MA Typeface Design

A new web site to showcase the work of this year’s students of the MA in Typeface Design at the univeristy of Reading.

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A Brief Review

A book that carries the names Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross on the cover is enough to get just about anyone’s synapses salivating.* Designing books: practice and theory, published by Hyphen Press is the best single volume on the subject of designing books. Why save it for the concluding remarks. Hold this book in your hands, flip through it, take note of the colour of text blocks, the proportions … in these simple acts there are invaluable lessons to be learned.

The book comprises three main sections. The first two are concerned with fundamental principles—symmetry, asymmetry, proportion, form, etc.; the third is a collection of real examples of good (oftentimes, exceptional) book design. The writing is concise and intelligent; the illustrations informative and relevant; and the design of the book itself is a product of Hochuli’s consummate skill.

Learning to design books is not a particularly complicated affair. The fundamentals—all of which are covered in the book—can be learned with little effort. However, the same can be said of, for example, chess: learning the moves is nothing more than filing away the rules in memory. Mastery, however, is a lifetime’s work. And as grandmasters of book design and typography, one is in good hands with Hochuli and Kinross.

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Words as Pictures

Thanks for your feedback to my questions about posting frequency and the length of these Sunday Type posts. I’ve decided to shorten Sunday Type just a little (though I will sometimes supersize it), and also post relevant newsworthy items throughout the week—if there are any, that is. I’m also considering ‘mashable’ posts using tags. So, for example, you select the Marian Bantjes tag, and you get to see a post that comprises all the Bantjes bits from various iLT posts. If there are some smart WordPress coders out there, then let me know how I might go about achieving this—please.

Let’s get started today with work from Chinese artist Tsang Kin-wah:

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Meta goes Micro
I wouldn’t usually publish short items like this, but I like it, so here it is. FontShop has just launched a micro-site devoted to FF Meta Serif. Some interesting content, including this downloadable PDF poster:

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Get Fit With Fonts

Welcome to another Sunday Type. Thanks to everyone who has mailed me links. To those who have mailed me questions, please be patient. I have at least 200 unanswered iLT mails, and I’m working through them in my spare time (and there’s not much of that).

Food, good food, is always a good place to start:

To learn more about this tart and its script, see the brilliant TypeFoundry (photo, copyright TypeFoundry). Continue reading this article

one big bullet point

Mathieu and Breton’s article on their experience of KABK’s Type and Media masters course has proven insanely popular. The students at Reading are nearing the end of their masters in Type Design, so hopefully we’ll be hearing from them too.

I’ve spoken here before about the importance of white space, not simply as an element of typography, but as the active ‘void’ that defines it. Just as shadow gives form to objects, so white space, carefully conceived, brings to the page structure, form and order. So, I had to smile when I saw this comic strip:

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by Mathieu Christe & Berton Hasebe

A year ago, after the ten of us settled in The Hague, we started the Type and Media masters course—excited to begin our education in type design. Expecting to immediately start drawing letters, we were surprised to find that our first course was in Python programming. Though unexpected, it was an appropriate way to begin the semester, as we quickly learned that in type design you need to understand a wide range of different tools, adapting to and preferably making them your own. Understanding as many tools as possible gives one that added flexibility.

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From Another Planet

I first came across this poster by Paul Grabowski for the Type Directors 54th TDC Show over at Armin Vit’s Under Consideration. It’s absolutely stunning. Viewed from afar, it looks as though it’s comprised of myriad typographic ornaments.

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Grandmother Amalia

Born in Zabok, northwest Croatia, his passion led him to Italy and then on to the Netherlands where he studied type design. Nikola now teaches at the University of Zagreb and the Academy of Art in Split. Among his types are Tempera, Tempera Biblio, Greta Display and Greta Grande (with Peter Bil’ak), and Amalia. He also designed DTL Porta for use in the newspapers of Dutch publisher Wegener. Nikola very kindly took time out of his busy schedule to answer some of my questions.

Which letter do you design first?

I don’t really have a letter that I design first. I first think about construction (translation, expansion), proportion, contrast, and then I begin to make sketches in the way that I prefer; it can be a different letter each time, but it’s usually a lowercase letter, and then maybe two caps just to gauge the proportions.

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A Year in the Life of…

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes. iLT is now one year old. During year two I plan to go up a gear, with more contributed pieces, more type history, more great typefaces and inspirational lettering, interviews, more type history, more type tips, book reviews, types in use, and a readers’ questions section. If you have suggestions for content, then let me know.

I mentioned Marian Bantjes’ work for Creative Review last week. Here she is again, with a stunning laser-cut poster:

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