When you were starting out as a designer, what advice do you wish you'd been given?
I wish I would have been told that design is a way of understanding the world and to focus intently on what confuses me about my world view. If I was told that in the beginning I think my concepts would have been a lot deeper and I'd have considered design as a tool as lot sooner than I did. Although...I am grateful for the period of my design education that was totally uninformed. I had no idea what a designer was when I signed up for my degree. So in the beginning it was discovering aesthetic...kind of like how a painter learns to mix colors, then learns to paint realistically, then learns how to use painting to respond to the reality of the world around them. Design can be a tool, like painting or any other medium an artist might use, to respond to the world and chronicle your experience.
I can see that you used to create really cool and illustrative animations. What made you progress to type design and do you still animate?
I've always been an illustrator—in fact, I think we all are that way. Every child draws! Lucky for me my mom encouraged me and so I kept drawing into adulthood. I was curious about making those illustrations move because it felt like taking the ideas I was drawing and letting them explain themselves to a viewer. It was a way to tell stories with pictures. Now I do that with type design. I'm still telling stories, but my pictures have become so abstract they're letters now.
What helped you find your voice and passion as a designer?
At first my voice was like a chorus of all my contemporaries. I'm not afraid to admit how influenced I was by the things I saw on pinterest, instagram and are.na during my education. Some of those images/its nice that articles/design blog instagrams/etc. were as important to me as teachers. They exposed me to new techniques, and styles. If I saw some insane type treatment I'd begin to ask myself how they did it and open up an application to experiment. My urge to mimic would quickly become my own experiment and I'd produce more original work. But it would always be influenced. Being influenced as a student is helpful, it means you're in tune with your peers. You can take your time finding your own voice, and it's always totally allowed to change your voice. I'm still finding my voice. I think right now my voice is largely a protest to some of the work I see in my field. In the type world there are so many rules about what makes you a "good" or "bad" type designer. And ten times as many for what is a good or bag typeface. I really question those rules and use graphic design to tell the story of criticisms. It's my reaction to the world around me that helps me find my voice.
I strive to be a type designer but I've never really figured out how to begin creating typefaces and how to finalise them. Can you talk me through your process of creating typefaces?
This will be my favorite question to answer :-)
Here is the fun weirdo method to making a typeface:
1. Imagine you are a casting agent and you are given a script. The script is the narrative of your design—it tells the entire story of what you are making/or what will be made.
2. Cast the characters for that script, imagine what their voices will be likely —whats the cadence, whats the volume, can they sing? are they shy? warm? rude? Imagine how those characters dress, what they smell like, what their shoes look like. Imagine the characters so deeply that you understand their nuance. This nuance what your typeface will communicate.
3. draw a lowercase o n e f a s i and g
4. draw the H O R K A
5. Open your font making software (for me it's Glyphs App). Do lowercase first (it's harder) then the uppercase.
6. Do punctuation numerals and diacritics
6.5 Space and kern (hardest part)
7. Test your typeface by giving it to experimental graphic designers. Look for designers that are experimenting with new materials, that are designing material for counter cultures, and students!
8. redraw the whole thing over and over and over again
9. Sell it if you want or give it away for free
Your projects seem to be really independently produced - how has working with Wieden+Kennedy changed your practice, if at all?
GlyphWorld launched me into this public life as a "type designer" but in reality I was a nobody student like 1 month ago. At Wieden and Kennedy I am a nobody recent grad. I have a bunch of room to know nothing at all and to be the farthest thing from an expert. I'm allowed to know nothing and ask questions and ask for mentorship and no one expects anything else! My independent projects are free to be independent, they can be all mine and never be compromised because they need to be my source of income.
Before working with Wieden+Kennedy, how did you get your name out there, and did social media help with this?
Before Wieden+Kennedy I was working for Future Fonts and that helped introduce me to a few people within the type world. And before that I was just a super active student and community member. I wanted to get to know my professors as people and I wanted to know who was doing what in the creative school of thought I had prescribed to. I just started conversations. I'd email people about projects I was interested in (like you :-) ) and I'd volunteer, and yes of course I'd dm people and I'd comment on posts too! Social media definitely helped because it widened who could become my contemporary. Social media helps connect me to a more international school of thought.
What's your typical week like as a practicing designer?
