Explaining myself and Mixfont, an AI font generation model

ericlu
ericlu Posts: 13
in Font Technology
I received some negative comments in a recent thread where I asked for critique on a font I created with the help of AI. The font itself is actually quite liked on Reddit (over 400+ upvotes in r/typography) but the Typedrawers thread began to include some personal attacks on me and the work I did on it. I wanted to start a new discussion (in accordance with the forum rules) to explain myself, the situation, and share more about the research I have done on Mixfont, which is a frontier AI model for generating fonts. 

First let me state that I post here humbly and respectfully with full intention of learning from the experts here. I was told by professional typographers that this would be a positive community where I could ask for feedback. 

Much of the negativity directed towards me stems from an old post I made on X. I'm not proud of the way I phrased that, and it was never my intention to help or allow people steal from type designers. The original intent behind the post was more about my frustration with large companies like Monotype, which in my opinion have taken a monopoly over typography, and started to charge insane prices with very litigious approaches, and in the process also have not paid the actual type designers. In retrospect, the post wasn't nuanced enough and I regret making it, but I've since left it up for transparency sake.

My hope is that some can see past the negativity and realize the potential behind the technology to help creatives and assist with the typographic process. Unfortunately, I don't control what goes viral, and if you read my other posts, you'll see there are tons of launches and screen-recordings that I share of legitimately useful workflows that never get any engagement. 

Mixfont is my latest research project. It is a state-of-the-art AI font generator that can create TTFs from a text prompt or an image. Also, I'm not some billionaire AI CEO. I am a solo developer, and this project is completely bootstrapped and created by myself with no outside funding. I worked on this completely out of my own passion for typography and wanting to build technology that could help designers. 

Stealing fonts and harming designers was never the intent of the software. One of the initial reasons I created this model was because creating fonts was such a tedious process. I wanted to create a simple font out of my handwriting, and I had to meticulously draw out each character. Once I finished the letters, I realized there were symbols, numbers, and hundreds more accented letters that I had to also complete to get a complete font. 

I believe there are many positive benefits that this model can provide for designers. One obvious application is to take an existing font, and extend the support of its glyphset to more Latin languages, especially minority languages with obscure letters like in Welsh, Basque, or Icelandic. This extension workflow can fit right into existing software like Glyphs:



Another interesting application that the model is capable of is helping to explore new directions quickly. Instead of having to draw glyphs from scratch, the model can go directly from images to a complete set of letters. They are never perfect in one shot, but the ability to more quickly generate variations or explorations is important. In addition, the generated letterforms can be used as a starting point to start a manual tracing process or just to save time. Example of a generation from my own handwriting:


A final use case I wanted to share would be to generate variations of full fonts. Recently I used the model to generate an italic version of an existing typeface (example below). This way an underlying type design could be quickly extended with less tedious work from a designer. This technology can also be extended to generate light or bold variations as well. 



I think that this technology can be very useful and helpful when employed in the right way. I don't believe any of the workflows I shared above are "ghastly" or "anti-human" as I was accused of in the other thread. I also think it can fit well into existing workflows and I see little difference between this and auto-tracing or auto-kerning algorithms that already exist today - these programs are created to speed up the workflow of type designers and enhance their work. Ultimately I believe that this can help creators more than it can hurt, because the human aspect of typography will always exist. 

Finally I should address the training of the model. There were open source fonts (Google Fonts) that were used in the training but only to organize the format and spacing of the fonts. However, The vast majority of the training was not done on fonts at all. None of the copyrighted fonts from designers in this forum were used. Instead, it was trained entirely on raster images from across the internet - images of text and letters in things like signs, posters, screenshots, and more. That's how the model is able to output things like this for "a font that looks like dinosaurs":
This font isn't copied nor was it trained on an existing "dinosaur font". The model itself is simply aware of the notion of what dinosaurs look like, and based on many images from across the internet, what letters look like, and combining the two together.

I don't believe that this tech will replace creatives. The outputs are not at the level of a human designer, and I don't even personally believe that they ever will. Instead, it should be used as a helpful tool and accelerator. 

