Renowned type design studio Fontsmith has today launched FS Emeric, a new typeface that represents the culmination of over two years’ work by Fontsmith’s type design director, Phil Garnham.

The original brief that Phil set himself carried a bold ambition — a sans serif typeface that was capable of adding a fresh new voice to the classic modernist fonts.

As Phil explains:
“The timeless alphabets of the fifties have a deliberate neutrality, born out of an unfaltering mechanical solidity in each line and curve. FS Emeric has been designed to share this sense of structure and universality but it also introduces a new approach, intuitively informed by a sense of today, one of progress and optimism.” As a result, FS Emeric enjoys a connection to the familiar typefaces that have shaped the world of graphic design for so many decades, while also exhibiting a characteristic humanity that adds energy and personality.

It is available to purchase from fontsmith.com in 11 weights with italics, which together form a ‘Superfamily’.

The launch campaign for FS Emeric was developed by Exeter-based brand design studio Believe in®, whose Founder and creative director Blair Thomson said: “Our goals with the campaign were twofold — to demonstrate FS Emeric’s potential and to show off its extraordinary range and versatility. We’ve tried to capture a sense of possibility, so it feels expressive while preserving a pure typographic approach.”

The campaign consists of a striking type specimen booklet, an ambitious series of limited edition screen – printed posters and a campaign microsite at www.fsemeric.com.

The specimen booklet tells the story of the typeface through a range of brand applications, including packaging, signage and screen-based design. The finished booklet is beautifully crafted with a wraparound cover, printed in 4 spot colours with2 foils on GF Smith papers.

For the poster series, 11 leading design studios from around the globe were invited to create a limited edition A1 poster using one weight of FS Emeric. Believe in® designed an additional campaign poster, and all 12 have been screen-printed onto 175gsm Colorplan and hand numbered by Dan Mather in London.

Participating studios included Pentagram, Build and Bibliothèque in London, Manual in San Francisco, Studio Dumbar in Rotterdam and Lundgren+Lindqvist in Gothenburg.

Originally designed by Jason Smith and Fernando Mello as a broadcast typeface for aUK TV channel, FS Truman has been re-issued as a new member of the Fontsmith library.

The success of the original was due to its eye-catching design working well on screen, adding force to announcements for upcoming action series and films, and its standout amongst other TV channel identities. The font was influenced by the simple, legible, condensed and geometric aspects of Bauhaus and the humanist model for sans serifs.

Elements of the original design, including the headline and text versions, have now been merged together to form a robust typeface, ideal for use way beyond the original broadcast context. FS Truman takes the humanist ideal into a different, more interesting level, with a strong rational spirit and a number of distinctive, ownable quirks.

FS Truman is available in a comprehensive range of weights.

www.fontsmith.com

Inspired by Dutch and Belgian poetry books and Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos’s typefaces, FS Olivia is a font that captures the details of the process of writing. Imperfections in the printing process can often add personality and FS Olivia shares this characteristic as the design has been inspired by handwriting, with the addition of some very modern features.

Olivia is a friendly and feminine typeface that captures the motion of the pen, with low junctions, deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges.

Designer Eleni Beveratou explains: “When creating a typeface it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with FS Olivia. Although technology is part of my everyday life, I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.”

FS Olivia is available in a range of weights and supports Greek and Cyrillic alphabets in addition to the standard Latin characters.

www.fontsmith.com

FS Elliot is a robust, hard-working sans serif typeface for the 21st Century, with its roots firmly planted in the 60s. Designed by Nick Job, the design sets out to create something squarely in the British tradition, drawing on the influence of Jock Kinnear, Margaret Calvert and Design Research Unit, before adding warmth and broad appeal to create a hard-worker in any environment.

The typeface retains the simplicity and openness of the 60s typographic style, whilst creating something with further reach. FS Elliot has been designed to be very practical, a work-horse that can be used in a large number of applications with extensions into Cyrillic and Greek helping to test its durability.