Wake up, go to a meeting, do something in indesign, go to a meeting, drink coffee, get a concept killed, work on something boring, go home, try to work on personal stuff, get tired, do something dumb like watch TV, go to bed, repeat seven times!
I hope I can figure out a balance within the next three months. For now.... a typical week is like work sleep work sleep and theres got to be a happier way.
Who are some designers that inspire you?
Ines Cox
Andy Pressman
Charlotte Rhode
Jules Durand
Sophia Brinkgerd
Leonhard Laupichler
Bruno Munari
Saul Steinberg
Not designers but great thinkers:
Lorrie Moore
Lydia Davis
Joyce Carol Oats
Tao Lin
Noah Cicero
Chelsea Martin
Rachel Bell
What's some really notable differences between practicing graphic design as a student versus working with an agency?
Making money isn't fun at all. Learning is the most wonderful thing in the world. It's an incredible time and dreading school work will kill your future curiosity about the world.
Do you have any influences outside of design that inspire your work?
I love making music. I'm really interested in becoming better at piano and understanding how to tell narratives in a non-visual medium. I feel really inspired by multidisciplinary artists who are able to translate their point of view over different mediums.
I find the biggest issue I have with developing my voice as a designer is procrastination and artist's block. Have you ever faced a issues like that, and how did you overcome it?
Oh of course! It's something that plagues me :-) But I just try to remind myself that I have the rest of my life to finish my projects. There is no time limit for personal work unless you impose one. It's okay to live your life and neglect your projects and it can be helpful even. If you're procrastinating by going to a party maybe that party will inspire your work...who knows! But if you need to work and theres a deadline you just can't wait to be inspired. You have to wake up in the morning, sit at your desk and start.
In Glyphworld, you state that "Each stylized letterforms has been planted and nurtured by me. I am their author, I grew them—but they will continue to grow without me." Do you mind when designers use and alter your fonts, or do you celebrate this?
I celebrate the experimentation! GlyphWorld should be an entry point. By being accessible (free), lots of people can use it. In my mind, the more people use it, manipulate it, experiment with it, the more design as a whole shifts towards that type of curiosity. If more people can be exposed to experimental type they can begin to accept that it deserves a place in the world, and that it's valuable. GlyphWorld is free but many of my peers and contemporaries have experimental typefaces that are not free, I hope that GlyphWorld can be an entry point so that more people buy the typefaces of my experimental peers...I want more people to notice the value of experimentation!
When creating Glyphworld, did you already know you wanted to turn it into a physical experience through an exhibition? Do you prefer creating design for print rather than screen?
Yes at the very beginning I knew that I wanted to take a typeface or the idea behind a typeface and turn it into a physical experience. I wanted people to have a multisensory experience and begin to understand the complexities and nuances of type.
When I design type I think less about how the letters will live in the world and more about the designers who will use the typeface. I try to design for a cohort of people that I feel are pushing the boundaries of graphic design.
What's your favourite Glyphworld typeface and why?
My favorite typefaces are Wasteland and Airland. I designed Wasteland last and Airland first. I love wasteland because it's impossible to read and I love Airland because it's extremely easy to read. It's hard to choose though.... I love them all.
"Legibility isn’t always a goal, use cases don’t really matter and monetary return doesn’t dictate design choices." I wholly believe in this as well. How did you find the balance with creating creative, expressionist typefaces and also being employable?
I seldom worry about being employable with type design. I think the less employable you are the better! But in reality I need to make money so I have a whole separate portfolio of work that shows my technical skills. I wouldn't have many of those technical skills if I didn't push myself to experiment with unemployable bizarre and insane projects :-)
Congratulations on the Arlene Schnitzer Arts Award! What were the images you used in your Portfolio submission and why?
There were very specific requirements for that submission. We were asked to show work that explained who we were in a comprehensive way. I submitted all of my typefaces, a branding project I did called harka, a book of short stories I wrote and then designed to explain my friendship with my roommate, a publication about the querelle des femmes, and a workshop I did about type. I wanted to show them that I wasn't really a designer and that I was more of a thinker.
And finally, what's the biggest inDesign file you've ever had? I'm always pushing the limits of how large my Illustrator files can be - my current one is a measly 280 MB, yet somehow, my laptop can't load it without crashing.
Haha I think the biggest file I've ever had is my portfolio all the photos in it were attached psd files or giant jpegs. I'll attach it for ya, but it's the compressed file ;-)
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