fonts
I bought a typeface recently, which is something I almost never do, so it feels like I should write some text marking the occasion.
I am very into type but don’t own much type. I own seven serif faces (and use two), four sans faces (and use one), one monospace that I use, 12 specialty faces for things like book titles, and nothing else.
For an eighteen-year career in design, 100% of which I have spent utterly type-obsessed, this is maybe somewhat wild to an outsider. But I also think it’s consistent with the way that I think about the rest of my aesthetics.
I own fewer, better objects through my home, most of which I expect to own for life.
I take pictures with a prime-lens camera.
My own business’s website is monochromatic and all text.
Heck, I even write this newsletter, which is about as barebones as one gets.
The goal is to get a typeface that feels like you, one that is a versatile workhorse under a variety of conditions, and then to develop a relationship with that typeface such that you can flex it in any circumstance that communication is called for.
Criteria
Most typefaces don’t clear the bar of bare-bones usability. To me, a typeface must have the following:
- A minimum of two weights. Bold is a relatively recent technological invention in type, having only come into vogue in the mid-1800s. Not all digitizations of old typefaces contain a proper original bold weight.
- A true-cursive italic, not just a sloped roman. Italic is supposed to be a cursive face; it should look written. Roman, more structured, is supposed to look carved. Early digitizations of many typefaces, as well as many contemporary renditions of type, simply slope the roman and call it a day. Sloped roman is considerably less readable, less designed.
- Multilingual character support through at bare minimum all of Europe, including Greek & Cyrillic scripts. There’s no way I can fit the colonialist history of digital typographic support into one paragraph, but it suffices to say that many scripts have barely any digital support, most of which is extremely recent. I often find myself setting text in many different languages, especially quotations or names. In a perfect world, I’d have multi-diacritic support for languages like Vietnamese, but in practice I just literally edit the font to create the glyphs I need. In 2023.
- I should be able to pay money for it, and then I should be able to “own” and use it locally, across both desktop and web. That rules out “free” fonts (unsustainable, catalyzing a price race, etc), DRM fonts, and typefaces from foundries that charge usurious subscription fees for their web fonts. I went from one primary typeface family to another a few years ago solely because the new one looked a lot like the old one, but it had more glyphs and didn’t charge five figures for half-assed web support.
And then the typeface should actually be a good workhorse. Versatile, “neutral”-feeling, workhorse typefaces are considerably harder to make than a more tonal display face. Kerning & hinting are considerably harder. Both print & digital contexts need to be considered, with the reader being placed at a variety of distances (think book v. billboard). And as mentioned, one should be able to set a variety of texts with the face without casting too much of the design itself onto the work.
Typefaces are the tone of a text. They are, in a way, who speaks it, with what voice, with what accent, in what setting. There is no way to create a fully “neutral” typeface, despite many attempts to do so. Even a ubiquitous face like Helvetica or Times New Roman says something.
In order to know what typefaces hit you on a soul level, you just have to look at a lot of type, and then you have to examine your reactions to that type. No shortcuts. Find a place that has a lot of type and look at it. You’re in a meditative space now. Think about what feelings you get when you look at a typeface. Is it friendly or institutional? Confrontational or playful? Does it evoke a specific era? How do you feel about the aesthetics of that era?
Bar cleared
And so once all of that is done, basically if I find a typeface that clears the bar, I’m going to throw it in a note and seriously consider buying it someday. For the first time since 2018, I did this with Martina Plantijn. That happened four months ago. Yesterday, I bought it.
Martina Plantijn is a rework of Plantin, aka the Monocle font, which is basically a large-eyed interpretation of an old Dutch punchcut from the 1800s. Martina Plantijn manages to be faithful to the original while also creating something very new. With a deep tension between swashy, large-eyed calligraphic strokes and angular terminals, it essentially only feels like it could have come from now. It is made by a master of their craft at the top of their decades-long game. It is a masterpiece, and in due time if there is any justice, history will prove me correct.
I must candidly admit that I did the thing I tell all of you not to do and bought a typeface without any idea of what to do with it. But the time will come when I will know, and then I will have it, and then I will know how to move. I feel like I just bought a new voicebox, and really, how many of those do most of us ever need?