easilyamused | John D. Berry’s blog

As I have followed the news about the earthquake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan, naturally my thoughts have turned to the many people we met in both the typographic and science-fiction communities when Eileen and I visited Japan in 2007. Our closest Japanese friends, we found out quickly, were all right, as was everyone in their circle of friends. I certainly hope that all of the wonderful, generous people that I met in the Tokyo Type Directors Club, in the Japan Typography Association, at Idea magazine, and from other parts of the Japanese typographic community are safe and sound; and that all of their families and friends are, as well.

[Photo by Taro Yamamoto, 2007.]

Categorized as culture, events, society, type designers |

“In the history of typography,” writes Jan Middendorp in his introduction to Creative Characters: the MyFonts interviews vol. 1, “the 1990s represented a phase of unprecedented democratization of the type design and production process… It seems the 2000s have accomplished a similar step for the user… Today, many managers, secretaries, bloggers or scrapbookers have preferences regarding the fonts they use.”

Creative Characters was launched in 2007 to give a peek behind the creative curtain and introduce “the faces behind the fonts,” the people who design type. The newsletter has been edited by Jan Middendorp, who has conducted interviews with type designers from all across the world of type. Twenty-six of them have been collected between covers in this book.

Middendorp is a good interviewer. He knows his subject, and he asks intelligent questions; he doesn’t ask long, rambling questions to get his own ideas across, but instead looks for for a response from the people he’s there to listen to. The nature of each interview, of course, varies with the interviewee.

Jim Parkinson, the lead-off subject, is self-deprecating in recounting his own notable history as a lettering artist. “Many people who worked for Rolling Stone in the early years still think it was the coolest job they ever had.” And: “Of all the people I have been lucky enough to bump into, Myron [McVay] taught me more about lettering and type design than everyone else put together, save Roger Black. I still do most things the ways Myron taught me.”

That’s not unusual. David Berlow, asked about his influences, says, “I’m still learning a lot from the people I’m supposed to be teaching.” Christian Schwartz, after receiving the Prix Charles Peignot from ATypI: “Although I have some really great collaborators, they’re all far away, so I spend almost all of my time working in my little office at home, by myself, which makes my job seem very anonymous. It’s a real honor to be recognized by my colleagues.”

The range of type designers interviewed here is wide; what they have in common, besides quality, is that they’re all active today, and they all have something to say about their careers and their work. Some dig deep into typographic history for their inspiration; others shun it. Some draw spectacular display faces; some craft meticulous text faces; some do both. The other thing they have in common is that at least some of their fonts are available from MyFonts.com.

These interviews all appeared first as e-mail newsletters from MyFonts. Like most of us, I receive these delightfully formated e-mails and, more often than not, put them aside in my inbox to read later. I find that it’s easier to read them in this invitingly designed physical book, which has spacious pages, colorful displays, readable text, and a format with flexible covers and loose sewn binding that is light enough to carry around and comfortable to hold in your lap and pore over at leisure. The page design not only shows off each designer’s typefaces, but has varied examples of other graphic designers’ real-world use of the faces – for example, a page of newspaper and magazine designs by Tony Sutton using a range of typefaces from Nick Shinn. Everything about this book is inviting and workable. This is only Volume 1; the series of interviews continues to appear in our e-mail, and I hope the next set will be collected soon in Volume 2.

Categorized as book design, books, fonts, type designers |

I spent last Friday at the School for Visual Concepts, where a full day of talks about American type design was part of the two-day Type Americana conference. (The second day was hands-on workshops; they filled up and even had overflow sessions, but I didn’t participate in that aspect of the event.) We were shoehorned into a small, cozy space, the SVC gallery, but that made it easy to see and hear.

The individual talks all seemed to be carrying on a conversation with each other, as topics and historical people overlapped and interacted. Patricia Cost’s talk about Linn Boyd Benton fit naturally with Juliet Shen’s talk about his son Morris Fuller Benton; both of them shared references and contexts with Thomas Phinney’s talk about the American Type Founders (ATF), where both Bentons had worked. Steve Matteson’s talk about Frederic and Bertha Goudy intersected with Paul Shaw’s on W.A. Dwiggins, since Goudy and Dwiggins shared a home and a studio for two years in Massachusetts. Shelley Gruendler, talking about Beatrice Warde, said she had learned a fact she’d never known about Beatrice during Paul’s lecture. Jim & Bill Moran’s talk on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum didn’t directly impinge on the earlier designers, but it was part of the same hundred-year history. All in all, this was a remarkably concentrated dose of information and anecdote about the history of American type designers.

