Congrats Claus et al. Some quite interesting ideas in the mix, I find myself really drawn to the texture and atmosphere of Gro's and Crystian's typefaces, great job guys! Nice that you guys are posting the Reflections of Practice nows, give a nice insight into the process.

Thanks again for hosting us when we visited Reading.

The work is amazing. Congratulations to everyone.

Great work all!

Thanks James, Abi, Eric!

I absolutely love Guillotine!

Wonderful work as we have come to expect from Reading.

ChrisL

Congratulations!

Congratulations to all of this year's students.

Congrats!

Wow, I just had a look at Coline, which looks like a really successful piece of work built on an intriguing idea. Will go through all of these when having more time. Well done all of you! (Now if only I could afford the course too!)

Thank you everybody. Do continue to let the comments roll in, it's very interesting to hear what the outside world thinks.

Exciting.
I had the pleasure to see some of this work in progress. Fantastic to see the results.
I have looked at a couple in more detail.
2 words: Ubu Roi!

...it’s very interesting to hear what the outside world thinks...

You are unlikely to get any trenchant criticism here.

Well, here is the opportunity to speak up. I'm actually surprised of the lack of comments – call me naive. I feel Typophile has the He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know. syndrome to some extent, but I know that we (the students) would appreciate observations from all who care to speak. Is that what you are referring to Nick?

I think most of the latin designs look alike, and they look similar to previous years.

Perhaps the instructors influence the students too much.

Very little originality as far as I am concerned.

I'd be inclined to agree there is a certain Reading-ness in several of these, and in previous years. But without the designers directly requesting comments themselves I thought it may be a bit presumptuous and/or pretentious to offer criticism.

What I love is the enthusiasm of all the students, which really shines through in both the specimens and the RoPs. It makes me even more interested in the process of type design and the underlying thinking. Thanks for sharing these.

I'm personally very much enamored of Coline. It carries the torch, I think, of the emerging aesthetic embodied in faces like Skolar, or Freight Micro, or the sketches of Kompilat that were kicking around here a year or two ago.

Actually, insofar as a number of the faces this year seem to tap into that feel at various levels, I'd say there is a kind of cohesive school to the output of...um...the Reading school. I think that's a great thing, though. It all *feels* very contemporary and of the zeitgeist to me.

I'll leave it to the better-informed and -read to offer less subjective insight. I'm sticking to unqualified admiration. Again, congrats.

Is that what you are referring to Nick?

Yes.
And what do the graduates think? What were your expectations Claus, and did the course fulfil them?

Thanks for posting the link, clauses! Congratulations to all of the students!

"I think most of the latin designs look alike, and they look similar to previous years...Perhaps the instructors influence the students too much."

I tend to agree that not only Reading but design schools in general tend to graduate students with portfolios with a certain sameness. Perhaps I might say that the prevalent look of Reading work is towards chunky text faces. Having said this, I don't find that this requires admonishment. We have to remember that this is a school whose job it is to produce competent students, not so much for the student work to be highly original. We have to remember that this is student work examined and discussed regularly by faculty and fellow students. This methodology would by its nature bring a certain amount of sameness to the classwork and final projects.

A better question is, how good or original (if that is your criteria) is the work of the graduates a few years after completing Reading? We have to give each graduate time to blossom out of their student chrysalis and spread their own professional wings.

ChrisL

I'll presume to speak for those of us who attended the TDi short course at Reading a few weeks ago to say congratulations to the MA students! After spending a week at the department, it really is thrilling and inspiring to see what you can do with a whole year there. Thanks for sharing these wonderful faces with us, and best of luck on finishing your theses!

Also keep in mind most of us in Reading (with the exception of Anette this year) have been working in the rather narrow field of text typefaces. Me? I was aware of this Reading house-style you seem to allude to but I don’t think it stems from our professors at all, it has more to do with the fact that most students go to Reading without ever having designed a complete typeface – which is the whole point of the course.

i like what's going on with anglaise, more as a designer than a type person. would love to put this on an album cover. not too sure about the double-g's, but it's an interesting and inventive trick. something we don't see so much of in letters. way to be courageous.

Challenge: Run an Ecofont algorithm through your typefaces. Check out this article on money and printer ink if you question the significance.

Enquire is the design that attracts me first. It's conceptually interesting and generally I'm a sucker for reverse contrast. I didn't see Alejandro Lo Celso mentioned in the specimen, but it makes me think of him. Looks like a lot of work, and a lot of fun. Well done.

I like everything about Reading students, but what I don't like about them is the ignorance they pay to their non-Latin designs, specially to the Indics. They never seem to do it properly. All their typefaces I have seen so far looks alike and has a typical Fiona Ross style in them. Nice smooth curves, but lack of a balanced skeleton.

Also, they never care to set a single line without making mistakes in their specimens. I understand it to a certain extent as they can't read the script, but then they can always get it proof read, if they care at all. They will use some random text with thousands of mistakes in it and overall it will make no sense. Remember, text is meant to be read, even if it's a dummy text. And it says the best about a typeface when it's set in a proper text.

I am not pointing towards any individual here, but a personal reflection to the course as whole. Never mind. :D

I want to remind folks that the specimens you see from recent or soon to be graduates at MATD -Reading, KABK, or any other type design MA program are works in progress. They show engagement, process and thinking. They are not products. The specimens are made under significant time pressure and often include some errors of grammar setting etc. If they can sometimes be mistaken for products - that is really a statement in their favor. A kind of happy accident or proof of being exceptional. The reality is, obvious or no, is that all these projects will need more time to become polished and refined tested etc before they can be released.

Also I actually disagree about the type looking alike this year. I think there is an amazing amount of diversity of style on the more obvious aesthetic level and of approach if you take the time to look more deeply. I think that it is great that students' strange experiments can be made bubble under the surface rather than jumping out at you.

Christopher, read the eco font site more carefully. You have not noticed that you are supposedly forbidden from talking that idea and using it. I don't think they can enforce that but... But more importantly that post is off topic. Start a new thread or further one that is about that topic.

