Use Crowd-Funding to Successfully Release Your Font
An Interview with Pablo Medina, artist and designer behind Dekalb; a clean sans-serif drawn from the fabric of Bushwick.
Now released by PSY/OPS Type Foundry, Pablo talks about drawing inspiration from a neighborhood in the throws of an identity crisis and how crowd-funding his typeface Dekalb became an integral part of the process.
TypeThursday is the meeting place for people who love letterforms.
Come join us for an evening of appreciation of letterforms at our upcoming meet-ups.
RSVP is requested
San Francisco on May 18th
New York City June 1st
Los Angeles June 1st
Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Pablo — welcome back to TypeThursday, and of course huge congratulations on launching your new typeface, Dekalb!
Pablo Medina: Thanks for having me! I’m a big fan of TT. Have been attending for quite a few years now. The first time was when Josh Darden was holding them at Tom & Jerry bar.
UH: Yes, Thomas Jockin mentioned that you were a long time supporter. And this is also the second time you are featured in the interviews — the first time was when you were starting the project that is Dekalb today.
PM: That’s right. Thomas was nice enough to interview me a couple of years ago when I was running the indiegogo campaign for Dekalb which was then called Bushwick. He came out to my studio in Bushwick and we had a nice afternoon chatting.
UH: Yes, I read the interview and I want to pick up on some of the same themes now that Dekalb is a reality and out in the world. But before we get in to that, I think the story of Dekalb will be better told if we understand a little bit about you and your practice. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got in to type design in general?
My primary impulse for designing those and most of the fonts I’ve ever designed is emotion.
Walking, photographing and drawing as process
PM: Of course. I’ve been designing fonts for over 20 years now. The first three fonts that I designed were in 1995 for my graduate thesis at Pratt. My primary impulse for designing those and most of the fonts I’ve ever designed is emotion. More specifically excitement and fascination. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m the guy who can stop every other block to look at a sign on the street. I’ll usually pull out my phone and photograph what I see. It must be annoying for the person who is with me but when I see type or lettering that inspires me, I will interrupt whatever I’m doing and stop and smell the roses. (or look at the signs!) Lol.
The photography is the beginning of the process. Then I’ll take what I’ve photographed and mull it around in my mind a bit and start the drawing process. Back in the 90s I would start in Illustrator and then import into Fontographer. For Dekalb, I started directly in Robofont. The research and the initial drawing process are my two favorite parts of the practice. I was a drawing major in undergrad and I still love to draw.
My favorite locations for the research work are immigrant neighborhoods. Being the son of immigrants from Latin America, I’m very drawn to neighborhoods like Union City, The Mission District in SF, Bushwick, and many other places that I’ve explored in other countries, like Buenos Aires, Mexico City, The south of Spain, Dakar, Senegal, Havana Cuba, etc. So I get to combine my work process with travel, which is one of my favorite things to do. I can go on and on, but this gives you a bit of background.
UH: Yes, amazing! And you even state on your website that your work is driven by culture. I think there is something, when you are an immigrant or come from an immigrant background. It makes you hyper aware of culture as you often have to embody and navigate two or more at the same time. Did that carry over in to Dekalb?
Taking inspiration from Bushwick for Dekalb
PM: Definitely. I’ve lived in New York for almost 30 years. I know the city very well and not much seems new to me anymore. A couple of years ago, I went out to the Bushwick open studios. I was only planning on spending an hour or so there, but as soon as I saw the neighborhood again and noticed how there was a overlap of art and community, and more specifically, murals and signage, I ended up spending the whole day and went back the next day. In one weekend, I had taken hundreds of photographs mostly of murals, hand-painted signs and graffiti. Usually, I have to travel to be so inspired by a place, but Bushwick was practically in my backyard.
The sign-painting for a lot of the Mexican restaurants and Dominican barber shops live shoulder to shoulder to the trendier murals and street art that are also very prolific.
You make a good observation with your question. By emigrating to a country that is different than where you grew up, you are navigating two different cultures and identities. This is one of the most difficult things for immigrant families. The language, the food, the work ethic, the weather, everything is different. You don’t want to let go of your past, but you also don’t want to cut yourself off from the new surroundings (some people do though, my grandmother never learned how to speak English).
