina has a website jammed full of print related tips and goodies here designingforprint.com

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Learning to Design for Print was originally published in Type Thursday on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.