Of the design process, Nick Job said: “The great thing about having an eye on the future is that most of it is unknown. It’s what encourages us to take risks and it leaves an uncertainty which, I believe, gives the best work its enduring appeal.”

FS Elliot is available in a Pro version with full language support and a full range of Roman, Cyrillic and Greek weights.

www.fontsmith.com

In July 2011 the good folk at AV Browne asked Fontsmith to explore the creative possibilities for a MAC typeface that supported the architectural style of the space and one that retained a definite graphic quality.

Fontsmith designers Phil Garnham and Fernando Mello set upon developing a modern geometric type style that integrated and provided support to AV Browne’s angular brick concept, which is based around 30° angles. Project design director Chris Killeen of AV Browne explains – “The two main elements to the visual system take their cues from the building itself, the materials and the angles within the space. The first is a bespoke typeface using combinations of 30° angles to create characterful letters. The second is the wireframe pattern based on the bricks used within the building”

The logotype also uses the bespoke typeface with a few added extras. The fold in the logo mirrors the angles used within the font and brick elements which implies the context of the larger arts space environment as well as creating a nice consistent yet evolving relationship throughout the identity.

You can catch all the latest developments at the MAC here

http://www.fontsmith.com/
http://avb-group.com/

Over the past 10 or so years at Fontsmith, we have been quietly drawing and thinking about these letters, we’ve been thinking about how they fit into a specific picture. How can we create the tone of a letter-shape to fit into the context of a graphic designers brief. Legibility is fundamental, it is the omnipresent requirement, but the tone and texture of the letter shape is ever changing. As a species of brand aware individuals, we have become alphabet savvy. No matter how small, organisations want to communicate in a distinguished and personal manner, tailoring their words carefully to help them speak with a voice that is fitting to their offering. They also want to have ownership and control over their graphic assets and a font is a very powerful asset indeed. When used effectively a font can be the glue that binds all of the other graphic elements together.

The type industry has never felt more fertile than it does today and in this climate, interest in type design has piqued at feverish levels. So to continue Fontsmith’s superb relationship with the good folk here at TypeToken, Mike Sullivan (aka design tweeter @studiomr) has asked me to write a few words about the Fontsmith bespoke type design process. Obviously every type design project is different. There is no set formula or right way to design a bespoke typeface. Here I have attempted to break things down, to simplify and pigeon hole the process in order to give a little insight into how a bespoke type project may play out at Fontsmith.

Stage 1 – The Brief – context, words, colours and type mood-boards…

When we are approached by an agency, designer or client, we have a quick conversation in order to define the fundamental parameters of the brief. A conversation that revolves quite simply around the question – “How and where are these fonts going to be used?”. We can then wade into the exciting bit, the creative undertones of the proposed type. Typical questions are: “What are the values of this font?”, “How does it want to speak?”, “Is it direct, at a distanced or is it understated and approachable?”, “What other design elements are going to sit with it?”, “What is the photographic style”, “What colours are being considered?” etc…

Listen and understand your brief. Make notes, think, doodle and see where those doodles take you. Designing type isn’t rocket science but it does require a huge amount of skill and understanding that can only be gained through years of experience. It requires a fine eye for detail and craft, a visual sensibility for type styles and formal relationships within letter shapes. It requires an understanding of what has gone before and how that can help you to explore new creative possibilities.

Sometimes we create typographic mood-boards like the one above. Mood-boards allow you to gather a range of stylistic influences to pitch your own ideas into. They can help a client to define a typographic area that they feel comfortable with, a style that tonally resonates with them.

Sometimes mood-boards are very focused. For the UEFA Champions league typeface we felt that we had a good idea about where things should go. We gathered a mixed bag of typographic influences – a blend of sturdy sans types and classical forms implying a heritage and weightiness that felt right for the brand. (See above)

Stage 2 – Initial Ideas – sketchbooks, blackboards & beziers…

We begin to draw, craft and experiment with letters in our sketchbooks and on-screen…

The freeness of the sketchbook, can really aid the discovery for new ideas. More often than not, the confines of the computer and mouse can act as a straight jacket. We like to mix the process up, sometimes all sketch book, sometimes all on-screen, sometimes both in varying amounts.

