Ampersand: Interview with Dan Rhatigan

Ampersand is back! And with it a stellar lineup of speakers for our first conference in 3 years. In the run up, we caught up with Dan Rhatigan about his career and what’s new in the world of typography…

It’s been 3 years since the last Ampersand conference — how have typography trends changed during that time?

Thankfully, we’ve seen the spread of webfonts, so there’s certainly more than just system fonts in our digital spaces. However, I wish we were seeing more variety of styles in the web fonts used, too. Granted, I was already a little tired of geometric sans serifs before they rose to prominence on the web and in branding during the last couple of years.

What developments in typography are you most excited about right now?

Variable fonts! Granted, that’s a big part of my day-to-day job, but even without that bias, I think the possibilities of variable fonts are both useful AND cool. It’s been a while since I’ve had something to show when I give talks to people that make them audibly ooh! and aah!

What change, if any, would you like to see in our industry in the next 3 years?

More style. The web can be an ephemeral place, so why not embrace the pace of change and be a little more playful with style to liven up spaces we know will change over time?

In Rich’s book Web Typography, he says that we are all typographers. Why do you think typography is so important?

Typography is how we give visual form to words, so it’s an essential part of our languages, our cultures. Now especially, when most people type words more than they write them by hand, we are all engaging in typographic practice by some degree. Think about it: whenever you do something as simple as changing or even deciding to stick with a setting in any document, you’re making a typographic decision. That may not be typography as it’s been taught and practiced professionally, but the reality is most people communicate via words expressed in type now, making our culture one of amateur typographers. I care so much about helping people think about type because if you ARE a de facto typographer, shouldn’t you learn how to consciously shape that experience?

What do you make of the emergence of variable fonts?

I’m impatient. Variable fonts require many, many fundamental changes to how software handles fonts, and it’s a slow process to rethink all those layers of interaction, and do it well. Typography with variable fonts requires more than just the fonts: it requires support for them, and that feels like an unsexy infrastructure project most of the time.

Tell us about your first role in design or tech. Who did you model yourself on?

I studied graphic design, and after freelancing as a designer for a few months, I took my first real job as a full-time typesetter, thinking of it as an apprenticeship of sorts, the first step on a traditional path to mastery. That may have been a little romantic in a way, but it certainly DID teach me to really grapple with fundamental principles in a practical way, and it shaped my perspective even more than my schooling did.

What advice would you give practitioners who are just starting out in their careers?

Acknowledge that you’re part of a community, and find a place within it. It’s hard to know what makes you unique and valuable without getting to know others and what they do, and giving them the chance to know you.

What challenges are you facing at the moment and what are you doing to overcome them?

Those unsexy infrastructure problems related to variable fonts that I mentioned. I manage the folks who make the fonts at Adobe, but I’m constantly trying to advocate for the potential of variable fonts so I can convince others that the time and investment will prove worthwhile.

Anything else on your mind at the moment?

I still spend a lot of time thinking about Letraset and other brands of rub-down lettering. How typography has been democratized in the physical world remains as interesting to me as how is has been made accessible in the digital one.

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Join Dan and a host of other international speakers when Clearleft’s Ampersand Conference returns on 29th June 2018 — tickets are on sale now! www.ampersandconf.com