Getting Started with Typeface Design — Jonathan Hoefler

1. Know your idea.

Make sure you can articulate the brief for your project, so that you’ll have something against which to measure your success. You can’t objectively critique your own work unless you’re clear about what you’re trying to do, and developing some discipline here will pay handsome dividends should you start creating typefaces for others. (You’ll be able to shut down a nuisance conversation about whether the lowercase G is ‘nice’ by instead focussing on whether the brief for the project is sufficiently complete, and whether this letter meets the goals of that brief.) Even if it’s one you allow to evolve over time, make sure your typeface has a tight ten-second elevator pitch, so that you’ll always be able to confirm that you’re headed in the right direction.

2. Focus on systems, not letters.

In typeface design, there’s nothing inherently valuable about a really pretty letter: the goal is to have letters that give rise to handsome and enticing paragraphs. Train yourself not to look at letterforms, but at contexts: how one letter visually relates to the others, how it’s distinguished from its closest relatives, and how it cozies up to every possible neighbor. Always be looking at the larger context: judge letters by looking at words, words by looking at paragraphs, and paragraphs by looking at manuscripts.

3. Prioritize spacing over shapes.

Let the fit dictate the shape, not vice versa. If a letter always seems to be a little famished in that one spot, start by applying some ink, see if it solves the underlying spatial or textural problem, and only then decide what shape it should take. A well-fitted typeface with lumpy drawings is much more successful than a collection of impeccable drawings that don’t fit together. Take it from someone who’s made both!

4. Look!

Spend less time drawing and more time looking. One hundred percent of type design is about applying your judgment, and that kicks in not when you’re making things, but when you’re assessing the things you’ve made. (If nothing else, you’ll be more productive if you spend less time tinkering to make something perfect, and more time submitting first drafts to yourself for comment: sketching fifteen letters is much more satisfying than perfecting just one.) If you’re blocking out four hours to work on your typeface today, plan to spend two of them away from the computer, reviewing proofs at your dining room table. Or your favorite café, where engaging people might approach you with curiosity. Have that elevator pitch ready.

5. Proof with purpose.

It’s undeniably rewarding to see your embryonic font come alive on your résumé, or on a poster or a t-shirt you’re designing, but these aren’t diagnostic tools designed to help you improve your work. Definitely make time for unstructured play, because it’s motivating and healthy and fun, but also make sure that you’re rigorously testing your fonts using concise, organized font proofs. A proof is designed to help you focus on specific issues and diagnose specific problems: here’s one that I created, which you’re welcome to use.

6. Ignore the math.

Trust what you see, not what you measure. It’s hard for the rational mind to accept, but if it looks wrong, it is wrong, math be damned. Letters are processed by the human visual cortex, which through eons of evolutionary training has learned not so much to see, but to infer from clues what it thinks it’s seeing. It can’t be reasoned with, which is why we experience optical illusions, so it falls to the typeface designer to outfox the eye and give the brain what it needs. Instead of making letterforms that are correct, make ones that look correct, regardless of how the numbers shake out. You’d be amazed how many serious, conservative sans serifs have a perfectly balanced letter U in which one stroke is 220 units wide, and the other is 217.

7. Start small.

A lot of first-time designers (raising hand) have lofty ambitions about deep character sets or big families. It’s not just that these projects will exhaust your time and energy, it’s that they almost guarantee that you’ll paint yourself into a corner, owing to the many early decisions you won’t have known that you needed to make. Among the things that are likely to cause you to wholly renovate your foundation are adding an italic, a bold, an unexpected lowercase, small caps, an optical size axis, multiple figure sets, or additional script systems. You’ll learn more by making three small typefaces than one big one, so start with something manageable.

8. Beware the retread.

Even conscientious designers, who know enough not to nick someone’s data or copy their drawings, can find themselves so enamored of a published work that they strive to to find some way to participate in it. This often takes the form of rewinding the development of someone else’s font and performing it again, justifying this as ‘a personal take’ on ‘an idea that’s just out there.’ I once got cornered at a party by a guy who was working on a screenplay about prehistoric creatures cloned from recovered dna, but it wasn’t at all like Jurassic Park, he explained, because he took great pains to ensure that it’s different, and he was eager to itemize each and every point of difference to demonstrate that his project was totally original and non-infringing. Don’t be this guy. He’s a creep.

9. Throw things away.

Be prepared to throw almost everything away. Not just the beautiful drawings that somehow aren’t fitting in, but also the ideas that just aren’t going anywhere, no matter how attached to them you may become. You may yet find that your least successful output can be recycled or reinterpreted later, so keep a reject file. Two of the most significant typefaces I made in my thirties were nourished by cannibalizing the surviving parts of two failed experiments from my early twenties. Delight in becoming your own most ruthless editor, knowing that it will help you produce only your very best work.

10. Get some distance.

Of all the creative things I’ve done, type design is the one that’s most benefitted from getting perspective, so make it part of your process to put things down and walk away. Maybe for fifteen minutes, maybe for twenty years. Some of my favorite typefaces (including the one you’re reading) are the ones that have spent most of their lives unfinished in a drawer — and interestingly, it’s often these that are the easiest to finish. Sometimes it just takes fresh eyes to see what the impediment was; other times, the key to setting things straight will be the skill you haven’t yet developed. Either way, once you find the problem, you’ll know what to do. If you’re at an impasse, have faith that the version of yourself even one minute older will be wiser and better prepared. —JH