Quality; or, What Makes a Font Great?

Michael Vokits

Hello. I just can't make the jump from pretty good to great in my work (maybe “decent to good” would be more accurate). I can create clear shapes, reasonably smooth curves, optical correction, consistent weights and shapes, and all of that basic stuff, but I just can’t create a font that actually works. Plenty of classic faces violate these tenets (sometimes egregiously so), yet have a certain... resonance? flow? that mine lack. Clearly, there is more than mechanics going on. I just can’t figure out what it is!

I have a few sample of my work in the Critiques section (here and here especially), but I think this is more a matter of philosophy than technique, and I want this discussion to be about more than just my work: ideally, it will benefit others. In other words, I hope I’ve chosen the right category!

Andreas Stötzner

I always found it essential to start font work with an idea which makes me tick long enough to overcome the (sometimes horrendous) amount of labour and time spending.

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Thomas Phinney

Solid advice from both Andreas and James.

Too expand on Andreas’ comment, having a really clear vision, mission for what you are trying to accomplish is helpful. Consider having a brief for your type design. Here are some thoughts on that:

https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-typical-brief-for-a-new-typeface-look-like

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/02/a-type-design-brief-arabic-typography-calligraphy/

attar

Copy existing fonts and you'll know when you compare what you did with the original.
And practise some calligraphy.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Well, for designing type one needs to develop thorough insight and knowledge, a lot of skills, and on top of that one’s own idiom. That this requires a lot of time is nothing special. After all, designing type is a serious profession, not a hobby. Find a good tutor, find two good tutors, follow a course, follow two courses, mature, mature even more, let your designs mature, take a deep breath before you release a typeface, be highly critical, and then go your own way.

Chris Lozos

Find a direction that is you. Design a type that you would like to see rather than one you have already seen. Then do years of work.

Thomas Phinney

No question that almost every great typeface was made by somebody with a lot of training and/or practice.

Although you can’t replace practice, education can be an immensely time-effective leg up. I list all the major English-language programs here: http://www.thomasphinney.com/type-design-resources/

Jeff Kellem

Thomas Phinney said:

I list all the major English-language programs here: http://www.thomasphinney.com/type-design-resources/

You can add Type@Cooper West in San Francisco, CA, USA, a collaboration between Cooper Union and Letterform Archive, to the list. The first term of their first extended program just finished. Similar to the NYC certificate program.
http://coopertype.org/west

Thomas Phinney

Oh, of course! I have promoted the program in other places, just forgot to add it to my list. Fixed.

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Nick Shinn

Thomas said:

No question that almost every great typeface was made by somebody with a lot of training and/or practice.

Some great first efforts:

Baskerville

Bernhard Antiqua

Cheltenham
Futura
Perpetua
Scala
Thesis

When there is a change in technology, there is an opportunity for newcomers and outsiders to make a fresh, definitive mark. 

What is the new technology now, that opens the door for tiros?

Dan Reynolds

Nick Shinn said:

Thomas said:

No question that almost every great typeface was made by somebody with a lot of training and/or practice.

Some great first efforts:

Baskerville

Bernhard Antiqua

Cheltenham
Futura
Perpetua
Scala
Thesis

When there is a change in technology, there is an opportunity for newcomers and outsiders to make a fresh, definitive mark. 

This bothers me. Bernhard Antiqua and Futura were produced by large typefoundries that had been making type for decades. They had skilled punchcutters who could interpret Lucian Bernhard and Paul Renner’s drawings in order to manufacture great type. The way you phrase this, it sounds like Bernhard and Renner each sort of woke up one morning, decided to design a typeface, did that, and it was successful. That is not what really happened. Sure, because of the technology at the time, it would have been almost impossible for either of them to create a typeface without a foundry, but you are selling the foundries’ expertise too short for my taste.

Something similar can be said for Gill’s Perpetua. The project was shepherded by Morison, the first punches cut by Malin, and then the Monotype Drawing Office created the final product. There is a lot of Gill in there, to be sure. But Perpetua is a great “first effort” because of Malin and the TDO, too. It was not a “first effort” for either of those parties.

Like Bernhard, Gill had already collected significant experience as a letterer before designing Perpetua. Martin Majoor and Luc(as) de Groot were not what I would call “newbies” either, at least when it comes to the drawing of letters, when they designed Scala and Thesis, respectively.

Baskerville also was an experienced letterer before he designed type and began printing. And his type was cut by an experienced punchcutter, too. Would Baskerville’s types have been so great if he had not found a punchcutter who could interpret what he wanted?

Cheltenham: also produced by a type foundry.

