davidthedesigner

we're all a product of our times

When I reflect back on the Helvetica Film, I'm surprised that I can't really remember very much about it. Can you? (OK, so I only ever got to see the shorter version that was shown on the BBC.) But the one thing that does stick in my mind is the trailer which shows an interview with Wim Crouwell.

He's not really talking about Helvetica, at all - is he? He's talking about Modernism. But he's also reflecting, I think, on how his love of modernism is a reflection of his education and training.

As Ko was saying just the other day, his visit to a Marcel Duchamp exhibition in Paris when he was a student made a very deep impression on him. For me, it was a major Bauhaus exhibition at the Royal Academy: and, as a consequence, 'form follows function' has been a guiding principle for me throughout my career (or "the meaning is in the content of the text", as Wim says in that clip). And once those deep impressions are made, it's very hard - if not impossible - to shake them off.

But just as important to us when we're learning to become designers is what we reject. And what we reject is usually what went immediately before. I've been reminded about this because I came across a charming little book on my bookshelf the other day.

It dates from 1976 and represents everything that I hated at the time (although I will admit to owning a brilliant pair of Newman elephant cords which were exactly that colour orange: to which my father's reaction was "you're not going out dressed like that, are you?").

I can look at that book now, though, and appreciate that there's a lot of skill and craftsmanship gone into creating it. But, for the life of me, I can't learn to love it.

those 52 fonts

Well, I'll tell you why blogging is such a good idea - and why we have to keep it out of the hands of those who only have product to shift. I was pondering quite what I was going to do with my 52 fonts series once I'd got to the end. And what should happen? That nice chap Loïc comes galloping to the rescue, because he's felt inspired to do the job for me.

Loïc is anxious that I tell you that it's still in 'beta' mode, but he's put the construction together and is now working on how it should look. So, take a look yourself and let us know if you have any tips or suggestions to pass on.

Thank you Loïc - I really appreciate your doing this.

And that's why this blogging malarky is a good idea: see, you can just set something up and the whole thing can take on a life of its own.

As for me, I've been wondering about turning the 52 fonts series into a book. What do you think?

z z top

Well here we are a year down the line and we've come to end of this little series. Been interesting, hasn't it? Not always easy, mind. I've struggled at times, particularly with those last two (or should that be four?). But the effort's been worthwhile, because I've made some lovely discoveries along the way. My one regret (so far) is that I still haven't found the opportunity to use Modern. But I will.

And so we come to numbers 51 and 52.

First:

And yes, I know, the kerning's crap. But I don't own a copy of this font (yet), so I have to rely on the auto setting facility on fonts.com (a jolly handy resource if you want to know how a particular typeface looks when set).

This is Zemestro, designed in 2003 by David Farey (he's often referred to as Dave Farey, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he's like me and hates being called Dave). David's goal was to create a more legible and friendlier typeface than those limited to single character and stroke widths. The face finds its foundation in two earlier designs from Farey: Cachet, a soft-terminal sans he drew in 1999, and a partial alphabet he created for the New Scientist. Cachet appears to be monospaced and constructed with geometrically precise character strokes, but it isn't. The characters drawn for New Scientific are more condensed and structured than Cachet. Their offspring Zemestro takes on the proportions of the New Scientific letters and builds them into a full typeface family. Round characters have squared shoulders, helping to create visually consistent letter spacing and even typographic colour. Terminals are now square and clipped at right angles to the stroke.

And the name's interesting as well. "I'm always fascinated by typeface names," says David. "Most of mine are inspired by movies or books." It was while reading a book on the Russian revolution that he discovered zemestro was the word for a village council or group of elders, "before Comrade Lenin dissolved them all," he explains. "So this is the first Zemestro since 1917. I thought it was worth reviving."

And last but not least:

Zapf Dingbats. Simply because it's essential: you can't have a career involving setting type without ever having the need to set bullets and suchlike. And European Pi is never going to cover all the bases.

Zapf Dingbats is one of the more common dingbat typefaces. It was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1978 and licensed by International Typeface Corporation.

In 1977, Zapf created about 1000 (or over 1200 according to Linotype) sketches of signs and symbols. ITC chose from those a subset of 360 symbols, ornaments and typographic elements based on the original designs, which became known around the world as Zapf Dingbats.

