The Positives of Modern Day Type Design
This project was the practical side of my final degree essay - Entitled: 'The Reinvention of Typography In a Digital Era'.
The essay considers the possibilities and limitations of modern day type design. The intention of this practical was to highlight the positives digitalization has brought to type design:
- Traditionally an exclusive skillset, easily accessible tools have democratised the industry, allowing type designers to work independently, with no previous craft skills needed. Font software is also cheaper than ever.
The aims of the project were to:
- Create a font with a large character set, allowing global lingual use and giving the choice for a variety of functions.
- Interact with renown type designers.
- Use the Internet’s file sharing capabilities to collaborate on a typeface globally.
All of the above have been achieved. Clothworker contains multi-scripts, ligatures, ornaments, borders and more. Highly experienced and well known type designers with experience at Adobe, Lost-Type and Fatype Type Foundry all gave advice. Finally, the typeface had contributors working from the UK, Slovenia, Spain, France, Austria, Czech Republic and the USA.
- OpenType, allows the inclusion of over 65,000 characters. These include functional characters (like multi-script characters for global language use), as well as aesthetic options (like ligatures and swashes). Digital formats also allow users to share files globally.
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Concept
The aims of the project were to:
- Create a font with a large character set, allowing global lingual use and giving the choice for a variety of functions.
- Interact with renown type designers.
- Use the Internet’s file sharing capabilities to collaborate on a typeface globally.
All of the above have been achieved. Clothworker contains multi-scripts, ligatures, ornaments, borders and more. Highly experienced and well known type designers with experience at Adobe, Lost-Type and Fatype Type Foundry all gave advice. Finally, the typeface had contributors working from the UK, Slovenia, Spain, France, Austria, Czech Republic and the USA.
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Credits:
Joe Leadbeater — Type Design / Specimen Design / Art Direction (UK)
Franziska Weitgruber — Type Design (Austria)
Jan Janeček — Type Design (Czech)
Marsi Desino — Type Design (Spain)
Thomas Phinney - Ex Adobe Type Designer— Critiquing (USA)
Riley Cran - of Lost-Type Foundry — Critiquing (USA)
Jack Usine - of Fatype Foundry — Critiquing (France)
Tomato Kosir — Critiiquing (Slovenia)
Roxxie Blackham — Photography (UK)