Finally, aside from maybe Scala and Thesis, I don’t think that the other typefaces were made in times of significant technological change. Baskerville’s types were cast from matrices struck by steel punches, a technique that was already 300 years old by the time he came to printing. Isn’t Baskerville known for his developments & improvements in paper-making and ink? That isn’t type. Cheltenham, Bernhard Antiqua, and Futura were – as I write above – produced by foundries who had already been in the game for decades by the time these types were made (and had already released many successful typefaces, both in terms of critical opinion of the time as well as from a sales point of view). The Monotype Corporation in the UK had already been making type for, what, about two decades before they produced Perpetua? So I would not really call Monotype typesetting “new” by that time, either. Perhaps it was still “new” when they made Plantin or Imprint, but Perpetua?!

Now, this statement of yours: “there is an opportunity for newcomers and outsiders to make a fresh, definitive mark.” Well, if you would change it to: “There is always an opportunity for newcomers and outsiders to make a fresh, definitive mark.” well, then I would agree with it! But please do not try and tie it to incorrect notions of technological changes.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Would Baskerville’s types have been so great if he had not found a punchcutter who could interpret what he wanted?

A good punchcutter always comes in handy.

Dan Reynolds

LeMo aka Frank E Blokland said:

Would Baskerville’s types have been so great if he had not found a punchcutter who could interpret what he wanted?

A good punchcutter always comes in handy.

❤️❤️❤️

Thomas Phinney

Nick:

Yes, I said almost every great typeface. Not every one.

But still, I am with Dan: a lot of those typefaces you named would not likely have been great without the major involvement of others. We know this with utter certainty with Futura, because we can see Renner’s original drawings. While the concepts were interesting, the execution was crap and useless. It took the Bauer staff to make his ideas into something useful.

You could have added Sabon to your list. But of course Tschichold had decades of experience as a typographer and book designer before he tried to design a typeface.

Thomas Phinney

James Montalbano said:

Not something anyone can sign up for off the street, but I do teach undergraduate typeface design at Parsons School of Design. Perhaps you can add that to the list.

I know you do, but it is not a dedicated program in type design, and is only available as part of a much broader design curriculum. I have avoided listing such classes because I am sure there are very many of them (and they are not all taught by people who are terribly expert on the topic). The list is “where can I study type design specifically” not “where can I study design, and get a type design class included.” However, this makes it clear that I should spell that out on the list.

I also link to a Wikipedia list that does include such classes, btw.

Also, I could not find a specific listing for your course(s), online. Do you have a link?

James Montalbano said:

Also, SVA's "Type as Language" month-long program should be included as well.

http://typography.sva.edu

Ah, now that is a fine thing that I am going to go add right now.

Nick Shinn

I do realize that the designers involved in the types I mentioned had some (quite handy) technical help, and prior experience in graphic design and lettering.

But those were nonetheless first typefaces by the people universally credited with their design, which is not their draughtspersons or punchcutters.

What I found interesting was that the originality Baskerville et al brought to bear on the subject was not just that they were fresh to the process of type design, but that there was something new or different in technics which their designs addressed. 

Baskerville: smoother paper (also perhaps blacker ink, harder metal).
Cheltenham: Working from engineering drawings, hence scalable micro-details.

Futura: I associate the geometric sans with the emergence of typo-photo and photo-process mechanical assembly, on layers of clear acetate.
Perpetua: Not so much the novelty of Monotype’s drawing office, but rather Morison’s idea that it could be used for epigraphic purposes, translating Gill’s stone-carved letters to type.
Similarly, Bernhard’s Antiqua transitioned a fashionable distress of lettering, which had appeared in his posters (and those of Bradley and the Beggarstaffs), to type.

So I would say that for Michael to make a great typeface, it’s not enough just to work within the genre of bezier-drawn classic serif styles, which has been pretty much mined out these past 25 years, but some originality could be accessed by considering new things that font-making software can do, or transitioning lettering from other media.

In other words, originality is a requirement of greatness, as much as refinement, and certainly more accessible to a newcomer.

Perhaps an interesting place to start would be with a new tool, such as featured by Ofir Shavit here on Type Drawers: http://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/19201/

Nina Stössinger

If we’re talking about relative newcomers, stressing the need for originality might not be the most helpful or pressing thing. Sure there’s an element of vision, of a fresh take etc, and concepts should be thought about well. OTOH I’ve personally more often seen newcomers way overdo the “THIS HAS A LOT OF SPECIAL CHARACTER” point than under-do it. Certainly when working on text type, it’s much more about reining in the originality and character that pops up anyway, and learning how to make it behave and actually work. ie craft, iteration, learning to see (both micro and macro), etc.
I also have a hunch that some people have more of an eye for (or interest in) drawing a set of interesting/beautiful shapes, and others (fewer) are better at making it feel coherent and convincing as texture, and it’s when you combine both you potentially get something that’s really good.

