When in the type design process do you start drawing different weights and styles?

ishtar van looy · March 10

Fielding for opinions here. How long into designing a typeface do you wait before getting started on the bold or italic faces? Do you design them as a set from the get-go? Do you fully finalise one weight or style before starting on the next?
Personally, I tend to start on different weights once I've reached a fairly competent rough draft of my main letterforms, then fill out things like punctuation, diacritics, etc. together from there. This has its drawbacks, though, as it can lead to inconsistencies I need to iron out in subsequent passes.
What do you guys think?

John Hudson · March 10

I try to plan out the whole design space in my head first so, although it will probably change somewhat as I progress, I some idea of target weights and styles. Then I test a few glyphs in median and extreme weights—usually a mix of core and complex shapes—to make sure its all going to work. So that’s the stage at which the first different weight and style outlines are created. What I concentrate on next depends whether I am creating an intermediate, core master, e.g. Regular, or am planning to design only extrema and interpolate everything in between. If the latter, then I work on the extremes simultaneously, and check the interpolated instances as I go.

Mark Simonson · March 10

If I’m planning to create a typeface family, I’ll usually start thinking about weights early in the design process, when I’m still at the paper sketch stage.

Once I start laying down paths in a font editor, I’ll usually start with a middle weight master—regular or semibold—, working out both the upper and lowercase.

From there, I will add very light and very bold masters and do the same. During this stage I will also add preliminary instances so I can see how well everything works across the weight range.

Sometimes, I discover that the masters on the light and bold ends are not quite the right weight. In that case I will create new interpolated or extrapolated masters, deleting the previous one(s). These almost always require editing. I also sometimes disable the middle master to see if I can do without it. Once in a while I can, and if so will save a lot of time as I fill out the character set.

Once I’ve got the upper and lowercase worked out in all the masters, I’ll focus on groups of characters (figures, punctuation, accents, etc.), doing each group in all masters before moving to the next group.

As I progress, I’m always reviewing the glyphs I’ve designed so far for consistency with the more recently added glyphs and making changes as needed.

(Addendum) One thing I meant to mention, I usually work on italics separately, after I’ve finished or mostly finished the roman. Although I’ve already been thinking about it at the paper sketch stage. This is because I can reuse and adapt a lot of the work I’ve done on the roman.

James Puckett · March 11

As soon as ADHESION is drawn in a regular weight I start on the black weight. It’s easy for me to do an overly tight—i.e. bland—regular weight. Jumping into the black weight early forces me to think about what will give the typeface character and carry that into the regular weight.

Nick Shinn · March 11

For a family with roman and italic, and a range of weights, I start with the Regular Roman, upper and lower case alphabets, and test and adjust prototypes in various settings, until I’m satisfied with that, before proceeding further.

Kent Lew · March 11

Being somewhat of a traditionalist in temperament, I tend to work out full U&lc alphabet plus basic punctuation and figures in the Regular before working on auxiliary weights. Since I am mostly text-focused, I find that I won’t decide whether it’s worth pursuing a design until I can really set a bunch of running text. Limited “adhesion”-like sets and random nonsense text proofs aren’t usually enough to satisfy me.

So I tend to only start working on a heavier master once I’ve actually been using the Regular for a while and start feeling a need for the Bold. And usually I end up feeling compelled to work out the Italic before shifting attention to heavier weights.

That’s not hard and fast, of course. My specific process will vary by design. When I’m working on a sans-serif, I tend to work more holistically across the weight range, fleshing out Black and Light earlier in the process. Or if I’m working on a commission and decisions are being made in concert with a client, where the expectations of the brief are laid out and need to be evaluated differently.

John Hudson · March 11

Tim Holloway always preferred to work on the heaviest weight first, partly for the reasons James explains, but mostly because that weight presents the most problems, especially when working with complex Indic letterforms.

Yves Michel · March 11

Thank you all for your answers to this question! It's very useful to gather all your experience and explanations!

Thomas Phinney · March 11

My preference is similar to James Puckett, to do just a keyword of characters in a regular weight, and then go to the extremes. I will usually have had the design rolling around in my head for a while before I try to do anything with it, and I try to think about the lightest and heaviest (and any other axis variations) before I even start reifying the design.

When in the type design process do you start drawing different weights and styles?

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