I hope to have a positive discussion about this tool and its applications. I have spoken with many typographers individually and even some who have literally cried with happiness about how this can help finish old projects or get rid of the tedious aspects of the work. I would love your feedback and I will make myself available for a conversation with anyone who would like to talk. DM me or respond to this post and I will be more than happy to set up a meeting to learn more about your fears, concerns, or just comments. I personally am becoming depressed from the hate, negativity, and personal attacks directed towards this project and I hope to address this and move forward. 


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Comments

  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 841
    edited June 16
    ericlu said:
    Stealing fonts and harming designers was never the intent of the software. 
    Intent doesn't matter; outcome matters.
  • Tofu Type Foundry
    Tofu Type Foundry Posts: 79
    Thanks for taking the time to make this clarification post, Eric (although I still strongly disagree with using any generative tools in type design). There are numerous ethical downsides, which Nick already listed above me, but I also fail to understand why you’d want to skip the most enjoyable part of the type design process?

    The vast majority of the training was not done on fonts at all. None of the copyrighted fonts from designers in this forum were used. Instead, it was trained entirely on raster images from across the internet - images of text and letters in things like signs, posters, screenshots, and more.

    Wouldn’t these images of signs be using copyrighted typefaces, even if you’re not directly scraping from an .OTF file?
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Nick Shinn said:
    I don't believe any of the workflows I shared above are "ghastly" or "anti-human" as I was accused of in the other thread.

    You completely misrepresent what I said.
    I specifically referred to the “big picture” of what AI is doing, not type design concerns.
    Surely you are familiar with the environmental cost of data centres, the destabilizing effects of deep fakery, the creepy chatbot friends, the political influence of the tech bros, etc., etc.?
    These are the reasons to avoid using AI.

    AI like any many other technologies has both positive and negative effects and has to be used carefully and with responsibility. I agree with you that there are many scary applications, although I personally choose to believe that it does more good than harm. Many aspects of my life and workflow have become easier now with the help of AI. One example of this specifically is being able to use it for better language learning and thus being able to communicate better with my parents and extended family. While this isn't exactly relevant to typography, I think it's important to avoid blanket statements when the reality is more nuanced. 

  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Simon Cozens said:
    ericlu said:
    Stealing fonts and harming designers was never the intent of the software. 
    Intent doesn't matter; outcome matters.

    There have not been any outcomes of anyone using the model to circumvent copyrighted fonts instead of paying designers, if that is what you are referring to. The usage on the website in general is very minimal and so far has been entirely focused on streamlining workflows for designers. Personally I have paid for many font licenses and plan to continue doing so in order to support designers (though I always try to buy directly from foundries or designers, as opposed to Monotype). 
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Tofu Type Foundry said:
    Thanks for taking the time to make this clarification post, Eric (although I still strongly disagree with using any generative tools in type design). There are numerous ethical downsides, which Nick already listed above me, but I also fail to understand why you’d want to skip the most enjoyable part of the type design process?

    The vast majority of the training was not done on fonts at all. None of the copyrighted fonts from designers in this forum were used. Instead, it was trained entirely on raster images from across the internet - images of text and letters in things like signs, posters, screenshots, and more.

    Wouldn’t these images of signs be using copyrighted typefaces, even if you’re not directly scraping from an .OTF file?

    I ask humbly and respectfully: Is it truly enjoyable for you to have to draw from scratch every variation of an accented letter, like ì, í, î, ï, ǐ, ĩ, ī, and ı? Is it enjoyable to have to create multiple weight variations and italics for each font that you create? Is it enjoyable to go through the process of ideating with a client, working from scratch on a new concept for hours only to have the client reject the design direction completely? Or could it be better to generate a few conceptual ideas up front and work off of those visualizations as a starting point?

    From the designers I've spoken to, many say that their favorite part is creating the letterforms. Not endless client back and force, or outlining vectors, or creating tedious variations. An AI font generation model like Mixfont can reduce those parts of the process. 

    As for your second question, yes, it is possible that images like screenshots or signs contain text created from copyrighted fonts. I think legally this is very different from downloading TTFs or OTFs and training directly on copyrighted files. That said, I think there is a moral question on whether this should be ok. However I am on the side that the benefits that this can bring to designers can outweigh the moral downsides. 