Farquart Qimbosole, what is your real name? I have seen your registration and it looks made up to me.

I have to confess for anybody who doesn't already know it that I am both a MATD student and a Moderator. No doubt this colors my view to a significant extent.

Thanks Randy. I did write to Alejandro Lo Celso about Enquire and I am waiting for his feedback on it: we are definitely thinking along the same lines by following Roger Excoffon and Evert Bloemsma’s footsteps, and I hope my Enquire and his Quimera / Garonne can be seen as complementary designs (also not on the same level: I am but a student here). And while saying “yes, it was a lot of work” would probably sound like I did all the work myself without any guidance – which isn’t the case – and self-condescending or worse, disrespectful towards my fellow classmates who worked at least as hard as I did, I can certainly claim it was a lot of fun! (Also: I’m living in Cupertino right now, so if you want to talk about it over a beer I’d be happy to oblige!)

clauses—

Splendid work to you and your cohorts.

Thank you everybody. Do continue to let the comments roll in, it’s very interesting to hear what the outside world thinks.

I can gladly throw in the opinion of a complete laymen in typography and an aspiring graphic designer. ;) You'll have to work with me: my type lexicon is still in its infancy.

Personally speaking, I am particularly turned off by Capoeira, You Are Here, and Guillotine. ( I would say Okapi and Cantarell, as well, but I can tell that those two are designed uniquely to different categorical standards. This is a thought that I have that I cannot explain well, but just feel).

Anyhoo, in particular, I do not like these fonts because it feels as though they are moving, like they are fluid or dynamic. I particularly am found of type that is eternal and static. But type that has this motion feel feels very novel—maybe even child-like—and it seems to lack the necessary rigid elegance and eternity that a "professional" font would otherwise have. I was first made aware of this when I laid eyes on MS's Candara ( http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=295 ) .

I think I was raised in a time where the general public were exposed to sans serif typefaces that were a clean mix of thick lines and thicker lines—no nonsense. Now, it seems as though more and more type has this bulging, expanding, and subtle curvatures. It's very different from the ubiquitous—and comforting—presence of typefaces like Futura and Helvetica.

But that's just my rambling!

Nice job. :)

PS How do you pronounce your last name? I have always found the word Søren to be overwhelmingly beautiful.

It's so amazing! In my favor, may the best typeface win!

Congrats for all the hard work !

Edit to my previous poet: …this article on money and printer ink.

Apologies. Not actually sure how a wiki link happened. I don't even know how to do that.

Thanks, well done!

As I glance over the current faces and the back catalogue it appears that there is some sort of house style… Any takers as to why? Is it something to do with the instruction?

To state the obvious, all Latin typefaces to a greater or lesser degree look similar due to the fact that they are all based on the same skeletal forms. If you are to investigate similarities (totally valid) what is it that you find similar and then is this similarity a good or bad thing - is it correct or incorrect, is it useful or a hindrance?

These fonts are not being designed in a vacuum. (I am of last years cohort) you do have the attention of your classmates and of the tutors of which access at variable frequencies (not every day). Also time factors into the design process. After a short time of experimentation, the thing (typeface) needs to become *real* and so perhaps similar processes are used here as 'proof of concept' that everyone *can * create a typeface.

I am interested in the comment about the stability of a typeface and if the character stands firm or throws weight onto the next character. NICE.

/m

Dear Satya,

I cannot not react on some of your comments as I find them rather vague and some of them simply not valid. Please, excuse the length.

> I like everything about Reading students, but what I don’t like about them is the ignorance they pay to their non-Latin designs,
> specially to the Indics. They never seem to do it properly. All their typefaces I have seen so far looks alike and has a typical Fiona
> Ross style in them. Nice smooth curves, but lack of a balanced skeleton.

Can you please describe what is the Fiona Ross’s style in more detail? As far as I am concerned Fiona never attempted to influence my style while I was designing my Gujarati. In fact she is extremely cautious about that. Her teaching method is style-independent I would say. Therefore, to me, and I believe to most of the people who did any Indian script with Fiona, this must sound like a ready-made opinion. It is not based on any evidence. There is a significant stylistic difference between Surat, Vesper, and Martel/Malabar for example. How can you not see that? It is three different styles and you refer to all of them as Ross’s style?

Or is the balanced skeleton part of what you refer to as a style?

Little note about the ignorance. Personally, I did (and every student is encouraged to do so) a significant research of Gujarati typography. I might be an ignorant, but I am not aware of studies of similar scale (about the same amount as Emma Williams’ work on Gurmukhi and other works on non-Latins) in Gujarati. The students' strive to understand the writing system and its conventions is immense. How could you possibly call such a research-based approach an ignorance?

Also, please refer to Indian (or Indic if you wish) scripts only, not to non-Latins. Are you experienced in judging/designing Arabic, Ethiopian, Cyrillic, … As far as I understood, you are Hindi with some understanding of Gujarati. Correct me if I am wrong. In what respect you are entitled to judge the other Indian scripts more than the students? Have you done research of similar scale for all of the scripts?

Last time I did ask you about my Gujarati and you did not have any comments (besides typos which is purely linguistic comment). I would very much appreciate some, once I am working on it again.

> I am not pointing towards any individual here, but a personal reflection to the course as whole. Never mind. :D

It would have been better if you did point towards individuals, because as a reflection on the course it is simply not true as I attempted to explain above. And the reasoning is completely independent on readers’ understanding of Indian scripts. Hence anybody can make their own picture.

I am not going to elaborate much on the misspellings as I would just repeat Eben's words. The limited time and focus on typeface design instead of language are the main reasons for such mistakes. My Surat specimen is full of them and nobody so far intepreted it as a typographic ignorance. Of course it would be much nicer to have it without them and much more respectable to the language, but it has nothing to do with typeface design. It is almost certain, that I left many typos in this text, but I believe the readers will get the meaning despite my language deficiencies.

David

—
davi.cz

I really see it as a privilege to have someone like Fiona as a teacher for designing non-Latin typefaces.