The final talk didn’t intersect quite so intimately with the others, but that’s because it was about a more recent period: Sumner Stone’s days as the first typographic director of Adobe, and the creation of Adobe’s program of original typefaces. Sumner said this was the first time he had spoken about that period publicly; it had been too close before. He not only told us tales of how Adobe hired him and how he developed the type program, but he set the stage by explaining the state of the type business and technology at the time Adobe started up. Most of it wasn’t new to me, apart from some of the anecdotes, but it was fascinating to hear Sumner put it all together. I hope he writes it up, or otherwise records it for posterity.

That could be said of all the talks: they all cried out to be expanded and recorded in more permanent form. The information communicated in that room last Friday could not be found anywhere else, at least not all together; it was the fruit of several people’s dedicated research, and much of it doesn’t exist anywhere online. (At least not yet.) Everyone spoke well, and the audience was rapt. Juliet Shen, who spearheaded the effort, and the supporting staff at SVC, put on a fine event.

[Photos: (top) Thomas Phinney & Sumner Stone; (middle) audience during a break; (bottom) Thomas Phinney, Michelle Perham, Kristine Johnson.]

Categorized as education, events, type designers |

On November 12 & 13, the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle is hosting a two-day event on the history of American type design, called Type Americana. The first day features eight talks; the second day is workshops, one by Sumner Stone and one on wood type. You can attend just the day of lectures, or both days (spaces in the workshops are limited).

The talks: Thomas Phinney on American Type Founders, Paul Shaw on D.A. Dwiggins, Jim & Bill Moran on Hamilton Wood Type, Patricia Cost on Linn Boyd Benton, Sumner Stone on the early days of Adobe Type (Sumner was Adobe’s first Type Director), Shelley Gruendler on Beatrice Warde, Juliet Shen on Morris Fuller Benton, and Steve Matteson on Fred & Bertha Goudy.

The workshops: “Vintage Letterpress with Hamilton Wood Type,” taught by Jim Moran and Bill Moran; and “ThinkWrite,” taught by Sumner Stone.

In addition, Friday night will be the Northwest premiere of Richard Kegler’s film Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century, about the work process (and the personality) of the late Jim Rimmer, working and talking at his home-based type foundry outside Vancouver. I’ve seen an unfinished version of this film, and it’s amazing.

Categorized as education, events, letters, printing, type designers, typography |

Matthew Carter has been named one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows – a justly deserved honor with a very handy monetary package attached. It’s usually nicknamed the “genius grant,” and Matthew has lots of excellent company both this year and throughout the history of the fellowships.

This news follows hot on the heels of his being given the AIGA Boston Fellow Award just last Friday, at a sold-out event at the Cambridge Public Library. There must be a lot of feelings of good fellowship swirling around Cambridge this week.

Congratulations, Matthew!

Categorized as events, type designers |

At TypeCon in Los Angeles, Ross Mills is handing out nicely printed type specimens of his newly released typeface Huronia. It’s a sturdy, compact serif design that looks as though it will be immediately useful as a book typeface. Andrew Steeves of Gaspereau Press describes Huronia’s “tensile strength and character,” which seems a good way of expressing the nature of this text type.

The current release is the standard character/glyph complement, which contains an extended Latin character set – that is, the letters that we use in English and most other European languages. A later release will include full support for “all American languages,” including the writing systems used for Cherokee, Cree, and Inuktitut. Those beautifully designed glyphs are shown on the type specimen alongside the English text.

Categorized as book design, fonts, letters, type designers |

Oded Ezer continues to be absurdly creative with the actual physical nature of type. And I don’t mean holding lead sorts in your hand. This time he’s in London, or he was last week, talking at the London College of Communication while wearing a slightly painful-looking typographic mohawk. Type roolz OK!

Categorized as letters, type designers, typography |

Font Aid IV is a project to raise money to help the recovery efforts in Haiti after this month’s devastating earthquake. SOTA (Society of Typographic Aficionados), which is a US-based nonprofit, is acting as organizer. The way it works is much like the three previous Font Aid efforts: type designers contribute one character each to a special font, which is then sold to benefit the needy cause. This time, the special font will consist entirely of ampersands; ostensibly this is because of the theme “Coming Together,” though I’m sure it can’t hurt that ampersands are fun to draw and easy to find a use for. All proceeds from sales of the font will go to Doctors Without Borders.

Categorized as fonts, society, type designers |

I was too busy during Typ09, the 2009 ATypI conference in Mexico City, to write anything for this blog (or for much of anything else), but it wasn’t for lack of potential content. The conference was very well attended and full of ideas; everyone I’ve talked to seemed to think that the program was particularly stimulating, and the cultural and intellectual milieu was rich and intense.

Many thanks to the organizers of the conference – especially to Ricardo Salas, the mastermind of the whole event; to the indispensible Mónica Puigferrat and Paulina Rocha; to Marina Garone and Leonardo Vásquez, of the program and exhibitions committees, respectively; to Roger Black, who got the ball rolling; and to Barbara Jarzyna, ATypI’s conference organizer and executive director.

