An informal research poll regarding type designers

Igor Petrovic
Igor Petrovic Posts: 341
edited January 13 in Type Business

I have a premise I would like to explore: that a typical type designer is a younger child in their family, meaning they usually have older siblings.

I made a very informal poll to see what the numbers look like:
https://strawpoll.com/e7ZJarP8Mg3

The poll isn’t scientific. For example, by family logic, there are naturally more younger siblings than oldest children. I’m just curious about general trends, not trying to draw firm conclusions.

This idea ties into broader questions about how family structure might influence personal and social choices. Relevant research seems to find no strong correlation, but I notice some patterns in everyday life. For instance, I’m a younger child, and many of my closest friends are too.

An important note is that this isn’t about stereotypes. It’s just a fun, informal look at a possible pattern.

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Comments

  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,520
    Interesting results so far! But I am curious what the typical population %s are, in various regions of the world, to best compare this data against to make sense of it :) And for that I guess it needs to ask people where they were born



  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 341
    Yes, geography would be a really important factor for meaningful interpretation.

    So far, the initial premise turned out to be pretty weak. But the "Only child" looks like a finding. It already won the "Audience award" :) Congrats, whoever it is!
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 354
    The only conclusion I can draw from that pie chart is that three-child families are rarer than two-child families.
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 230
    Another conclusion: the other twin is not interested in typography.
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 341
    edited January 19
    John Butler said:
    The only conclusion I can draw from that pie chart is that three-child families are rarer than two-child families.
    As I understand it, we don't know that either (in terms of type designers vs. general population), because Oldest or Youngest votes still could be from families with more than two children :)

    I asked ChatGPT to compare the numbers with those of the general population, hoping that would show specifics for the type design community. But the answer heavily depends on geography vs. family structure relations.

    However, such a low number of Only child votes seemingly outweighs even the geography factor. So my initial (so far clearly wrong) premise is now replaced by the new (also informal one): Almost all type designers have siblings.

    Yves Michel said:
    Another conclusion: the other twin is not interested in typography.

    At the moment, we have two votes for Twin. They might be from the same family, I even found there is a "TwinType" foundry on the web :)

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