In my eyes, Fiona is one of the few type designers with a trained and experienced eye in non-Latin typeface design who is able to guide students (and professionals) along the path of designing a non-Latin font. During the entire process your she puts the emphasis on experimenting with different calligraphic styles, understanding the various typesetting systems, achieving a good execution of the glyphs, taking advantage of the possibilities of contemporary font technologies and undertaking sound research in order to achieve contemporary fonts of high quality. She does not advocate a 'house-style' but encourages each of us to find our own voice and design methodology.

Since 1978 she collaborated in designing typefaces for many non-Latin scripts (first for Linotype and later for Adobe), and I believe that the millions of international readers (and compagnies) that read the newspapers and magazines for which she (and her team) designed the non-Latin typefaces never complained about any unbalanced skeleton in her designs. On the contrary, I believe that her typeface designs just include a balanced skeleton, that's one of the aspects which makes them good textfaces for setting long paragraphs. And this is probably also the reason why so many clones (not to say rip-offs) of her non-Latin typefaces are out there. (Also, see: http://www.typojo.com/pages/kolkata.html)

Regarding the MA students, do not forget that they worked on their designs for period of  'only' 10 months, which does not make one a professional designers just yet. Should one not be glad that more people are trying to produce well-researched, good quality fonts for scripts where there is not enough variety? I have had excellent feedback from the Tibetan community on my font (also, designed under Fiona's supervision). 

- btw Satya, I recall that you spent an entire afternoon in the department with Fiona and me and John Hudson showing you (and Fabio) the Linotype Non-Latin collection. You did not show any indication then that you considered the typefaces poorly designed.

regards,
Jo

www.typojo.com

Congratulations to all of you guys!

BTW, I agree with Jo on his comments…

I have no much to add apart from admiting here publicly too that I agree with my fellow colleagues Jo and David.

Having Fiona Ross as a teacher and advisor has taught me loads--she was crucial to put me in the right way in both my practical and theoretical parts of the course, not for imposing me how to draw specific nodes and curves. Your comments sound a bit offensive and denote you seem to be unaware of what's going on there, Satya.

BTW, it is valid to say here too that the Tamil typeface I created was also generally well received by a number of tamilians, including people from literary and graphic design areas.

I also disagree that there is a 'Reading house style' going on. The last three year's work do show the repetition of some design decisions such as broken curves or assymetric serifs, but I strongly believe there is some sort of differentiation and also many other ideas going on. Nobody is imposing any style there.

F

PS: Congratulations to this year's class!

I agree with satya, the English fonts look good, the Indics; with all due respect are pathetic. Linguistically, they have not even written a single line correctly. The letters are not balanced at all, some of them seem to have been written in the wrong (sequence)way. The Tamil is quite ungainly, it would have helped them a lot if they could have atleast learned the language or shown it to some Tamil font designers (who have a greater sensitivity than Tamil natives). It is one thing to look at a font as a novelty, completely another to use it everyday in every context, plus a comparative with exiting fonts by natives would somewhere suggest which one is more aesthetically pleasing.

Fiona Ross is a wonderful researcher, but I think she is famous as a type designer only in the west. In India I'm not so sure as to how many people use fonts designed by her. I think most of Fionas' fonts were designed and used in the pre-digital era because linotype had a monopoly on printing machines, in the digital age this monopoly was broken and a lot of local designers have made some very nice fonts which are in popularly being used. I feel westerners are not exposed (or do not acknowledge) Indian type designers/researchers.

Finally I'd say good work on the Latins, but I think you have a long way to go for the Indics, the first step I guess is learning the language.

I would say this discussion is becoming a bit off-topic here.

I did an extensive historical research on Tamil typedesign 2 years ago (I am from the class of 2007) and I would love if you could send me (that can be off-list) some examples of what you consider nicely designed Tamil digital fonts by Tamilian typedesigners.

F

Well guys, as Fernando says we do a lot of research on non-latin issues at Reading and Fiona is a very important link to non-latin for the students. Qualifying the typefaces as "pathetic" is very harsh exageration. I do not know much about Indic typefaces, but what I do know is that Fiona is honest in her work and has many many years experience, which deserves a bit of respect.

Let's remember that the MA typefaces are part of a learning process, latin or non-latin, we all work on them to get knowledge out of that experience, after that I think all of the students who have released their typefaces have re-worked them a lot after the MA.

pilar

Fiona Ross is a wonderful researcher, but I think she is famous as a type designer only in the west. In India I’m not so sure as to how many people use fonts designed by her.

Linotype Bengali -- or the numerous unauthorised clones of it -- is the most widely used Bengali text type in both Assam and Bangladesh. The importance of this design, by Fiona Ross and Tim Holloway, was acknowledged in the recent exhibition of Bengali typographic history in Kolkata, to which Fiona was invited as guest of honour. To suggest that Fiona's work is not used in India is simply ridiculous.

I apologize for my harsh words, but this honestly is my opinion. I have friends both in NID and IDC, I've seen them work on a font for years. I myself have been working on some fonts for a while, I must I am as harsh on myself as I am on others hence have not been able to release/display any of my fonts. Same is the case with my friends.

Fermello, please have a look at the fonts designed by students of NID, IDC, & JJ school of Art. I'm not sure if they've put up their work, but I saw their graduate show, and was quite happy to see some fonts designed by students. Fonts designed by CDAC, are very popular among Indian publishers, you can find their catalog online.

Please, do start another thread if you wish to discuss such enjoyable topics as a connection between quality of one’s typeface and typos in his/her specimen or the need to know the language before designing a typeface for it. I really think all typographers should learn Czech in order to make proper accents! ;)

Anglaise by Anette Schmidt looks a lot like Motter Ombra.

Congratulations!

Vikas: I have friends both in NID and IDC, I’ve seen them work on a font for years. I myself have been working on some fonts for a while, I must I am as harsh on myself as I am on others hence have not been able to release/display any of my fonts.