So Bushwick is a perfect example of this. It’s both an immigrant neighborhood and a neighborhood that is transforming, changing, gentrifying, whatever word you want to use. And I saw this directly in the vernacular ephemera on the street. The sign-painting for a lot of the Mexican restaurants and Dominican barber shops live shoulder to shoulder to the trendier murals and street art that are also very prolific. This is why there is so much controversy with the gentrification in the neighborhood. Just like people have to juggle our own two identities, neighborhoods also go through their own identity crises!
A typeface is not a brand. It doesn’t have to perfectly embody the subject matter from which it came.
UH: Yes. It’s a fascinating neighborhood. That kind of “mark making”, whether it’s sign painting, murals or graffiti is a way of making a space your own. But then you are always painting on a foreign canvas so to speak. So it’s always a mix! If you were to describe Dekalb as a product of Bushwick, how would you describe its personality?
PM: I think this is where typeface design and identity design are different. A typeface is not a brand. It doesn’t have to perfectly embody the subject matter from which it came. My goal was never to design Dekalb as a representation of the neighborhood. Someone might say, well Brooklyn is grittier than a sans serif modernist aesthetic like Dekalb. And there is some truth to that. I wasn’t interested in having Dekalb be a voice of Brooklyn. I was more interested in allowing the neighborhood to be a starting point.
Since I didn’t have a client, I just allowed the design to grow organically. I didn’t have much of an agenda other than challenging myself to design an extended family typeface. That being said, there are some elements that are very Bushwick. The drop shade styles are unquestionably a sign-painting sensibility. The ultra style with its narrow counterforms are a direct reference to graffiti throw-ups. The fatness of those letters also reminds me of Brooklyn buildings. Personality-wise Dekalb is big, loud and confident. If that’s not Brooklyn, I don’t know what is!
UH: Nicely put. It’s interesting that you mention identity design and agendas in this context. Dekalb was portrayed as a symbol of gentrification when you were trying to get it crowd-funded. How did you respond to that?
PM: Yeah, I was surprised by that. The one write-up that I remember that mentioned gentrification with regards to Dekalb was Paper magazine. I think there is a cool factor in labeling something as “gentrification.” So when it’s coming from a source like Paper, I don’t take it too seriously. You could just as easily call Paper Magazine “gentrification.”
The place where gentrification really matters is how it affects the inhabitants of the neighborhood. The families that are getting forced out of their homes by developers. The people who are getting deported because they don’t have their papers. That’s where the real fight against gentrification should be.
UH: Yes. If anything, a typeface made by a native New Yorker, from an immigrant background, in celebration of local culture seems to me to be very much in the spirit of the city.
Pablo, I realise we are running out of time and I want to end on how you funded Dekalb through crowd-funding and Indiegogo. Would you recommend this approach to other type designers out there?
Crowd-funding Dekalb
PM: That’s a great question. At the time, a film-maker friend was crowd-funding their film and that inspired me to do it for Dekalb. As with any creative endeavor, as artists and designers, we have to be willing to take risks and try new things to expose our work to the public.
The benefit was that the people who supported the campaign, became collaborators. They would send me emails and would encourage me and got totally behind the process.
I was fortunate enough to have received a huge amount of support from the crowd-funding experience. I also got some critique. This is the nature of the creative process. Support and critique. You have to take them both in stride. The benefit was that the people who supported the campaign, became collaborators. They would send me emails and would encourage me and got totally behind the process. I even had a friend design a great collage using Dekalb to promote the campaign.
The press that the campaign received was also great. It really helped spread the word. The critique was also very helpful. It helped me see the process differently. It helped me understand the creative process in context to culture. Because of the discussion that happened around gentrification, it helped me read and learn more about how gentrification affects neighborhoods.
So I would definitely encourage using the tool of crowd-funding. Just remember that you will be both supported and critiqued and that you will learn a lot from both areas.
I like to reference Joseph Campell regarding the creative process regarding this dynamic of success and failure. I can send you his “hero’s journey circle” that I designed using Dekalb that explains it very well.
UH: Yes please. And Pablo, I’ll close out here — but I just want to thank you for your time, and I’m looking forward to seeing your next project.
PM: And thanks for the interview. Hopefully we’ll get to meet over a beer soon!
You can license Dekalb here: PSY/OPS Type Foundry
Want to cruise down Dekalb Avenue with Dekalb? Have a look at this video Pablo made with Dekalb and Google Street View.
Enjoy these interviews? Sign up to the TypeThursday mailing list to be the first to know about our next interview.
Was this article interesting to you? Click the Recommend button below
