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: 3,685
    @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: 367
    edited June 17
    Is Mixfont legal?
  • Jens Kutilek
    Jens Kutilek Posts: 390
    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: 14
    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: 367
    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: 12
    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?
  • 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.
  • Andres Torresi
    Andres Torresi Posts: 28
    I received some negative comments
    I looked at the font myself for two minutes, and it suffers from very basic issues that have already been pointed out regarding the design system, spacing, kerning, and incorrect character construction.
    The font itself is actually quite liked on Reddit
    That doesn't mean much. You are posting in a forum of professional type designers. Many things can get likes on social media, but that does not speak to their objective quality, which is what you came here to ask for.
    full intention of learning from the experts here
    The first step in that process is learning not to misrepresent professional critique of your work as a personal attack.
    the potential behind the technology to help creatives and assist with the typographic process
    I think the potential is absolutely there, and it is fascinating. But right now, it is just that: potential.
    I worked on this completely out of my own passion for typography and wanting to build technology that could help designers. 
    In its current state, I only see this being helpful as a tool to quickly visualize a few general directions. I don’t see any significant advantage over existing, established processes.
    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. 
    While certain aspects of font development involve tedious tasks, your tool actually removes the rewarding parts of the craft—like creating a polished concept and drawing refined letterforms—while introducing major problems into the technical execution. The truly demanding, meticulous work in type design is maintaining drawing perfection, resolving complex optical adjustments, and building well-established sources. To give you a practical example: if you asked me to expand your bubbly blackletter glyph set, I would reject it because of the sheer volume of tedious cleanup work it requires, whereas I would gladly expand something created by a skilled developer. Right now, your output is merely a rough sketch, offering no big advantage over a folder of static PNGs or a basic vector file.
    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. 
    For a type designer, that expansion is part of the joy because it directly informs the core design concept. It is exactly what we love to do. Only some parts of that are tedious.
    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 glyph set to more Latin languages, 
    I agree, and I completely understand your vision here. That would be an incredible application: once a designer establishes the primary design direction, an automated tool could 'fill in the gaps' via a systematic extension of the existing work. For example, if I design a specific dot shape, I could instruct the system to construct all accented characters using that exact logic consistently, saving me from having to manually check that the design intent was properly replicated everywhere. It's a basic example that now can be solved with right usage of components, but it can work on more nuanced situattions.
    especially minority languages with obscure letters like in Welsh, Basque, or Icelandic.
    Obscure? Obscure Basque letters? The Basque alphabet uses the exact same standard Latin letters. The best way to identify and solve a problem is to actually confront it directly. If you take your passion for typography and sit down to build a proper, professional typeface from scratch—navigating everything from initial design to final font software production—you will quickly realise the actual bottlenecks type designers and font developers face. It is not a matter of Basque or obscure characters. It's obscure when you don't know about it.
    This extension workflow can fit right into existing software like Glyphs
    Conceptually, that would be excellent—provided the tool can actually produce clean, precise results comparable to an experienced font developer, or at least reach an acceptable threshold where the designer can manage the trade-offs.
    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.
    I agree that this is its strongest application today: typing something in to quickly generate a visual. However, it doesn't hold much value beyond those initial five minutes. From a professional type design perspective, the quality of the current output is incredibly poor and requires a total ground-up rebuild. It isn't much better than auto-tracing your own sketches, though it might occasionally spark a creative idea you can use as a source of inspiration.
    In addition, the generated letterforms can be used as a starting point to start a manual tracing process or just to save time.
    The current output is rough enough that I might only take a handful of letters to use as a base for completely redrawing. But that is no different than starting from a loose manual sketch that still needs to be refined, polished, and optically corrected. Refining and polishing *is* type design—it isn't the boring part of the job. 
    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.
    If it eventually produces high-quality results that minimise manual intervention on mechanical and repetitive tasks that a computer can do, I would welcome it. As it stands, I don’t see any advantage over the interpolation and master-generation tools we already use.
    I think that this technology can be very useful and helpful when employed in the right way.
    If the proof of concept eventually delivers on its promises, absolutely.
    I don't believe that this tech will replace creatives. 
    Neither do I. I see it as a utility to help creatives. However, to achieve that, a skilled designer must remain completely in the loop, maintaining granular control over every detail—either within the tool or via manual intervention. The font you provided for critique doesn't even offer source files to manipulate or the clean Bézier paths that type designers rely on. It functions as a 'take-it-or-leave-it' generated file that lacks basic type design level, such as consistent spacing across identical shapes (something that would take under an hour of highly enjoyable work using current software). It feels like a prompt-generated output where someone ran a few iterations and packaged up the result. That does not align with your stated concept, nor does it feel like something you really 'designed'.
    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 am one of those people, as I mentioned before. I would love to see that concept fully realised. But we are nowhere near that reality, AFAIK. The main issue is that you are overlooking major flaws and considering certain automated outputs 'done' when they are not even at an acceptable standard. If they become acceptable, I will be the first to say YES.
    I personally am becoming depressed from the hate, negativity, and personal attacks directed towards this project.

    began to include some personal attacks on me and the work I did on it
    From what I have read in this thread, the responses consist of objective criticism of your work, not personal attacks. On one side, users are voicing legitimate concerns about AI, copyright and legalities; on the other, they are evaluating the actual quality of the final output. You shouldn't be discouraged by critique of the output—after all, it is the output of a tool you built, not a reflection of your character. Use it to learn, and to build the expertise needed to discern which feedback is valid. You clearly have impressive engineering skills to put a system like this together. It can be deeply frustrating to invest yourself entirely into developing an idea only to find that the results do not yet match your vision. Perhaps you need to align your tool more closely with the actual type design workflow to create something meaningful for the designers here. That ultimately depends on your goals. If your objective is to rapidly generate remixed, sketchy fonts to get likes on Reddit, you are practically there (but that's not much appreciated in this community if you are looking for approval). If your goal is truly what you outlined above, there are foundational typographic concepts you still need to master, and that will take time.






  • C.Fransen
    C.Fransen Posts: 14
    edited June 19
    ericlu said:
    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. 
      No, it doesn't offend me Eric. I'm still a beginner and not even an amateur in type design yet. I come here ofter but seldom participate in posting. I read a lot on Typedrawers and I'm very aware of my shortcomings in type design. 

    I guess what I meant was that trying to convince a professional classical pianist he/she should try a keyboard because it holds some more 'features' than their grand piano is a not going to work in my opinion. Although keyboards are often being used by some of the most talented pop music artists I still think it can't 'compete' with a grand piano.

    Then I must say after reading Simon Couzin's reply, I whole heartily agree with him and couldn't have said it better as he did. He has put some really good advice in his reply and reminded me instantly of what Gerrit Noordzij said:"You only see what you know". 

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