Similarly, it should be noted, very few of the Reading MA student typefaces are ever released (either the Latin or the non-Latin): they are student projects intended to develop and demonstrate certain skills, not to produce a releasable typeface. Some of the students go on to complete/extend and release their student projects after they graduate, usually with much revision such that the final versions are noticeably different from those shown in their student specimens (which are, by the way, one of the course deliverables; i.e. they're making the specimens because it is a requirement of the MA programme).

Most of the Indic and other non-European designs produced by Reading students, so far as I can tell, tend to be unfinished. So some of the errors in the specimen text may be due to incomplete glyph sets or only partial OpenType Layout. Again, the goal is not to produce a font ready for commercial release, but to develop and demonstrate specific skills. As someone who has hired graduates of the Reading programme, I can say that I'm interested in what the designs tell me about the skill set of the student, not whether I like the typeface or consider it complete or ready for release.

I also note that most of the non-European designs tend to be pretty conservative, more so than the Latin types (a notable exception is David's Gujarati). I suppose this might be a criticism, but given how many really crap non-Latin fonts exist in which someone has tried to be novel or has tried to apply decorative elements proper to display typography to text sizes, there's a lot to be said in favour of conservatism.

i should also have said, thank you for posting this. i find it very fun to look at the specimens.

Clauses you made the font 'Markant' ? i very much like the visual relationship between the lowercase 'f' and lowercase 'g'.

i do agree that many of these fonts are similar, or at least similar in terms of risk level.

Satya, I'm shocked by your gross over generalizations. I'll be the first to admit that my Devanagari is not perfect or polished, and I'm sure I made some ignorant decisions along the way. But to credit the success or failure of my Devanagari to Fiona Ross would be terribly foolish. To her credit, whatever mistakes exist in my type are there because she allowed me to find my own way with the Devanagari to a large extent. Additionally, I was able to show my work to Arobind Patel, who works as a typographic design consultant in Bombay, and he gave me a generally favorable review.
Also, I went to great lengths to keep as many typos from my specimen as possible. I apologize for any that are left over. If you would like to proofread my specimen, I would be glad to make a corrected version available.

Re. the similarity of some of the Latin designs. I think there is a bit of a default Reading style which involves a chunky roman text face with a broad-nib stress pattern with strongly-flavoured serifs. Since these are student projects, and the skills developed and demonstrated are more important than the style or individuality of the typeface, this doesn't really bother me. It does mean, though, that the work of students who break the mould tends to stand out.

I really like Anglaise. it is like a sexy modified Motter Ombra. I have been working on my own customization of Motter Ombra for a personal project. so maybe i am drawn to this font for that reason.

I really like reading all the comments about style and method. I dream to design my own typeface and I will call it 'Wilding'. but I have a lot to learn yet.

Okay, this is becoming an unhealthier thread now. Let me clear a few things.

@David & Paul:
Please note, I am not commenting on Fiona Ross here at all. She is a great designer/teacher and I respect her for everything she has done. Also, the term non-Latin I used was to do with Indics only - sorry for not putting it clearly.

I was mainly here referring to the typos in the specimens only, and feel that it is also the part of it. Why there is no typos in Latin?

And otherwise also, I feel that the time you guys put into designing Indics is simply not enough for the amount of work you are supposed to render. Most of you guys focus only on your Latin designs and keep all your Indic secondary. May be you all do a lot of research but it does not reflect (at least) in your booklets. All the typefaces I have seen so far, only the Latin ones were completed. Also you will always make your Latin first and then force the Indics to go with it. Is that the correct way? If the intension is to learn, why not design a stand alone typeface?

I still stay on my opinion that the tyepfaces I have seen so far (except Malabar Hindi and Frida Tamil), lack a proper skeleton and hence not pleasing to read. No matter how refined they are.

Paul, I am not generalizing here anything, it's just a personal opinion. It all could be wrong.

Peace.

The so called Reading style is in fact several styles. You can track threads of typefaces over the years inspired by Excoffon’s expresivity , Dwiggins’ pracical angularities, various stress experiments, … The website is a great resource to study how the students personalities project into typeface design, how people deal with the same inspiration differently.

Also note that we posted a lot of Reflection on Practise essays which describe the reasoning behind the typefaces and development of not-only-Latin typefaces. It is a great resource of meaningful and constructive writing on design process.

Satya: Most of you guys focus only on your Latin designs and keep all your Indic secondary. … Also you will always make your Latin first and then force the Indics to go with it.

This is clearly not the case. The process is iterative and the design of Latin and other scripts is intertwined. The dominance differs for each project. Satya, do some reading before you claim something. Look at the RoPs at least. You are suggesting how the students work without knowing anything about it.

Juliann: I think it's doing Anette Schmidt's Anglaise a disservice by calling it a "modified Motter Ombra", Anglaise was quite clearly developed with different ideas in mind. I don't see much similarity past being both of them being bold high-constrast display types.

userone I think I am replying to you and maybe also fermello78

The similarity I am seeing (I'm too ill equipped to even describe it) is quite nuanced, house style was too strong a term! I was curious about it's presence without intending any judgement. I thought about one day studying in Reading and was hoping to glean something about the mechanics of the course by studying the output! So for example duration sounds like a big factor.

I like this thread, hat's off to all participants.

>Re. the similarity of some of the Latin designs. I think there is a bit of a default Reading style which involves a chunky roman text face with a broad-nib stress pattern with strongly-flavoured serifs.

Titus Nemeth's fault, probably.

kidding... :))

F

Sorry folks to continue the off-topic on Tamil.

Vikas:

>Fermello, please have a look at the fonts designed by students of NID, IDC, & JJ school of Art. I’m not sure if they’ve put up their work, but I saw their graduate show, and was quite happy to see some fonts designed by students. Fonts designed by CDAC, are very popular among Indian publishers, you can find their catalog online.

Couldn't find the student fonts you mentioned.

But I did find the fonts 'designed by CDAC' and can tell you that great part of them consist of digitizations of pre-digital display types that can be found in many old metal/hotmetal catalogues from Indian foundries which I had the chance to consult while studying in Reading. Also, note that the high-contrasted fonts TM Bharati and TM Kapilan, which I reckon, must be widely used for texts, are in fact 'undercovered' Monotype designs (some of them also appeared in several pre-digital Indian catalogues, sometimes with references to the numbers 280, 340, 580 and 708, notably the Monotype way of naming its Tamil fonts). And these Monotype designs are undoubtedly derived from the work of the American Mission Press in Madras in the nineteenth century.