  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,357
    AI like any many other technologies has both positive and negative effects and has to be used carefully and with responsibility. 
    The ethical issue is not about you being responsible in how you use it to make fonts.
    It’s about supporting something which is fundamentally malignant. 

    So, you’re cool with the environmental and social harm of data centres, the brain rot inflicted on children (future adults), the deep fakery undermining democracy, out-of-control fraud and cybercrime, the massive transfer of wealth to the broligarchs, the political influence of said bros, the existential threat of rogue software, future wars fought with AI-enabled autonomous cyborgs, &c., &c.?

    There is no nuance, no balance of positive and negative, the scales are tipped to bad, bad, bad.

    It’s disingenuous to pass the buck to government for mitigating its harms. Look at the history of social media, which blew up 15 years ago. Only now are countries like Australia, Canada and the UK (this week) getting around to legislating its use to protect children. The case between The New York Times and OpenAI, which began in 2023, is not expected to be resolved until 2029. But what new shenanigans will AI be up to then? 
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,682
    @Tofu Type Foundry
    Wouldn’t these images of signs be using copyrighted typefaces, even if you’re not directly scraping from an .OTF file?
    @ericlu
    As for your second question, yes, it is possible that images like screenshots or signs contain text created from copyrighted fonts. I think legally this is very different from downloading TTFs or OTFs and training directly on copyrighted files.
    Note the law around protection of typefaces and fonts varies by jurisdiction and no global legal judgement can be made. In some jurisdictions, typeface design itself is protected by copyright, while in others only the font software is. There are also alternative protections for typefaces design available in some jurisdictions, such as design patent or registered industrial design.

    For me, the ethical question — and hence what the legal question should be — comes down to whether a derivative work is created that produces exploitative value for the maker of that derivative work — or for another party, such as a client or other users of the derivative font — without compensating the maker of the original. That’s just unpaid exploitation of another person’s creativity and labour.
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 290
    ericlu said:
    I ask humbly and respectfully: Is it truly enjoyable for you to have to draw from scratch every variation of an accented letter, like ì, í, î, ï, ǐ, ĩ, ī, and ı?
    yes. cultural exchange (well, usually in one direction for me) in review with local experts is one of the highlights of working on type
    Is it enjoyable to have to create multiple weight variations and italics for each font that you create?
    yes. if I had endless time I wouldn't interpolate anything, deterministically or otherwise
    Is it enjoyable to go through the process of ideating with a client, working from scratch on a new concept for hours only to have the client reject the design direction completely?
    working with clients is another one the highlights of the process. are you familiar with it?
    From the designers I've spoken to, many say that their favorite part is creating the letterforms. Not endless client back and force, or outlining vectors, or creating tedious variations.
    which designers did you speak to?
  • jeremy tribby
    jeremy tribby Posts: 290
    John Hudson said:
    this is the work. Is all of it equally enjoyable? No, but it is what trains skills and shapes us as people who make this particular class of thing. I grew up around artists, and I came to realise — although I only found the words for it recently — that the art, in the sense of a product — a painting, or a sculpture — was only part of what they were making, and not always the important part. They were making themselves as makers
    I hadn't refreshed my screen in time or I probably wouldn't have commented after this - that's a lovely way to put it, john.
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 366
    edited June 17
    Is Mixfont legal?
  • Jens Kutilek
    Jens Kutilek Posts: 389
    ericlu said:
    Monotype, which in my opinion have taken a monopoly over typography, and started to charge insane prices with very litigious approaches, and in the process also have not paid the actual type designers.
    Where do you take the information from that Monotype doesn't pay actual type designers?
  • C.Fransen
    C.Fransen Posts: 13
    edited June 17
    Hello Eric,

    I like to think in metaphors; imagine you walk into a bar packed with artists. Artists who live for the music and come up with, produce, and try to sell everything themselves, because that is what they want to do and have spent their entire lives on. They live for the music and their instruments.
    Offering them an AI tool that would allow them to make their music 'faster' or 'better' would be more of an insult than a good idea.

    That is how I see the world of type design. They are all artists who live for their work. 


    Cheers, Coen.
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Simon Cozens said:
    Instead, it should be used as a helpful tool and accelerator. 
    This doesn't make any sense. Let's assume your model produces an initial set of glyphs, but the outline quality is poor (it is), and the spacing and kerning is also poor (it is). 
    Have you actually tried the font generator? I don't understand how you can make these claims without having tested it out for different outputs. Each output is completely unique so I don't understand how you can make this claim across the board, without having even tried it. 

