James Victore’s 10 rules on type

Typography has always been something I saw as clean, measured and exact – like maths it had rules and there’s a right and a wrong and you keep working until you have perfection.

In truth I don’t like the thought of typography being a perfect equation, with rules and guidelines because it’s not maths – it’s art and the 10 rules of James Victore helped me realise this fact. These are the 10 James Victore rules for type:

James Victore talks about branding with a feeling and not just having typography that follows the same conventions as everybody else. If you look at his work, you can see the different emotions they bring – all because he has followed his own rules and creates work that is instantly recognisable as his own. Normally when branding I feel like it takes advertising, a brand message or an experience with that brand to convey a level of emotion to an audiences but with his work, I feel emotions I have never felt with other typography.

As a designer, it’s important to realise that it’s not always about the design. The content is important also and that should influence and bring context to the design.

I don’t think New Yorkers would love the ‘I love NY’ logo as much if it said I love Paris so content is definitely important.

I believe that if a typeface is built for a purpose and used for that purpose correctly then it can only be beautiful – it is designers than make typefaces ugly when they use them in the wrong way.

Comic sans is a perfect example in my eyes. A lot of people find the typeface ugly, but that’s only because they aren’t using it right. The font was designed by Vincent Cannaine for the purpose of helping kids read and makes reading easier for people with dyslexia. What’s ugly about that?

You can search for the right typeface for hours on end but really, we are designers and the better thing to do would be to make what we are looking for. I personally hate searching for content. Many times in my career I have had to search endlessly on stock image sites for the most ideal image for a client, when really it would have been quicker to take a picture which would have been more visually impactful to the audience.

When James Victore said this, my initial reaction was ‘what are you on about’, but what he said makes sense – it’s called thinking outside of the box. Just because you are designing a book cover for a war novel doesn’t mean you should use a stereotypical bold stencil typeface. That was the brief James Victore had, he took inspiration from the novel ‘ Johns got his gun’ and used a handwritten typeface which in his words, ‘made poetic sense’ because of how personal the novel was and how different it was from other war novels.

You’re the designer not the computer. When working on type even a mistake can turn out to be a beautiful one. We should be proud to show off our capabilities and not the abilities of the computer.

… be a designer not someone who pushes a few buttons.

If you follow trends you will be following them all the time in your designs – you’ll never be your own designer and your work won’t truly be your own. As designers we should create and not be seen to replicate.

James Victore believes ‘done is better than perfection’ and I believe this also. It’s the imperfections that add to your type that can add character and truly make your type stand out from the rest.

Be creative, create your own guidelines and conventions and influence others instead of allowing others to influence you so much that you become a copy.

These are the things I took from the 10 type rules of James Victore which, I think can be said for design in general. We all strive to be different and naturally we are so as designers, we should look at becoming more of ourselves instead of copies of others.