F

'famous as a type designer'

hyuk, hyuk, hyuk, hyuk >^p

Indeed, famous and type designer don't really fit together that well.

Abi, I do not mean to discredit the work behind Anglaise by comparing it to Motter Ombra; perhaps my wording was off but I wasn't trying to say that she had simply modified the font. obviously I have no clue as to her design process.

nor was i trying to say the 2 fonts are identical but they do share some qualities, maybe most profoundly an indescribable feeling they leave me with; of course you do not have to agree.

but they would be in the same visual police lineup, so-to-speak. in *my* opinion.

i agree with some of the comments about threads of similarities among classes. if you choose to look at these as examples of progress and learning, that's not a terrible thing as they are clearly all well-researched. but i notice the argument of "if you look more deeply into the details" is brought up a couple of times.

here's my thought on that. the perspective of a designer who would want to use these in a project is rarely one that delves quickly into the details. it begins by the initial "feel" of a typeface, the gut reaction that one wishes to apply to his material... not all designers are type freaks.

so with respect i say congratulations to the students who have put so much hard work, research, and time into such a critically challenging and otherwise difficult craft. that said, i also feel rather critical towards the lack of top-level diversity between some — not all — of the typefaces.

that is to say... the technical, well-researched, objective qualities (that i may not fully appreciate) fall prey to the immediate subjective reaction i get when browsing a font menu or type specimen.

neverthless, impressive and badass work here!

“if you look more deeply into the details” that's not even a complete thought, let alone an argument. can you finish the rest of this sentiment that you're feeling so the rest of us can understand what you're trying to get at?

"Looking more deeply" seems to refer to Eben's earlier post ...

With Karsten's cue, I should maybe explain what I meant by that. I think that if a type works well as a text face as designers we stop looking very hard at why it is working. Similarly we don't investigate why the water works in our house. If it does, we are happy and we leave it at that. It doesn't make us bad people. But as this is a type site some of us will be wondering... So I will explain what I meant.

Without meaning to beat anybody up ( see the text above!) I think it is fair to agree with Paul Halupka and admit that graphic designers do quite often lack the skill with which to assess a text face. Not all graphic designers set books or magazines after all. Some of us make logos or do other things. So some, even many, (most?) graphic designers will not be able to quickly assess the MATD designs, or to be fair, any other group composed of text faces. I have been a member of that group.

Where I disagree with Paul Halupka is that you have to be a font freak to see the difference once you set some text in a few different type faces. Even a long time logo designer, once they try setting text will suddenly see a great deal of difference. Even if they don't know why that difference is there.

And people who routinely make choices about setting text may not know in detail why they make their choices. But they are responding to differences in voice and weight and color. And if they are experienced they may also be making that choice based on factors like weight flexibility, glyph range, relationships betwen romans, italics, smallcaps etc. And in some cases because they know know how a type ( or formal charcateristic of a type ) acts on a given kind of paper stock when printed using a certain method.

So with that as a context; what I think is fun about this crop of MATD typefaces is that the ones which are meant to be text faces of one kind or another* work in some ways partly because formal characteristics such as tending to be relatively low contrast for instance, which in this case they mostly share, but also in spite of very different approaches to construction, levels of noise in their shapes so on. Admittedly these differences in approach are hidden under the skin of "working". But if you start to compare the letters shapes closely, or set texts in the fonts, I am confident that the difference in he fonts voice or feel and the differences in suitability to a given task will jump out at you.

*text faces come in a variety of sub varieties after all

The majority of Reading student designs are low-contrast, semi-condensed, non-geometric, serifed text faces of conventional letter shape (e.g. all g's are binocular), with large x-height and ascenders that extend beyond cap height.

For differentiation from one another, they rely on styling details such as asymmetric serifs, which serve no function in a text face.

That doesn't make them dysfunctional, because they can still work very well with redundant features, although very few if any classic, established text faces have asymmetric serifs, which would suggest that it is not a good idea.

But the merit of any one face is not really the issue.
What does it say about a course in type design, that the majority of the faces hew so closely to a uniform template, year after year?

Students should be encouraged to become aware of what is informed by both convention and trend in their shared taste (and that of the faculty) and step beyond it, experimenting with the basic parameters of type form-- x-height, extender length, and contrast (both of stem widths and letter widths), perhaps even adopt non-conventional letter forms. Is the New Typography of the previous decade dead history?

There is plenty of time to be "contemporary" once one has graduated, but surely--notwithstanding a solid grounding in technical competence--design education should be more devoted to experiment with fundamental form than styling.

Is the New Typography of the previous decade dead history?

i hope so.

Young fellow, you weren't around before. Things were turgid, to say the least.
While the Reading course is a necessary agent of maturity in digital type culture, the sameness that has been observed in its student output appears to be the result of excising the open-minded approach to type design that emerged during the digital revolution--at least if your reaction is anything to go by!

i assure you it isn't: my views are entirely my own.

@Nick: Did you mean "century" in place of "decade," or am I missing your reference?

Craig, the previous decade is 1990s, IMHO.

...i assure you it isn’t: my views are entirely my own...

Paul, you may have arrived at your views individually, but they nonetheless have much in common with other Reading students, if such views are borne out in the faces produced.

How do you explain that Grandia has many of the same qualities of form that Reading student designs of recent years have exhibited? (noted in my 11.03 post)

i can't speak for others, but Grandia was influenced by (as far as i can best identify) Menhart + Dwiggins + Unger + perceived constraints for printing at small sizes + the desire to harmonize with Devanagari (highly calligraphic influence) + my own design aesthetic. I'm certain that certain other students have also been inspired to varying degrees by the first three influences at least, still others perhaps have been fascinated with type for small sizes. Had I chosen Tamil, Telugu, Sinhala or a script based on pointed pen construction for my non-Latin portion, I would probably have done a modern face for the Latin. The style I chose seemed to me to tie together all the influences/constraints that I wanted to bring together.