    You can't have it both ways. You can't say "this is software to make fonts for you", and "our mission is to make original typography accessible to everyone", but then also say "This does not replace designers and you need to be a designer to finish it off". Which is it? 

    If you want to help designers, talk to designers and find out how they want to use AI to produce high-quality fonts, what would help and what would not help. You might find out, for example, that generating accented variants isn't actually a problem because it's all componentized. You might find out that there are good automations for generating slanted masters already. You might find out that some people - and this I have no ability to relate to all - actually enjoy the process of kerning, but checking kerning is a real PITA and tools to help with that would be great.
    This is exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to have a open and honest dialogue in Typedrawers with designers just like you. What I'm finding is that I'm being attacked at a personal level instead of getting actionable feedback on applications that would help. I think your idea on kerning is a great idea. If I trained an AI model that helped with checking or implementing kerning, would that be something you would view as helpful?

    I'm not sure I understand why you see a difference between the technology in Mixfont and the automations that you mentioned above. Generating accented variants or generating slanted masters via automations - these are technologies that help make it easier to make fonts. Why do you feel like those automations are not replacing designers? 

    But walking into a forum full of type design enthusiasts and telling them that type design is "a tedious process" and here's an AI which does it instead is... kinda failing to read the room.
    I'm willingly here because I want to engage and have a productive conversation. If my goal was truly to replace everyone here (and if the technology could indeed do that), why would I even have this dialogue? I do believe that there are tedious parts of type design and I strongly believe that there are ways that technology like AI can be helpful to many parts of the design process. 


  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    C.Fransen said:
    Hello Eric,

    I like to think in metaphors; imagine you walk into a bar packed with artists. Artists who live for the music and come up with, produce, and try to sell everything themselves, because that is what they want to do and have spent their entire lives on. They live for the music and their instruments.
    Offering them an AI tool that would allow them to make their music 'faster' or 'better' would be more of an insult than a good idea.

    That is how I see the world of type design. They are all artists who live for their work. 


    Cheers, Coen.

    Coen, I appreciate your response and engaging with me kindly. I never meant for any of my posts to be an insult and I apologize if things came off that way towards you. 

    My response to this is that artists already use many tools that make their music "faster" or "better". They use software like Ableton, Fruityloops, etc which help them edit and create faster than with traditional recording devices. They use sampling as a method to base new music from other songs. I think that a more open and embracing attitude towards new technologies has potential to improve the workflow for both music and type design alike. 
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Igor Petrovic said:
    Is Mixfont legal?
    Yes it is. Why would it not be? 
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Carl Crossgrove said:
    A couple of things not yet mentioned:
    1: Reddit is really not a place to solicit informed opinions or to gather solid critical approval. I see utterly un-informed, basic, first-stab student work there praised with the unction and enthusiasm of parents seeing their child's first finger paintings. Consider that source.
    2: You characterize the iterative development step of testing alternate ideas and variants as more tedium. For those of us with manual drafting skills, this is not only a richly rewarding process and stage, but also a surprisingly efficient one; the benefits you imagine only available via automation are literally present in our ability to simply draw alternate shapes; to sketch and test and instantly review them. The iteration and exploration are both fun and bountiful parts of typeface development.
    As others have said, if we can find ways to get AI or other automations (many of which have been availlable) to do the actually tedious, repetitive, mechanical work, that would be welcome. But the whole endeavor of making typefaces is fairly methodical and investigative. Maybe you want to automate a different activity. At the very least, I think understanding the activity better would be a stronger base to try improving it.
    I appreciate your response Carl. 

    I want you to know that just because this technology exists does not mean you can't keep your current process. I'm not trying to replace anything. I believe that this is simply another option that you could try in order to speed up your process. But no one said it's required. 