The font first gained wide distribution when ITC Zapf Dingbats, which consists of the subset chosen by ITC, became one of 35 PostScript fonts built into Apple's LaserWriter Plus.

For those of those who really want to go to town, Zapf Essentials is an update to the Zapf Dingbats family, which consists of 6 symbol-encoded fonts categorized in Arrows One (black arrows), Arrows Two (white arrows, patterned arrows), Communication (pointing fingers, communication devices), Markers (squares, triangles, circles, ticks, hearts, crosses, check marks, leafs), Office (pen, clock, currency, scissors, hand), Ornaments (flowers, stars), for a total of 372 glyphs. However, not all ITC Zapf Dingbats glyphs are included in the Zapf Essentials collections (eg: airplane, letter).

One interesting little story about Zapf Dingbats is that David Carson lent the font a degree of notoriety in 1994 when he printed an interview with Bryan Ferry in Ray Gun magazine set entirely in the symbols-only font – the double-page spread was, of course, quite illegible. Carson has it that he did this because the interview was so boring.

And if you'd told me a year ago that I'd be ending this series with David Carson I would never have believed you.

yanus & ying

I've got to get a move on. I've got to complete this series by the end of this week.

So here's Yanus. It was designed in 1997 by Tagir Safayev at ParaType. It was inspired by Neulin Sans of Ray Gun magazine from 1996. The first version of the typeface was created as part of a corporate identity program for the Russian airline Aeroflot.

And here's Ying. Designed in 2006 by Gert Wiescher.

Not bad, are they?

the x factor

I know. I know. It's gone very quiet around here. Sorry about that: I'll try not to let it happen again.

Truth is, I'd had an extremely busy spell and for a couple of weeks I simply wasn't around to do any blogging. But I was back at my desk last week, so I should have been posting every day. But I didn't: I'd been struck by bloggers' block.

Maybe it's because I've reached the letter X in this little series on 52 fonts you could use instead of Helvetica. Ever since I started, I knew that X was going to be the difficult one. I should have posted it at least a month ago if I was going to be anywhere near keeping to my declared schedule (of two fonts every two weeks for a year). But I've been skirting round a choice for several weeks: it's not that I can't find fonts that begin with X; it's just that I don't find any of them in any way inspiring.

I wondered 'should I go for a Chinese font?' - something like C Xing. That would say something about the world just now. And, yes, I have typeset Chinese text, but I don't feel qualified to make an aesthetic judgement on what's a good Chinese font and what isn't.

Or should I go for a symbols font: something from the Xmas font family? But I'm never, ever going to use one of those, am I now?

So instead I seem to have landed in Canada: with two fonts by two young(ish) Canadian type designers. I'd like to say that I love them (the fonts that is). I don't, though. But at least they'll get me out of a hole.

This is Xenara, designed by Ray Larabie.

And this is Xheighter, which sounds as though it's something that you might get a spam email about. Designed by Lloyd Springer at Typeart.

So, enough said. I've breached the block. See you again tomorrow (I hope).

ww.

In the end I decided against Wide Latin: partly because it should come under L, not W; and partly because there's not very much you could really use it for, is there? (Apart, maybe, for 'Wanted' posters for Cosa Nostra.) So, let's have a little elegance instead.

This is Walbaum, designed sometime around 1800 by Justus Erich Walbaum. Walbaum came to typography via the unusual route of confectionery. He taught himself engraving while making his own pudding moulds while working in a pastry shop. At night, he started engraving music types. Eventually he set up his own foundry in a town called Goslar.

In 1802, just before his town was to be incorporated into Prussia, he left for Weimar. Here he established another very successful foundry. His classical types were very popular for a while until fashions changed. His name then disappeared until the 1920s, when the typeface was revived as Monotype Walbaum.

And now, Warnock - which is a little more modern and comes in more weights and variations than you can shake a stick at. It was designed in 2000 by Robert Slimbach (who's cropped up in this series twice before, here and here).

Warnock Pro is a new Adobe Originals type composition family named after John Warnock, the co-founder of Adobe Systems, whose visionary spirit (according to Adobe) has led to major advances in desktop publishing and graphic arts software. A full-featured, state-of-the-art OpenType family - with Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek character sets in a variety of weights and optical size ranges - Warnock Pro is a classic yet contemporary composition family that performs a wide variety of typographic tasks with elegance.

