On August 6th, the Harris Walz campaign launched and one of their primary messaging tools was my typeface Balto. Shortly after that the campaign rolled out the final version of their logo, which I drew in collaboration with my friend @sdadich . I don’t have the words to express how lucky I am that this historic campaign has used my letters to share their bold, thoughtful and caring ideas with America. I will write more about my small part in all of this soon, but for now, please go vote and encourage your friends and family to do the same.
Thanks to the team at @wideeyeco , especially @benostrower and @alaynacitrin , for choosing Balto and letting me lend a hand. Special thanks to @jonathanhoefler for being a supportive friend in the first few days when I was freaking out at the enormity of all this.
Type design is really just drawing the same shapes that represent the same numbers over and over and over with only slight variations over and over and over. This is only 16 of the 32 sources for this project. I'm going to need one of those crazy 360° displays soon... And some more tea.
#typedesign #typography #typeface #typefaces #font #fonts #graphicdesign #five #five.uc #five.tab #five.uctab #five.num #five.den #five.sups #five.subs #endlesslydrawingthesamethinguntilmyeyeshurt
I have a new R&D typeface for sale: Epoxy. It is different from my previous typeface.
Free trial fonts, a comprehensive PDF sample, live type tester, multiple licensing options and other stuff at typesupply.com. "Link in bio." as the influencers say.
I hope lots of customers buy this. I desperately want to draw the italics.
#fonts #font #typeface #typography #lettering #graphicdesign #neo90s #postpostpostmodern #epoxy #dumbidea #fonts4sale
I hit a major milestone in a big project for a client so I celebrated by, um, drawing some more of this weird "Epoxy" typeface. Other than missing kerning, this thing is at a point where I could add it to the Type Supply R&D Department. So, maybe soon? Or maybe I should wait for the italic? Or maybe not? #thisisthehardestpartoftypedesign
A few minutes here, a few minutes there and this doodle may be turning into something. I figured out what was bugging me: the lightest weight was too monolinear and the inner/outer curves were paying too much attention to each other. It also may have a name, Epoxy, because: 1. the name appears to be available and 2. this whole thing (like pretty much everything I draw these days) is an experiment in tinkering with the mysterious glue that makes a bunch of discordant shapes hold together into an organized system that people can read.
One time I wrote a marketing plan. As a joke. And it turned into a font. That I liked. But I still feel kind of weird about it. Here's the story:
/portfolio/iota
(The link is also in my profile.)
Back when I was a design student I was what is now called "an annoying weirdo." I relentlessly tried to avoid falling into any habits like using the same fonts, styles, structures, etc. in multiple projects. (What I didn't know then that I know now is that I enjoy design most when I'm trying to do things in ways that I haven't done before so I deliberately break my patterns so that I have no set methods or assumptions so that I always have to think hard because I feel like I do my best work when I'm uncomfortable. A N Y W A Y !) At one point, I caught myself using Futura and centering text on a few projects in a single semester. I got really mad at myself and made this sign as a persistent admonishment. It sat on a tiny gold easel next to my computer monitor for years. Now, I just made a typeface in the same category as Futura and centered most of the text in the marketing. Either I'm a sell out and/or things come full circle and/or this makes sense and/or something? Whatever. I'm going to go draw something that only works in asymmetric layouts now.
I don't like spotlighting individual glyphs for attention (they are part of a system, you know?) or swooning over individual details (they are part of a system that is part of a system, you know?), BUT the main challenge in drawing Iota was making everything smooth and precise because apart from smooth precision there's nothing else in the typeface. So, here, look at these shapes that I'm relatively happy with.
This concludes my week of posting about Iota. Thanks for reading. Sorry this was all so… blue and orange and nerdy and boring.
Designers love to use geometric sans serifs in all caps. Maybe this is even the main use case for these typefaces? (I think William Addison Dwiggins had some thoughts related this all the way back in 1929. NINETEEN TWENTY-NINE!) So, a very functional A-Z was a huge priority when I was designing Iota. It's not terribly difficult to design an A-Z that works reasonably well in a single line headline. It is a lot more difficult to design an A-Z that works reasonably well in a block of all uppercase text. (At least it is for me.) It's very tricky getting the color and rhythm to balance out. I spent {large amount of time} debating the uppercase width strategy for Iota. I was considering two models:
1. Humanist. This model has letter widths that visibly vary. The universally acclaimed "perfect" example of this is the lettering on the Trajan column. I guess that's right? I don't know. I mean it's nice and all, but perfect?
2. Mechanical. This model has letter widths that look even. I don't mean "have the same width" I just mean that there is no prominent narrow-wide-narrow-wide variation when looking at text. The perfect example of this is debatable. In my opinion, the typeface that does this perfectly is… HEY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT MY FONTS RIGHT NOW.
I tried both of these models. Full on humanist widths felt too precious. Full on geometric widths felt too engineered. So, I went for something between to try to get a warm texture that still felt geometric. These kinds of typefaces require so many subtle decisions…
One of the trickiest things in designing a geometric sans serif is, uh, making it look different from the 12 billion other geometric sans serifs out there. My approach to this 90+ year long conundrum was to work backwards from what I wanted Iota to feel like before I figured out what I wanted it to look like. I wanted it to feel very, very, very plain but with just a tiny bit of friendly personality, warmth and texture. This led to explorations of different ways to visualize these qualities. Most of these were not a good fit, but one that felt right was to have subtle flares at stroke entrances and exits to discreetly reference handwriting. I was really happy with the pleasant texture that this added to blocks of small text. Plus, at large sizes it reduced the coldness of the geometry in the lighter weights. However, the flares drew way too much attention to themselves in the heavier weights when used at large sizes. The flat strokes looked so much better but I didn't want to give up that texture at small sizes. So, I compromised through some interpolation magic. At the lightest edge of the weight range, the flare is very prominent. At the midpoint of the weight range, the flare is completely eliminated. The weights between thin and bold have the flare slowly become less visible and from bold through ultra the strokes are completely straight. This is a very, extremely, seriously, minor detail that is not new and certainly not a Type Supply Invention™. These subtle decisions are what making a geometric sans serif is all about. It's the little details and how they are combined that, hopefully, cumulatively add up to create a useful communication tool.
