Connecting and Collecting Feedback with Ghostlines
Meet Lukas Winklerprins and Jack Jennings, co-creators of Ghostlines, a Robofont extension. We’ll be discussing new methods of gathering feedback throughout the type design process and the importance of collaboration.
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Stacey Sundar: Hi Lukas and Jack, welcome to Type Thursday. Thanks for being here with us.
Lukas WinklerPrins & Jack Jennings: Hello! Thank you for having us. We love what TypeThursday is doing.
SS: Tell us about yourselves and how you got interested in type design.
Background
JJ: My background is in both web development and graphic design. I completed an undergraduate in GD at Rhode Island School of Design and spent most of those four years trying to get into the Type Design class Cyrus Highsmith taught. I also found any excuse to draw type for the assignments in the general design courses. Since then, I’ve mostly dabbled in type design as an amateur, often through the lens of the supporting software systems. I run a software development studio — Standard Library — in Los Angeles, which is the parent organization of Ghostlines.
LW: I’m mostly into type design because Jack brought me into Standard Library! But type design and typography were actually my first touch points into the world of design while I was growing up. My mother bought me Ellen Lupton’s “Thinking With Type” when I was in middle school or early high school. That grew into a broader interest in graphic and industrial design. It’s only since joining Standard Library that I have gotten a true peek into the world of type design.
SS: Thanks for giving us some insight on your backgrounds. Tell us about Ghostlines–what is it and how did you two conceive of the idea?
LW: Right now we’re an extension to RoboFont. Ghostlines is a window that lets you create and keep a list of emails from people who want updates on fonts you are working on. You can use this window to send your in-progress font to people in this list so that they can look at it and experiment with it before giving feedback.
We were working on a good number of type design projects and wanted to get the type to our classmates — we wanted to share what we were doing and to let them use the type in their books and posters.
Beginnings of Ghostlines
JJ: Originally Ghostlines was just a set of scripts developed with Wes Adams while at RISD. We were working on a good number of type design projects and wanted to get the type to our classmates — we wanted to share what we were doing and to let them use the type in their books and posters. Now as professionals, we see the usefulness of this tool for foundries and freelancers alike. Wes continues to be an advisor to the project many years later.
SS: Interesting! It sounds like Ghostlines was created to speed up the iterative process and also as a way to connect people with new fonts to use. Do you have any idea as to the amount of time one saves by using the Ghostlines extension?
User Benefits
LW: At present, type design feedback usually happens in institutions of higher learning, online discussion groups, or sometimes ad-hoc in-person meetings. These forums are difficult to organize, and can yield conflicting feedback from the general public. Ghostlines seeks to make feedback easier. All feedback goes through one medium, asynchronously, and the designer can curate the group of recipients for their thoughts. This makes it easier to keep your feedback at-hand as you draw, which should reduce time going back-and-forth between your notes and drawing.
JJ: We also see Ghostlines as an tool that can help type designers market their work, especially at the earlier stages of developing and idea. Sometimes it’s not clear if an idea has general appeal, and getting some response to rough or early sketches outside of your immediate peer group can save time in choosing what to prioritize.
SS: What was it like for you to collaborate on a project of this level of complexity? What have you learned?
I really wanted to work with Lukas on this project — a relative outsider to the type world, but with a sense of analytical and design thinking — to force me to justify product features with research, and question the assumptions baked into the project at the outset.
Thoughts on Collaboration
JJ: We’re currently a team of three — besides myself and Lukas, Stephanie Kwak is heading up back-end development up in Seattle. Grasping at scope has been the trickiest part of the project — scope of the type design world, scope of our ideas, scope of our options for development. None of us are professional type people, so a large part has also been research: talking with designers, finding other type design tools, and using what we learned to guide the process. I really wanted to work with Lukas on this project — a relative outsider to the type world, but with a sense of analytical and design thinking — to force me to justify product features with research, and question the assumptions baked into the project at the outset.
LW: Ghostlines has been a big learning process for me, and Jack has been incredibly helpful and patient through these months of working together. The collaboration has entailed figuring out how to work as a small, distributed team — lots of back-and-forth with regards to prioritization and ironing out our workflow. There are definitely some moments were “leaks” are evident! Where did that commit go? What was our final decision on X? We have been figuring out workflow as we progress and we’ve learned to externalize a lot of our decision-making to keep each other on the same page.
SS: It sounds like good camaraderie is a major ingredient in working together and your product itself is collaborative in concept. Can you share any other nuggets of wisdom you’ve gleaned on the key to effective collaboration?
One thing we have useful is regular road mapping. Any time progress gets slow, or our product starts feeling amorphous, we all sit down together with a blank slate and make a road map.
Mind Mapping
LW: One thing we have useful is regular road mapping. Any time progress gets slow, or our product starts feeling amorphous, we all sit down together with a blank slate and make a road map. This helps us reorient what we’re building and find what actionable steps we need to take today, tomorrow, next week, and next month. The road map is useful to maintain our momentum, but we’re also good about not being precious about it. Our priorities have changed over our months of collaboration; each time we re-orient the project, we learn something new about our priorities.
SS: Can you tell us a bit more about your process of mind-mapping?
JJ: We spend a lot of time with pen and paper. Lukas’ desk is currently covered with mind-maps and priority lists. As version 1.0 approaches, our road maps have had a big “LAUNCH” milestone at the far-right side, and we orient our tasks along the x-axis to visualize what tasks depend on others, and which tasks can be relegated until after launch.
LW: Road mapping on paper was a quick and intuitive way to assert our timeline. It’s like a sketch. Tasks are constantly being modified & updated & crossed out. Once the road maps get too messy, we get a new sheet of paper.
JJ: It’s the same as the process of sketching letter forms — the final form of our work is digital, but it’s helpful for us to have an fluid, investigative process before any code is written.
SS: Well, thanks Lukas and Jack and congratulations on the upcoming Ghostlines launch. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you and thanks for being here for TypeThursday.
JJ: Our pleasure, thank you for your time this afternoon.
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