The Hidden Lives of Letters
An interview with typeface designer Ben Kiel.
This post is brought to you by “The Burden of Dreams.”
As a web designer/developer, I’ve always had a passing interest in typography and how it can affect the way we digest information. I used to view font faces in a utilitarian way. Font were just another asset I used to build a website. Nothing more. Slowly, an deeper appreciation for the fonts I use every day stirred inside me.
I often wondered: Who creates typefaces? Why? What sort of business proposition necessitates birthing a new font face into the world? Or are they born from a artist’s need to create, for little or no other motivation, like a painting?
What’s a day-in-the-life of a typeface designer look like?
Are they filled with the curving of serifs and the microscopic adjustments of line-thicknesses? Do gallons coffee percolate under a slowly-growing cloud of cigarette smoke. Perhaps graphite scrapes against a giant swathe of vellum, while colleagues’ footsteps tap hardwood floors in circles as they consider a new idea.
Ok, maybe I’m just thinking of Mad Men (and I know, they’re not even typeface designers).
A few months ago, I sat down with Ben Kiel, an amazing font designer based in St. Louis.
Whenever I see a website on TV, it immediately takes me out of the fiction. I can’t help but mumble things like “Who the hell uses Opera?”
Do you have similar experiences with type?
In movies? Nah, I turn that part of my brain off. I used to, honestly, I would identify every typeface used in a movie (this was before this became a profession). Now, to be perfectly honest, I’m terrible at the whole typeface identification game. I’ve lost interest in that.
I don’t watch that many TV [shows]or movies, and the TV I watch is pretty terrible, but I’ll notice, “It’s nice Burn Notice used Chalet as the logo.” So I’ll notice things that I know, but beyond that, I won’t be like ,”Well that didn’t exist in blah-blah, so they should have used that! …This country would’ve never has this typeface because of the blah-blah.”
There are definitely people who do that, and blogs dedicated to that, and there are professional typeface designers, Mark Simonson is one, who really loves train-spotting movie typeface incorrect usage.
I shut that part of my brain down.
Can you describe what you do as a typeface designer?
Sort of [laughs]. I do a variety of things, I guess that’s the easiest way to describe it. There’s a part of what I do which is teaching. I teach at Washington University, and Cooper Type, so that’s one income stream… and then Typefounding, my business, has a couple different things. The majority of my business right now is typeface production for other typeface designers.
Typeface design is a really interesting beast in that it’s design, it’s graphic design, but it’s also software engineering in a way.
Because these things run on your computer, they have to work, they have to fulfill standards, the files have to be a certain way. For these things to work across platforms, versions of Word, and browsers, things have to be software engineered to meet certain standards or to subvert the standard in order to work around bugs in software.
I do typeface mastering for a variety of clients, like Kris Sowersby in New Zealand, and some other typeface designers.
Typeface design sees like a really small thing, but there’s a variety of skills required to get something ready for production: there’s a design skill, there’s a production skill, and there’s a technical skill.
Some designers have all of those skills, and some designers, the smart ones actually, are really just interested in the design side, and they pay other people to do the other stuff. I tend to do the “other stuff,” as one side of my business.
That’s a lot of Python programming, getting things right, cross-browser testing and proofing. Like, for Chris, I’ll proof all his web fonts, and manage all the hinting for that and all that stuff. I’m the final quality control, before sending stuff out. I didn’t do any of the drawing, but I’m making sure his web fonts are all right for his client-base.
Another side of my business is custom typeface design. One project this summer, with Jesse Ragan who’s a typeface designer in New York, we did a custom typeface. Jessie and I did that together, and thats a typeface for an advertising company for Aldo shoe’s fall campaign. that was about a month-long project of Jessie and I working back-and-forth.
I used to work at House Industries, and I still do some work for House Industries. A lot of the stuff I do for them is both technical and client-based, which makes them kind of an interesting beast.
What do you look for in each of those business streams?
Honestly, what I like is solving problems. That sounds very cliche, but I really enjoy the client relationship and making the client happy.
Sometimes with projects, you’ll go through a number of iterations because the client isn’t exactly sure what they want, and what they want at the start isn’t what they want at the end, and it’s my job to get whatever they want to look as good as it can.
And then I also, not as much as I should, do typeface design for retail sale. I have a bunch of things that sit on the back-burner. That’s fun because I get to make tools that other designers use.
It’s fun to see those things out in the world.
For example, the last thing I released with house was roman numerals for a company called Uncle Goose. House a long-standing relationship with this company, who make wood kids’ toys. They’re fantastic! Made in America, chemical-free… If you ever see Uncle Goose somewhere, they’re amazing.
So we did number set of counting Koi fish for that, which got turned into a retail face, and it has a whole typeface family coming with it whenever I find the time to work on it [laughs].
So that was a fun project, and now I get to see it out in the world. Like, the other day, I saw something on Instagram where someone in England loved it and gold-leafed the “4” on his friend’s house. That was cool!
I’m surprised to learn that typeface designers are obligated to use or write computer programs to help create their products.
Is that unusual?
There’s a lot of data to manage, basically. For instance, having something that only covers A through Z doesn’t get you very far. Kind of a standard now is having a language-base that’s at least through central Europe. You need to cover languages like French, Spanish, German,Polish, Eastern-block, and Icelandic countries.
It’s about 400 characters to get all that. So if you think one typeface, 400 characters, in a family that’s maybe 26 fonts, then all of the sudden you have a very large number.
Managing all that takes a lot of programming.
What can you tell me about your company, Typefounding?
In Typefounding, I do mastering, logo work (typographical logos), custom application design for specialized tools, and even project management for other font houses.
T L ; D R ;
- Typeface designers are part designer, part graphic designer, & part programmer.
- There’s a whole industry that powers every font you’ve ever seen. Complete with custom fonts, design houses that make them, and a network of designers working to ready them for consumption.
- Ben Kiel gets his biggest thrill by solving problems and creating things that will live out in the real world.
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I’ve toyed with the idea of moving all my interview content into this format. This is my first attempt. More on that to come.
In the meantime, what do you think? I’d love to hear from you @glen_elkins.