Tamil is a language, Devanagari is an alphabet.

Having once been advised by Gerry Leonidas, in a Typophile thread, that a Greek type of mine wasn't calligraphic enough, could it be that the hegemony of The Stroke at Reading comes from, first, the belief that many non-European scripts are inherently calligraphic, and consequently that multi-script types must therefore be calligraphic?

Tamil script, sorry.
Devanagari is better described as a abugida or an alphasyllabary if we're being pedantic.
My personal feelings are that any similarities that exist between the faces that come out of reading as student projects are based on the fact that many of the students likely have cultivated similar tastes to begin with and that in most every case, these projects are the first attempt of the students to produce a coherent typeface. The fact that students will be scored for their work may contribute to many students playing it on the safe side. That or perhaps young students feel that it's better to get some fundamentals down first and then experiment later. i can't say why there is such a high level of hegemony, but it is interesting to hear others speculate and criticize if a bit baffling/humorous/insightful/frustrating/humbling to hear the views of those looking from the outside in.

Thanks for the disinterested assessment.

disinterested? i'm anything but! if i were in Toronto, i'd be glad to have a long chat with you about all this over a pint or two. if i'm disinterested in having this conversation it's disinterest over the format and not the content. sorry if i'm coming across cross over the internet.
In fact, I feel I've been quite candid and honest and open about my own experiences at least. It seems that perhaps you're disinterested in hearing the perspective from the inside?

Paul, disinterested means candid and honest--no axe-grinding!
I was paying a compliment. Candid would have been a better word to use, apologies for my cumbersome vocabulary.

Sure I'm critical of the Reading approach, because it's not the way I teach type design, and I'm interested to find out why it is what it is, by asking hard questions--hopefully in a disinterested manner. I will admit there's more than one right way to teach.

The commonalities of the student designs is a fascinating phenomenon, and your insights are quite illuminating.

doh! apparently i need to take more of those 'it pays to enrich your vocabulary' tests. i won't make that mistake again.

anyway, i'm in Buffalo in October, perhaps i can make it up for a visit and we can chat more about it then.

Alright!

>Sure I’m critical of the Reading approach, because it’s not the way I teach type design

Nick, among those you teach do you find similarities of style?

No. Quite the opposite.
But I teach a single semester course as part of a 3-year graphic design program, not a one-year MA.
A better comparison of teaching method with typeface design outcome would be comparing work designed at Reading with that done at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK), and Gerard Unger would probably be the man to do it, as he teaches at both institutions.
The KABK work appears to have more variety, although quite a few of its student designs in the most recent year are also low contrast serifed faces with very small cap height and conventional letter-forms.

Perhaps it's just the contrarian in me, but I don't see why the criterion of readability in text faces has to be such a constraining influence on proportion and letter form. Last week I came across an advertising booklet from around 1930, which I bought, in part because of the lovely text type, with its small x-height, monocular "g", and Venetian "e", which I found to be perfectly readable.

BTW Eben, note the contextual variation of double "l" and double "s"!

I want to give my respect to Anette Schmidt for being the rebel in this crowd :)

I do have a contextual l (el) that follows where the 1st one is shorter than the second. I am have my doubts that either of these is really contextual though. Do you have better images?

Nick, some of what you are saying doesn't quite add up for me. Admittedly I have been here at Reading and I could have "drunk the cool-aid" as they say, but even if that's the case I think some of what you wrote needs closer looking into if only for the sake of accuracy. I have no doubt that Paul will sort you out. I may make an attempt at some point as well.

But while I can't spare the time for an in depth reply just now I did want to register my disagreement.

The majority of Reading student designs are low-contrast, semi-condensed, non-geometric, serifed text faces of conventional letter shape (e.g. all g’s are binocular), with large x-height and ascenders that extend beyond cap height.

At first, I am not completely sure if this statement is valid at all. How many years do you include in your calculation? Did you do that calculation at all or is it just a feeling?

Second, perhaps the same can be said about contemporary text typefaces in general? So what does it say about the students’ work? That they understood the genre. The goal, for most of them, was to design a text typeface. Working text typeface. If somebody want to spend a year designing display type, that is their choice. The people usually aim bit higher, for dictionary typefaces, newspaper typefaces, … in order to make use of the academic year. So that is the reason why they chose to follow the way of "careful originality" or say "readable originality".

Third, non-geometric, low capitals, serif that is a must for a typeface usable in long texts. Large x-height, low contrast is a need for small sizes. Give me high-contrast sans-serif newspaper or dictionary typeface. The students just understand their brief.

For differentiation from one another, they rely on styling details […] which serve no function in a text face.

That is exactly the point! The styling has minimal function that would affect the readability. Much better option than originality for the sake of originality (venetian -e- or single-storey -g- for example). The problem is the differing understanding of what readability is. Where you go for subjective evaluation of what is and what is not readable, I would go for definition based on convention.

I would prefer if people avoided biased comparisons of the KABK and Reading. There are similar "inspiration threads" at KABK: Underware-like, Noordzij inspiration, … and at the same time there is some interesting stuff going on.

Type design is a craft at the first place. If you think you can teach being original… ehm. well, you can keep thinking that. That would be a pain to discuss it.

Eben, having had a look through the rest of the publication, it seems that the contextuality is the result of bounce, rather than an alternate design of glyph. However, that's a legitimate effect.

I don't think I've said anything inaccurate about why the typefaces at Reading tend to be similar in appearance. Just some conjecture as to why that might be--Paul came up with a few theories too.

Did you do that calculation at all or is it just a feeling?

Neither, it's an observation.

So what does it say about the students’ work? That they understood the genre.

That they didn't question the conventions, or the trends.

Large x-height, low contrast is a need for small sizes.

For agate, perhaps, but otherwise that is simply not true. Presently, large x-height faces appear to be in vogue for text, as they were thirty years ago. Is that a need?