So, just X, Y and Z to go (but they're going to be the toughest six to find, methinks).

from arial to wide latin

It's time I got back to my 52 fonts series, and next up is W. I was going to post today and I was just pondering which two fonts to feature and doing a bit of background research, when I came across a little gem of a BBC radio programme from 2005. Called 'From Arial to Wide Latin', it's well worth 30 minutes of your time.

vee have vays of making you type

(With apologies to all you Germans out there.)

Well, here we are approaching the end of this series. It doesn't seem as though I've been posting fonts more than twice a month, but I must have speeded up somewhere along the line as I shouldn't be reaching Z until November. Maybe X will stop me in my tracks: we'll just have to wait and see.

But here we are at V, and first up is Van Dijck - which, you may be surprised to hear, wasn't designed by the man with the strange 'cockerney' accent who starred in Mary Poppins. Instead it was Christoffel van Dijck, one of the great 17th-century Dutch typefounders, who gave the font its name. Though this modern version of the font may not have been cut by him, it is nevertheless representative of the best designs from the 1600s, and was drawn at Monotype under the supervision of Jan van Krimpen. However, Van Dijck Italic, for which original punches survive, is almost certainly the work of van Dijck himself.

And in complete contrast, next up is Verdana. It's perhaps a given that this series is really all about type that has been designed for the printed page: that's something that can't be avoided. But if I were to be compiling this list at the beginning of the 22nd century, it would be interesting to see how many of them might be fonts that had been specifically designed for reading on screen. And whether Verdana would still be there.

Designed by Matthew Carter, and released in 1996, Verdana was bundled with subsequent versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system, as well as their Office and Internet Explorer software on both Windows and Mac OS. In addition, it was long available for download from Microsoft's web site allowing it to be used by any system supporting TrueType fonts. As a result, it is now installed on most desktop computers.

u-turn

If I had to choose just one font (instead of the 52) that I could use instead of Helvetica, then I think that would really have to be Univers. I love it. And I love it because it's so damn difficult to use. In my view, it's the one font that sorts the men from the boys.

It's arguably one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts - quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Piegnot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family.

And now to a new discovery (for me at least) - which is the way of this little series: it makes me go out and hunt things down when I get to particular letters and nothing obvious springs to mind.

It's Utopia. It was designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe in 1992, and was intended to solve a number of typographic problems related to office correspondence. This demanded versatility, so Slimbach created a font family with cuts for text, for titles, extra bold for headlines, small caps, all caps with numerals, old face numerals, fractions, ligatures and scientific markings.

the times they are a-...

So, I've got to T - and I was trying to find a way of avoiding Times. Because (and do please correct me if I'm wrong) Times is the serif equivalent of Helvetica. It surrounds us. We see it everywhere. Sometimes used well. But more often than not, used without thinking - simply because it's there. It's successful though, there's no denying that.

And, talking of success, I really can't avoid including Trajan - can I? Because it's found its way onto this blog before: and more than once, which is more than you can say for every other font in this series. It first appeared here last summer. Then, just before Christmas, Richard put me on to the little video about it being the movie font (which is well worth watching again). And if that weren't enough, it tried to sneak in early by masquerading as a J-font. So, love it or loathe it, it has to be here, doesn't it?

Designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe in 1989, it is - as they say - a modern classic.

My second T wasn't quite so easy to decide upon, though. There are lots of fonts that begin with T, that's for sure - like Tabitha, Taffy, Talking Drum and Tom Boy. All useful if you've got to knock out a poster for the village fete, say. But nothing much to get a serious designer's juices flowing.

I was sorely tempted to include Torino Italic after Mike Dempsey sang its praises last week. But, as beautiful as it is, I thought we needed a little grist to counter the 'perfection' of Trajan. Here instead, therefore, is...

The first cuts of Trade Gothic were designed by Jackson Burke in 1948. He continued to work on further weights and styles until 1960 while he was director of type development for Mergenthaler-Linotype in the USA. Trade Gothic does not display as much unifying family structure as other popular sans serif font families, but this dissonance adds a bit of earthy naturalism to its appeal. Trade Gothic is often seen in combination with roman text fonts, and the condensed versions are popular in the newspaper industry for headlines.

There we are then - suited to a T.