Erik van Blokand

Thesis had a couple of precursors. 

Max Phillips

What Nina said. Students always have some brilliant idea for a breathtakingly original typeface, and they're always enthusiastic about these ideas. They're generally less enthusiastic about the hard graft that goes into making a type fit for use. They want to know how quickly they can get the thing up on MyFonts or GF.

On the other hand, what Chris and Andreas said. I do think "Design a type that you would like to see" is an excellent rule. I also think it's the approach most likely to produce valuable contributions. But "Design what you'd like to see" doesn't mean "design something no one's ever seen."

Ben Kiel

Max Phillips said:

But "Design what you'd like to see" doesn't mean "design something no one's ever seen."

Outside of type design, but in the realm of typography, this semester's teaching mantra has been: "Perhaps there is a reason you've never seen it before..."

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Nick Shinn

@Erik:

Thesis had a couple of precursors. 

But wasn’t it De Groot’s first published typeface?

Further on Thesis, not to over-emphasize technological determinism (and as I understand it, Thesis exemplifies The Stroke), but didn’t interpolation—’tweening—play a large role in the development of the typeface? Not just the availablility of a large number of weights and styles, but the mathematical disposition of weights.

This is what I’m trying to get a handle on, the idea that new technical capabilities can be exploited by designers to “get in first” and create definitive, and hence “great” typefaces.

IMO, learning a skill in a conventional manner can seriously hamper a person’s ability to do really original work (with which I equate the “great font” that is the subject of this thread). It creates a rut, a modus operandi, a conventional semantic groove that is hard to escape.

It may be necessary to put in 1,000 hrs somewhere along the line, but on the other hand, plodding towards greatness doesn’t entirely ring true.

Ofir Shavit

My drawing teacher in first year of my Industrial design studies, said that the difference between a pro and an amateur is that an amateur can sometimes "jump" very high and on the other hand can as well "fall" very low, while a pro, might not create a masterpiece every time but he will probably never fall too deep.

I'm sure there are many designers or "regular people" that can bring their talent and (naive) brilliance to type design with the reduction of the massive amount of work involved in the process. I believe it can have a most positive influence over professionals work as well, not to mention the educative benefits (@James Montalbano a student can create a geometric typeface from scratches in 1-2 hours of work with Fontark, in 3 hours he'll understand almost all there is to know about why it doesn't work. In 5, he might come up with a cool idea?)

We've started a month long Hebrew type design course (in a Facebook group) this week (Monday), and I have decided to start a fresh new design along with the students, here are few shots of it during only several hours of work...

But it doesn't sum to the time factor, I believe it only starts there.

PabloImpallari

Michael Vokits said:

What makes a great typeface?
Plenty of classic faces violate these tenets (sometimes egregiously so), yet have a certain... resonance? flow?

Soul.

Michael Vokits said:

Clearly, there is more than mechanics going on. I just can’t figure out what it is!

Great typefaces have powerful souls.

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All sounds like good advise. Also: "...when your hair's combed right and your pants fit tight, it's gonna be all right"

Scott-Martin Kosofsky

I believe one cannot consider type design as separate from its intended use and, therefore, one has to judge text types separately from all others. A great text type has to be something greater than the sum of its parts, to the extent that its spacing is as important as the design of its characters. What types will work well for text in one technology might not work as well in another. Cultural expectations and fashion trends play a role, too, such as when the style turned from Old Style to Modern in the 19th century and back to Old Style in the 20th.

Another matter: Ofir, why are your students using Latin punctuation with their designs? While it is true that neither the period nor the comma existed in traditional Hebrew, they have been part of it since the advent of Modern Hebrew in the 19th century. (See, for example, the poems of Nahman Hayim Bialik.) Various attempts to incorporate those punctuation marks go back to the 17th century.

Ofir Shavit

Scott-Martin Kosofsky said:

Another matter: Ofir, why are your students using Latin punctuation with their designs? 

The dot and comma were missing-glyphs at that stage, automatically replaced with the default font's glyphs while the demo text was generated to examine the design.

Yªssin Bªggªr

Pablo> define soul please

Maybe somewhat off-topic but I've always found great that Christian Schwartz shows early work on his website. Seeing such evolution is much more interesting and inspiring than discussing great first typefaces. Especially when it is hard to tell what attempts were never released.