Where you go for subjective evaluation of what is and what is not readable, I would go for definition based on convention.

It may be better, educationally, to try to achieve readability in a type design based on unconventional premises. But in my experience, when a student comes up with a set of premises for a type design, it's difficult to anticipate what the outcome will be, or what will be learnt. It may well be possible to learn more from attempting the impossible and failing dramatically. At any rate, I do not grade students by "subjectively" looking at the face and deciding how good or readable it is, or how "creative" the premise, I look at how well they have gone through the process of crafting it.

The journey is more important than the destination, and if you believe that, you will end up at the right place.

If you think you can teach being original…

I've never taught an MA in type design. But teaching type design to graphic design students, most of whom have no special interest in typography, they always amaze me with the variety of work they come up with.

Nick, is it possible to see samples of the work of your students? I'm very intrigued.

Nick: disinterested means candid and honest

No it doesn't. Disinterested means unbiased, i.e. having no vested interest.

Tamil is a language, Devanagari is an alphabet.

Tamil is an ethnicity, a language, a script and an alphabet: the same term is used for all these things. Devanagari is a script, which is a superset of a number of alphabets, e.g. Hindi, Marathi and Nepali.

...having no vested interest.

What I was trying to say, was that Paul's analysis was very objective for someone in the middle of things.
What would be the best adjective for that? Dispassionate?

...the same term is used for all these things.

Well yes, English, French etc. are nationalities as well as a languages too.
For all the things that Tamil and Devanagari are, they are not inherently device-dependent (i.e. "calligraphic") in their appearance, which IMO is a mistaken view, even though their letter forms may have originated with specific media, as did the Latin script.

...is it possible to see samples of the work of your students?

I've already asked the authorities if this would be OK, but haven't heard back yet.

Nick Shinn: At any rate, I do not grade students by “subjectively” looking at the face and deciding how good or readable it is, or how “creative” the premise, I look at how well they have gone through the process of crafting it.

My point was bit different: from your subjective interpretation of readability arise your criteria on judging creativity/originality. Nevertheless, you made a good point in the last sentence and I agree with that. No idea why can you judge the course on the creative premise at the same time.

My impression from several remarks above is that people expect the students to come up with strikingly orginal design (as in display) while designing a text typeface. This seems mistaken. In my opinion, orginality is pretty much the oposite of readability of long texts.

Here's my two cents on this:

1. Execution is more important than idea/concept/originality, as we probably all agree.

2. Pure execution is impossible, however. You cannot just execute, you have to execute something.

3. People will always try to see that something, no matter how good the execution. If they don't find anything then they will be disappointed or confused.

With some typefaces I find it difficult to judge (for myself) whether it is convincing because I do not even see what it is that I should be convinced of.

> In my opinion, orginality is pretty much the oposite of readability of long texts.

Agree. Having done the Reading MA in 2004-2005, and watching Robert Slimbach's processes and struggles of designing text typefaces during the past 3 years, I believe that the level of originality in what we call a readable/legible typeface can only be about 5%.

Just look back to Jenson's roman type in De Evangelica Preaparatione from 1470. How much have things evolved since then? What significant events happened in 500 years? Quirkiness was tamed, x-height grew, and sans serifs sprouted. Anything else? Is this comparable to the shift from blackletter to roman type? The development of sans serifs may be, assuming we don't acknowledge them as mere roman type without serifs.

Very cool stuff. One thing I've always wondered is why student type design projects never seem to make their way into the world the way say, student Computer Science do. Instead, student type projects seem to either never become available at all, unless they get picked up by a commercial distributor. It would seem to me that even if students don't manage to get their fonts sold to a foundry, that more of them might either self-publish on the web or release them as freeware...

Originality is a very difficult topic. But I do agree with Nick that a teacher can choose to emphasize helping the student to develop his or her individual voice and vision--or not.

And I do get the feeling that the emphasis at Reading is on producing the skills and understanding to get a job in the font industry. That they seem to be succeeding at this is an impressive achievement.

I do get the feeling from looking at the typefaces that they don't emphasize as much development of individual voice and vision. But it is very hard to judge this from the outside, as it is also a matter of which students choose to attend, and what those students want out of the year.

At TypeCon in Atlanta Gerry Leonides did say that he wants the students at Reading to do text faces, as these have additional demands that display faces don't. This seems to me a pretty reasonable point.

I agree it is harder to be original with text faces, but I don't agree that originality is impossible or unimportant. You have a narrower scope to express originality, but it can come out strongly still, if the designer has a strong and consistent enough vision. Just look at Goudy Old Style or Palatino. These are unmistakable, original text faces, even though they may vary less than 5% from the faces of Jenson and Griffo.

Nick Shinn:
very few if any classic, established text faces have asymmetric serifs, which would suggest that it is not a good idea.

Adobe Jenson -- can one be more classic than that? -- is full of asymmetric serifs (which I believe are not redundant to the calligraphic feeling of the type, in this case).

Some of Fournier's types have them as well. Apollo by Frutiger, too!

F

Nick: For all the things that Tamil and Devanagari are, they are not inherently device-dependent (i.e. “calligraphic”) in their appearance, which IMO is a mistaken view, even though their letter forms may have originated with specific media, as did the Latin script.

My take on this is that every writing system is tool-influenced and insofar as these tools influence the development of the normative shapes of writing during the maturation and standardisation of the script, then they more or less limit the kind of modifications that can be made without undermining those shapes in ways that may affect both legibility and cultural acceptance of new designs. Of course, other factors apply in the latter regard, not least the relative adventurousness or conservatism of the individual culture. But the influence of tools and how those tools are used can't be ignored willy-nilly. As I've written elsewhere, I think the term ‘calligraphic’ is imprecise and misleading, so should be ignored, but is what Paul is saying is that the normative forms of Devanagari letters are influenced by the use of a broad nib tool held at a particular angle, and that other scripts such as Tamil are influenced by different tools used in different ways, then this is a sound observation. He's playing it safe in treating Devanagari as he has in his Reading project, but if he chose not to play it safe, then he would have to deal with the contrast between the influence of traditional tools and methods on the normative shapes and trying to treat those shapes in different ways.

