Born to be Condensed: An Interview with Typeface Designer Aleksandra Samuļenkova
A Conversation about the upcoming typeface Pilot
Dutch culture is a hotbed of typographic design. Especially work produced at KABK’s Type and Media program. TypeThursday sat down with typeface designer Aleksandra Samuļenkova to discuss her time studying at KABK and the development of her upcoming typeface Pilot. It was a pleasure to chat with Aleksandra.
TypeThursday: Thanks for being here, Aleksandra.
Aleksandra Samuļenkova: Hey Thomas!
TT: Could you tell us more about yourself?
AS: Sure. I am a type designer, based in Berlin at the moment, working for LucasFonts.
I was born in Riga, Latvia. While studying art and design at the Latvian Art Academy I was doing layouts for a local fashion magazine. Working with type raised my interest about how the type is being done. Later I went for an exchange year to Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin where I took a type design course with Luc(as) de Groot. The Dutch approach in type design fascinated me so I continued studying at the Type and Media master program in the Hague. That was a wonderful time full of challenges. Being challenged, being out of my comfort zone is a very efficient way to get forwards. It is even enjoyable! At least it seems to be so now, 4 years after my graduation.
You are encouraged to experiment and go beyond predictable results but at the same time — to make justified and consistent decisions in your design.
The Dutch Approach
TT: What about the Dutch approach in type design fascinated you?
AS: Although it seems to be a hands-on approach, it gives you a thorough understanding of theoretical ideas in type design. It is not dogmatic, yet you get a chance to systematize your experience and knowledge. You are encouraged to experiment and go beyond predictable results but at the same time — to make justified and consistent decisions in your design.
I believe same can be said about some other schools and traditions, but so far I experienced such an attitude mostly from the designers of the “Haagse” school.
TT: Could you give an example of a project you did, in the Dutch method, that gave you this hands-on and yet theoretical understanding of type design?
AS: Actually, all the projects we did at Type and Media can serve as an example. Like the revival project. We were supposed to find a type specimen printed roughly before 1940 and make a digital version of the typeface used there. The process of learning by doing starts right there, while looking for a suitable specimen at the antique book market. You have to find and identify the type, then compare your specimen with other printed matters, and decide on which you will base your revival. One learns a lot just at this stage. While digitizing the actual shapes you need to understand original designer’s decisions, evaluate them, and — take your own decisions.
Back then I opted for a nice Dutch poetry book, set in Jan van Krimpen’s Lutetia. The next few months I spent digging through archives and libraries in order to learn more about it. At the same time I was studying Van Krimpen’s letters found in different specimens by digitizing them. Comparing Van Krimpen’s drawings of Lutetia with the specimen printed with the actual metal type was very enlightening. Obviously, the role of the punchcutter P. H. Rädisch who worked with Van Krimpen cannot be underestimated.
Pilot, in turn, was born to be condensed! It’s features are based on its compactness.
Creating Pilot
TT: Your upcoming typeface is Pilot. What was the motivation for creating Pilot?
AS: The idea of Pilot was born when I was sketching for my final project at Type and Media. I was living in a narrow Dutch house, on a street full of other narrow Dutch houses, I was surrounded by tall Dutch people — I must have been influenced by environment when I chose to work on a distinctively condensed typeface.
Well, I just love condensed type in general. It is such a valuable tool in typography. But I had a feeling that the narrow styles are often designed just as derivatives of the regular width.
Pilot, in turn, was born to be condensed! It’s features are based on its compactness. The distinctive construction of its letters is only possible because of Pilot’s width. Applying the same construction for wider letters just wouldn’t work as well.
At the very early stage of my final project I was playing with an idea of drawing letters with only straight lines, trying to retain some contrast modulation. Obviously I pretty soon abandoned this rather naive experiment but I realized that narrow shapes drawn in such a manner are much more satisfying. That’s where Pilot’s angularity is coming from.
Retro-futurism
Pilot is definitely not a revival, it doesn’t even have a link to a specific historic example. But certain kind of publications inspired me — some sci-fi pulp fiction from the 50s/60s. Not so much by their typography or lettering but rather by their general appearance.
I’ve always had a crush on “futures” seen from the past: utopias, dystopias, sci-fi. Excepting some well known and valuable works, it is mostly just a trashy pulp fiction. The future it represents is just a twisted version of the present when it was created. That’s what I love about it!
I call Pilot a retrofuturistic typeface. It could have come from that non-existent, imaginary future described long time ago.
If you place Pilot in its natural habitat, it looks quite authentic there :)
Developing Pilot for Retail
TT: You started working on Pilot at KABK: The Royal Academy of Art. Pilot is going to be released by the type foundry Bold Monday soon. What lessons have you learned from taking a school project into a retail typeface?
AS: I am not sure I can call it a lesson — I saw it coming that Pilot would have to be completed and fine tuned before it could become a retail product. After graduation, I reconsidered some decisions I took back then in a hurry, improved the overall consistency, completed the character set and spent some time finding the optimal interpolation values for the final set of weights.
TT: Were there a specific consistencies you had to rethink? Were those issues because of the condensed nature of Pilot?
AS: Rather because of Pilot’s angularity — I had to go through the overshoots in several rounds, for instance. Pilot’s letters have pointy tops and bottoms, it was a tricky task to make them all look even at the baseline and x-height.
I also reworked some stroke endings and slightly changed proportions of some letters, yet these weren’t radical changes. I think the typeface got improved by all these very subtle changes and lots of fine-tuning but it is still the 100% Pilot.
Casting Pilot as Metal Type
By the way, at some point, Pilot Black Italic won first prize at a contest organised by the Fine Press Book Association and as part of the prize it was cast into metal. It is exciting to hold your own typeface physically in your hands and feel the weight of the metal.
TT: Who wouldn’t be excited about their typeface in metal! Was it one letter, or the whole font?
AS: The set includes Latin capitals, figures and punctuation. The process of turning the digital font into metal type was led by Ed Rayher of Swamp Press. Ed wrote a nice little process book, it is an exciting read.
I have already seen Pilot metal type in use and even tried to print with it myself.
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