From: tiro@tiro.com (Tiro Typeworks)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Font Design - General Strategies
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 19:36:11 GMT







Unfortunately, only time and accrued experience can engender the
ability to imaginatively extrapolate the appearance of an entire
character set from a handful of letters. The only supplementary
activity to working on your own types, that I can truly recommend, is
looking very closely at other peoples' types. Of course, learning how
to look at type is an acquired skill in itself; the close comparative
analyses of types in the new edition of Bringhurst's _The Elements of
Typographic Style_ are a good model in this regard.

Most type designers I have talked to seem to design either the
uppercase or lowercase first. Matthew Carter held an impromptu poll on
the subject at his Barcelona ATypI thinktank session; I think the
lowercase narrowly won out. I tend to jump back and forth between
lowercase and uppercase, trying to establish certain key letters
first. The usual sequence is something like: i, n, o, m, h, l, I, H,
O, a, b, d, p, q, L, E, F, T....

After establishing the 'control character' -- i.e. those which will
determine spacing -- I tend to work on sequences with common forms. At
some point a certain whimsicality enters the process: I hate designing
s's, both upper- and lowercase, so they often get left until last; on
other occasions, I force myself to design the S and s quite early in
the process, as a kind of Jesuitical exercise. The lowercase g is one
of the favourite characters, but is almost always one of the hardest
to get just right. When it is right, however, I know it (like the
click of a box being shut, to borrow a simile from T.S. Eliot).
Lowercase a is another favourite, and this character often contributes
more than any other to the character of a type.

The other point that I can't stress enough is that the preliminary
spacing of the type should be part of the earliest design process. You
are not simply designing black shapes, you are also designing the
white space between them. This is why it is important to start with
the letters that will determine basic letter spacing. Form, spacing &
scale are the substance of a good typeface, and the design of the
whole will suffer if any of the three is neglected. All good type
designers are Trinitarians.

John Hudson, Type Director

Tiro Typeworks
Vancouver, BC
tiro@tiro.com
www.tiro.com