    I would love your ideas on other applications of AI. My goal is to make it as useful as possible to all the designers here. What activities would you suggest? This is exactly what I am trying to understand. 
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 366
    edited June 18
    ericlu said:
    Igor Petrovic said:
    Is Mixfont legal?
    Yes it is. Why would it not be? 
    Which font base does it use for AI learning? Is it aware of the non-modification clause in font licenses?
  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 13
    Igor Petrovic said:
    Which font base does it use for AI learning? Is it aware of the non-modification clause in font licenses?
    I mentioned this in my original post. It's not trained on TTF font files at all, rather it's trained on images (some containing text, but many not) from across the internet. I'm not sure which specific non-modification clause you are referring to, but the training was not done directly on font files. 
  • Eko Bimantara
    Eko Bimantara Posts: 11
    For me, who's comfortable working alone, AI has become an assistant for other parts of the production and distribution of work: Poster presentations, font descriptions, email response partners, and even legal assistants. Now, some friends who don't understand coding can create websites with really cool font previews all by themselves using AI.

    I think it's crucial to have websites/tools that can detect and pointing out fonts circulating on the internet as piracy detectives. Perhaps AI could play a big role here.

    Font designers who enjoy the process won't want to use AI to replace the craftsmanship in their font creations. Where's the expertise?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,140
    edited 5:57AM
    ericlu said:
    Igor Petrovic said:
    Which font base does it use for AI learning? Is it aware of the non-modification clause in font licenses?
    I mentioned this in my original post. It's not trained on TTF font files at all, rather it's trained on images (some containing text, but many not) from across the internet. I'm not sure which specific non-modification clause you are referring to, but the training was not done directly on font files. 
    That’s (legally) fine for jurisdictions and legal protections that only apply to vector fonts, but the visual appearance of a font is legally protected in many jurisdictions, including by design patents (USA), design rights (all of the EU) and even in some jurisdictions by copyright (including in the UK and some EU countries). The exact bar of similarity required varies quite a bit, but it is definitely a thing.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,232
    Human beings read or listen to copyrighted works, and learn from them. What they have learned then goes into works they themselves create.
    Since an AI model runs on a machine, it is understandable that if it is trained on copyrighted works, this can be regarded as theft pure and simple. Even if others, who are more positive about the technology, would find what happens during the training of an AI model to be sufficiently abstracted from the input works as to be in some sense equivalent to human learning.
    Obviously, AI is a threat to the livelihoods of creators - whether type designers or cinematographers.
    Given, though, that AI appears to allow mere ordinary mortals to... bring into existence, if not create... motion pictures of feature film length, something which, when done the Hollywood way, requires immense resources, I'm hesitant to view it as good for nothing. It seems to open up new possibilities of genuine value.
    The energy consumption - and pressure on the market for memory chips and processors - of the current AI data center building boom, though, is another issue, and here being negative seems to me to be fully justified without a concern that one is getting into Ludditism.
  • Simon Cozens
    Simon Cozens Posts: 841
    edited 8:22AM
    I'm trying to have a open and honest dialogue in Typedrawers with designers just like you
    Designers just like me? Okay.

    Eric, this is going to be my last contribution to the thread, and hopefully you'll see why. I actually want to encourage you to keep going with what you're doing, and hopefully others will see why.

    You came here as a programmer, not a typographer, not a designer. That's OK. So did I. I came here a few years back as a programmer who was interested in type. I had big dreams about both drawing type and automating the drawing of type. I proudly showed off what I'd been working on, and some of the really big names in type design here kindly but honestly tore it to shreds. I'm not sure I considered it kind at the time. Like you, I interpreted it as a personal attack. It wasn't, but it felt like it - because that's a completely normal reaction to people being negative about something that you've worked really hard on. I understand.

    But it's impossible to have an "open and honest" dialogue when you feel like you're being attacked. You go into defensive mode. You try to persuade others (or yourself) that they're wrong. When you're in defensive mode, you can't learn. Which is why I think more contributions to this thread are just pointless right now. Set a calendar reminder to come back to it in a year, when you're a little less emotionally close to it.

    In my case, after I recovered from feeling attacked, I stepped back. I looked again at what they were saying. They were right! My outlines were crap. The spacing was inconsistent. The design was a mismatch. Dammit, they were right. I realised that the reason for their negative feedback was that they were too kind to leave me where I was and they wanted me to get better.