Although I didn’t have time to write anything, I did take a lot of photos. I posted an early batch to Flickr before the conference began, and later added quite a few more. Most of them even have captions! Here they are.

[Photos: Typ09 banner and posters at Anáhuac University (left); Mark Barratt & Simon Daniels at a sidewalk bar in the Centro Histórico (below, top, L–R); one of the multiple screens in the main program at MIDE (below, bottom).]

Categorized as culture, events, type designers, typography |

It’s amazing when fonts turn up in the news. As everyone in the type business has undoubtedly heard by now, Ikea decided to switch from one typeface to another for its catalogs and ads, and all hell broke loose on Twitter. You wouldn’t think that a typographic design change would generate that much heat, but lots of people (not all of them typographers or graphic designers) have expressed outrage – outrage! – at Ikea’s dropping its longstanding catalog typeface, a custom version of Futura, and replacing it with, of all things, Verdana. Shock! Horror! A web font!

Verdana was designed in the 1990s for Microsoft, developed specifically as a typeface for reading onscreen. The designer, Matthew Carter, has long experience of virtually every kind of typeface technology, and he brought that to bear on designing Verdana. Since text on a computer screen appears, of necessity, at pretty coarse resolution, the outlines of the letters have to be adapted somehow when rendering them at small sizes; there simply aren’t enough pixels available to reproduce the outline shapes perfectly. That’s where the art and craft of designing screen fonts comes in: making the most of those extreme limitations. In what was at the time a revolutionary turnabout, Carter first designed bitmapped letters for each of the target sizes, positioning pixels to get the most legible shapes he could; then he drew the outlines for the higher-resolution letters, based on the shapes of the lo-res bitmaps. Tom Rickner, a wizard of digital font technology, then created the “hints” that would tell the font software exactly how to distort the outlines at a particular size, when drawing a character on the screen, in order to achieve the ideal bitmap at that size.

One of the things that make Verdana legible onscreen, compared with a lot of other typefaces, is the generous space around the characters. There’s always a tendency among web designers to try to cram in as much material as possible in the space available, but that works against clarity and legibility. Without enough space between the letters, they all tend to run together. We’ve all seen this, much too frequently, on our computer screens. The clear, open shapes of Verdana’s letters can vary quite a bit from size to size at small text sizes onscreen, but one thing they have in common is that they’ve been given enough space to breathe.

Although Verdana was meant primarily for onscreen reading, it works surprisingly well on paper as well. It’s a simple, clean, unpretentious sans serif typeface, easy to read. I’ve used it for years as the typeface for manuscripts and drafts of anything I’m writing, because it’s easy to read both onscreen and on paper and it gets out of the way. I realized seven or eight years ago that Verdana had passed into general use, when I saw it on a billboard in San Francisco. (The same characteristics that make it legible onscreen may make it easy to read at a distance as you’re driving by.) I’ve never tried using Verdana in print, but I can imagine situations where I might want to.

It’s funny to see the choice of Verdana lambasted because it was designed for a different purpose. As Erik Spiekermann has pointed out, many of our most versatile typefaces were originally designed for one specific purpose, answering a particular set of constraints (Times New Roman, for instance, which was designed for the presses that printed The Times in 1931). Even Bell Centennial and Bell Gothic, both of which were designed for the listings in American telephone books, have been used successfully at huge display sizes by editorial designers with an eye for the unusual. Perhaps Verdana has unexpected uses as well.

I have no strong opinion about Ikea’s redesign. Certainly Verdana’s numerals are very clear and readable – even stylish, in a chunky, sturdy sort of way – and the numerals are what end up at the largest size on the pages of an Ikea catalog. And I alway felt that the Ikea version of Futura was a little too tightly spaced, though that’s not the fault of the typeface but of how it’s used.

One of the reasons Ikea chose Verdana is that it works across quite a lot of languages and scripts. The basic fonts include Greek and Cyrillic alongside the extended Latin alphabet; and Microsoft’s Japanese typeface Meiryo is based on Verdana, with the romaji (Latin letters) being essentially slightly revised and sharpened versions of Verdana’s designs. (As near as I can tell, from Ikea’s Japanese web pages, the Japanese catalog does use Meiryo, although with a different typeface for some text.)

Verdana may be about to become more versatile for both web and print use, since Ascender Corporation just announced that they are working with Matthew Carter and the Font Bureau to extend both the Verdana and the Georgia families with new weights and widths.

Whatever the merits of the case, what strikes me most forcefully in all of this is that a debate about which font to use could even be noticed, much less become a cause célèbre in the public consciousness. What typographic times we live in!

[Images: two details from Ikea’s U.S. website (top and middle); sample of some of the forthcoming new members of the Verdana and Georgia families.]

Categorized as advertising, design, fonts, society, type designers |