They say that Goudy started a new career from scratch at age 40.
However, he had been a bookkeeper prior to then (1905), a job in which penmanship was paramount.
Nowadays, one can get into type design from a variety of disciplines, but from bookkeeping, unlikely.
When did you folk start out, and from what previous (if any) career or education?
To start the ball rolling, I had studied Fine Art, worked as an art director and graphic designer, and went into type design full time at age 47 (although I had made income “on the side” from type design since age 32).
9
Comments
At age 36-7 (2011) started to plan Fontark (launched at 2013) and dive deeper into type design.
Sold my first typeface only a year ago.
As a kid I was always amazed by Persian calligraphy. I started designing type around age 24 when I was studying Graphic Design. The funny thing is I wanted to design equivalent of Arial in Arabic
! which was extremely criticized by the teachers. Of course it was a very fascinating endeavor for me, I never included it in my portfolio. Before that I was completely focused on Computer Animation. I worked in advertising to create Commercials, TV Idents and also Cinematic Visual Effects. I think Motion and Type design are completely sitting on different extremes in many terms. Animation as a medium creates instantaneous emotional impressions and Type works in subliminal ways. I can brag about Animation with any stranger but it’s very hard to talk about Type! Although they are also similar in terms of creating a character and technicalities. My career in Type Design had two major turning points; the first was when my Graphic Design graduation project was selected in Letter 2 in 2011 which lead to its publishing and the second was my graduation in TypeMedia. Ever since I was only designing Typefaces.
I started to learn calligraphy and lettering, on my own, a year ago (when I was 34) and am working on my very first typeface right now.
I liked the teaching, but now I have finally found something that I truly adore.
I am teaching myself most of it and sometimes I get help of some really kind and patient people
Be the Best Commercial Artist You Can Be
* http://www.horizonatv.com/
** http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/AIM_Magazine
I've never relied too heavily on type design for income. I actually see that as mostly a plus.
In terms of education, nothing in art or design; I studied Computer Science around when I started making outline fonts. I have a ton of respect for Reading, but still recommend "classical education" in type design: being self-taught. It's ponderous, bumpy and risky, but you end up with your own voice, which usually makes you more profitable (per hour spent). Plus it's a point of pride.
My first experiments with type design happened during my physics studies one and a half decades ago and produced some atrocious freefonts (please don't look them up). A few years ago, my interest in type was kickstarted once more while I was studying the cover of a book by Kenzaburō Ōe set in FF Quadraat. Like many others here, I learned all I know about type design either through trial and error or through countless helpful interactions on Typophile and, later, TypeDrawers.
As far as day jobs go, I've spent a PhD and three post-docs in astrophysics hunting exoplanets and have now transitioned to teaching physics. My revenue from type design is a tiny fraction of my income (of order 2%), even though my current income is pretty low (teaching part-time until I've built up a complete curriculum of materials). It did make a sizable contribution back in the year where Google Fonts funded Cormorant, though.
Creo que la gente pagan mas.... Oh, sorry.
I think people pay more for originality. It takes longer to get there, but if you make it it pays better.
Do you imply here that a professional training restricts originality? Until now I always thought that a thorough study is helpful for defining what originality within the boundaries of our profession exactly comprises and that subsequently advanced skills are useful for creating original typefaces.