    So I tried again. I failed again. I studied. I hung around type designers and began to appreciate the complexity and precision of their craft. I tried again. I failed again. But through that process, I learnt to see. I trained my eyes. I learnt the difference between good type and bad type. If you haven't trained your eyes, you simply won't see that.

    Type design is very deceptive because it's easy to draw a series of recognisable letter forms. Hooray, I made a font! It's easy to make a font if you don't know the difference between a good font and a bad font. Very easy. And so it's very easy to develop a lack of humility. You start to ask yourself "Why can't other people see how good this is?" Such a question does not help you grow; does not help you make better type. Instead I started to ask myself, "Why can't I see how bad this is?" Now that's a growth question.

    Right now I still don't trust myself to make type. I'm at that dangerous but exciting point in the growth curve where I'm good enough to know how bad I am. It's exciting because all the actual designers here have been through that point in the growth curve and come out the other side. It's a good point because if I can actually see that my designs are crap, then I know my eyes are working properly! I can just about make adjustments to other people's fonts, but really, I'm not a designer; I know that my contribution is best placed on the technical side. It feels really great to find your niche.

    But on the other hand, lack of humility combined with the inability to see is a killer. I'm going to talk about spacing and kerning, not because it's the most important part - others can tell you more about design consistency or outline quality - but because it's my particular hobby-horse.

    "If I trained an AI model that helped with checking or implementing kerning, would that be something you would view as helpful?", you say, breezily. Just train an AI model to implement kerning. Sure, give it a go!

    But perhaps, before doing so, maybe look into the prior art. You will discover that there are entire PhD theses about automated letter-fitting. You will discover that there have been, to date, at least seventy different attempts to automate letter-fitting, and yes, some of them use AI models, and that after these seventy different attempts, designers still don't use fully-automated kerning tools because they aren't good enough.

    There are particular technical reasons why it's hard which we could go into - it's an exceptionally sparse manifold, and because designers don't always kern every single pair - and because not all fonts are good fonts - it's impossible to trust that the training data actually contains positive examples. I could say more, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

    The point I'm trying to make is that, on learning this, a humble person might then say "perhaps this isn't just something I can solve by throwing a stack of CNNs at it". I wonder you would say.

    You might think I'm trying to put you off. I'm genuinely not. I honestly hope you try, and I honestly hope you succeed! We would all love a solution to this! (Apart from those weird guys who enjoy kerning.) I don't care where that solution comes from.

    But for it to actually be a solution, it needs to be a good solution. And of course, if you haven't learnt to see yet, then you will never actually know if it's a good solution or not. Very easy to think you've succeeded in such a circumstance! Very easy, if you can't recognise what good kerning looks like, to achieve 99% test accuracy but still have absolutely atrocious results in practice (I'd say "ask me how I know", but, well, don't) and you wouldn't even know. (As an aside, I often say about automated letterfitting that if you miraculously achieve 99.9% accuracy on a 1000 glyph font, then 1000 of your kern pairs are bad and you don't even know which ones, so your font can go in the bin.) You'll present a solution after all that hard work and training, and people will tell you it sucks, and you won't believe them.

    So if you are going to do this, and if you genuinely want to make software that doesn't just make fonts but makes good fonts - and I hope that's something that you do genuinely want - then you are going to need to know what "good" is, and that means you are going to need to really engage with type design. Not just have a reasoned discussion in which you have been unfailingly polite and everyone else has been nothing but rude, I mean really engage.

    Sketch some letters. Draw some type - no, sorry, draw a lot of type. Open a font editor and make a font. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Go on a course. Read a book. I'd strongly recommend Don Knuth's Digital Typography because it starts off as a programmer wrestling with the complexities of typography and ends up being a love letter to type design. Study designs from top designers. Understand how and why they work. Learn to see. Get honest critique and don't hate it when it comes. Get better. Go deeper. Soon you'll find you've put in those ten thousand hours and you're actually good at this.

    This is why I'm encouraging you. It's awesome that you're interested in type. That's a great thing. My secret plan is actually to get you care about it, because people who care about our industry are not a threat to it. My super secret plan is to encourage you to get deeper into type because getting deeper into type will cause you to develop more humility, more discipline, more perseverance, more care and commitment, and all of these things will make you a better human being - in ways that "just getting it done" with AI never will.

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