Scripts are not device-dependent, but nor are they entirely device-independent.

Miguel: I believe that the level of originality in what we call a readable/legible typeface can only be about 5%.

This always strikes me as a strange way to look at it, because if a typographer or designer is making a choice between two or more ‘readable/legible typefaces’, then that 5% that accounts for their difference constitutes 100% of the value that determines the choice.

>then that 5% that accounts for their difference constitutes 100% of the value that determines the choice.

Well put!

Originality in type design is a weird thing in that it is so hard to pin down, yet there is a remarkable degree of commonality in response to it, at least with a design that is excellent as well as original.

For example Gotham is a revival and execution of traditional designs, yet people have widely responded to its freshness, particularly of the upper case. And even there it's hard to pin down what's new.

Also the truth about the impact of teachers is somewhat elusive. Here are two opposite sayings about teaching. One,from the movie The Karate Kid: "There are no bad students, only bad teachers." The other from a prospective guitar teacher for my son when he was a teen: "It's not the teacher, it's the student."

No doubt there's truth and exaggeration in both, but the magic of what happens or not between teacher and student is a bit mysterious.

Fernando,as I said, very few of the classic faces have asymmetric serifs.
Frutiger has tried it (Apollo), and Carter (Alisal), more no doubt, but these are not their most successful designs.
Goudy did it best.
That most calligraphic of modern classics, Palatino, has symmetrical serifs, demonstrating that serif style is not bound to stroke style.

...tools...limit...cultural acceptance of new designs.

John: I think the opposite is true, much more so in commerce than academia. Members of language groups whose scripts haven't progressed quite so much as the Latin don't wish to be chained to legacy technologies. Art directors and graphic designers everywhere want their DIN. Enterprising type designers are addressing this challenge. Yara Khoury of Al Mohtaraf, for instance, has designed a number of monoline Arabic faces, including a "Univers".

The idea there was was that you can see the effect of the double f not just in ff but also in ffi & ffl. I will change it to show the other special possibilities f+f= ff ( + ffb, ffh, ffi, ffj, ffk and ffl ) It may well be that there is a better way to express this idea though.

It wasn't clear to me that, that was what you were trying to say. I think what was throwing me off, was the f+l = fl together with the f+f+l = ffl. That made me expect you would mention the fi/ffi in the same way.

I appreciate your saying so! That makes sense. I hope the next version seems more sensible to you. It should be up in a few days.

Pardon my ignorance but I am surprised by what I see. IMVHO, there are some basic mistakes in some of these fonts. Say, the spacing of 'capoeira' on the front page is simply wrong : the rounds are too loose, the i not spaced enough. I really like capoeira, guillotine, coline, anglaise and Enquire though. I am also self-teaching myself, so where am I wrong?

Nick mentioned "asymmetrical serifs" as characteristic of a supposed Reading house-style. I agree that there seems to be a style that is characteristic of Reading MATD productions at large.

Would someone please be kind enough to give or show examples of these asymmetrical serifs?

I'm more or less familiar with the look of Reading productions like Cassius, Vesper, and Malabar.

Also would someone please explain why asymmetrical serifs are not necessarily a good thing?

Thanks!

"asymmetrical serifs...good thing?"

They are neither good nor bad. It is all in the execution. As the man said, the devil is in the details.

@_Palatine_ There is a point where the serif becomes too long and there is also a point where the serif is too short [from the point of view of the designer]. This might be different on either side of the glyphs stem, considering the whole of the letter and what the composite elements of the glyph are doing. Sometimes a serif may need to be shortened in the inside of a letter (n) to avoid serifs from becoming too close, with a chance of touching, when printed, and therefore closing up the character. When there are more than 2 or 3 occurrences of shortening the serifs on the inside of the letter this might suggest a style to populate throughout the character-set. I don't remember being told this, but it just seems to make common sense.

I would have said this before... the course (any course) is a chance to try things out, why just do something boring and simple, try variety – experiment.

My font Pseudo considered serifs to be malleable like clay, where I could add a little or take away to give balance to the letter-forms.

Chris: As the man said, the devil is in the details.

That man was wrong. God is in the details. The devil is a generalist.

LOL!!! But the alliteration sucks :-)

I thought "God is in the details" was the original from Mies van der Rohe. But my friend Wiki, who seems to know everything, put me in the know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_is_in_the_details

God, devil, same thing.

Who sits at at the left hand of the Father?

> Who sits at the left hand of the Father?

Eric Gill.

Because the Good Lord doesn't like a smartass. ;)

I wouldn't consider myself qualified to comment on how good the Tamil graphics in Venkat are; I presume the students were asked to stretch themselves by designing a face for a language with which they were not familiar, and under the circumstances of a course such as this, there would hardly be the time to fully immerse oneself in the aesthetics of another culture.

Given that, as noted, these are exercises and not products, there is nothing wrong with that. (Devanagari, of course, is the script used for Sanskrit and Hindi, among other languages, but not Tamil or Malayalam... or Tibetan or Thai or Gujarati, even if these scripts are indeed closely related to Devanagari.)

Perhaps relevant to the discussion of non-Latin (specifically Indic) typefaces in this thread, I am running a little experiment in the following thread:

http://typophile.com/node/67613

I have long suspected that those who don't read a script simply don't see the same things that a typographically attuned native reader sees. I've posted a sample of the hangul (Korean alphabet) of two fonts bundled with Windows, Arial Unicode and Gothic. The latter is a solid if dated design by an influential twentieth-century Korean type designer, while the former is a disaster; even Koreans who don't pay much attention to typography wonder why the Korean is displaying all weird when they come across web pages or applications that display hangul in Arial Unicode.

You non-Korean speakers are welcome to comment on how you think the two compare in the sample.

Perhaps the instructors influence the students too much.

That is indeed a huge concern, but from what I've seen the Reading instructors try quite hard to avoid such overbearing influence (as all good teachers should).

You must've been thinking of the other school...
(Sorry to repurpose your negativity. :-)

hhp