Stage 3 – Developing and exploring a theme…

Our initial client presentation will include mood-boards, sketches and vector based ideas. This variety of ideas helps to define what aspects of the brief are important to the client and in-turn form a clearer direction for the project. Wh we have clarity, the next phase involves digging deeper. We begin to look at introducing subtle features into the letters and evolving alternative characters for the concept in order to work out which letterforms best suit the design in both it’s uniqueness and functionality. We use a standard font test word – ‘hamburgefontsiv’ to get a good overall picture for all shapes and the DNA within the alphabet. We also often accompany this test word with project specific words, sometimes juxtaposed with project colours and photography.

Here are three ideas that explore the realm of the Slab Serif. The top option is rounded, the middle is squarer and the bottom has more contrast and a slightly condensed proportion.

We also just play with individual characters to find the right energy. This collection shows a selection of experiments from our work on the Channel 4 typeface.

Stage 4 – Fontlab Refinenents – glyphs, spacing, kerning and coding…

We then push on and create a “Beta” test font for design agencies to start dropping into their design work.

We begin by crafting a more comprehensive character set within Fontlab. We refine the relationships between letters and we letter space each glyph to achieve a harmonious balance and grey tonal colour in text.

We then move onto kerning. The above image show kerning pairs for the Sheffield City typeface.

Engineering the functionality of the new typeface.

We print out large versions of characters and stick them to the studio walls to check over the curves.

We explore the possibility of complimentary weights and styles. For instance we can develop a re-weighted and simplified text font from a headline font like the tests above. Bespoke typeface design creates a very strong and unique synergy throughout a brand. It communicates through a plethora of varying situations and mediums, using different words to subtly convey a consistent tone. Branded type is a subtle and powerful device.

Stage 5 – Project launch…

The big launch and inevitable blog critique… always an exciting yet nervy time for all concerned ;) Here are a few of the bespoke projects that I have been involved in over the past few years…

The team – See above.
From Left to Right – Jason Smith, Me (Phil Garnham) , Emanuella Conidi, Helen Buckhurst and Fernando Mello.

Name: Emanuela Conidi
Time at Fontsmith: 3 Years
Role in the studio: Type Designer

Did you always want to design type and how did you get started?
Well, I was baptised by a typographer. Seriously. My godfather was the owner of the only typographic office in my small town in southern Italy which I like to think wasn’t a coincidence! Afterwards, I grew up happily unaware of type, and of the fact that there was such a career as typeface designer. I had a fascination for letters since an early age and when I was in high school I did spend a lot of time drawing letters on my school desk or on my friends school diaries. I would choose quotes from Latin authors, troubled musicians, philosophers or poets, in the way that teens do, and I would draw a piece. I was basically doing (bad) lettering, without knowing it. I found it relaxing, creative and expressive. Following these instincts I choose to study Graphic Design at the Politecnico in Milan. I got the bug for typography after meeting James Clough and Lucio Passerini in an evening course at the CFP Riccardo Bauer in Milan, where I also experienced metal type hand composition, bookbinding and letterpress printing. Their passion and absolute dedication to typography has been such an inspiration that I changed the subject for my final dissertation, embarking in a year long research on nineteenth-century Italian typefaces, typographers and founders (together with my former colleague and good friend Marta Bernstein). When I graduated in 2006 I was already a partner in a graphic design studio in Milan with four former University mates but with time I grew to understand that my real inclination was towards type itself. The year after I decided to move to Reading to attend the MA in Typeface Design, a choice that changed my career path. It was an amazing and challenging year spent discovering new passions and learning about types with great teachers. At the end of the course I moved to London, started working at Fontsmith and it’s been nearly 3 happy years since.

Which commercially available fonts from Fontsmith have you worked on?
Completing and expanding the established Fontsmith library fonts was one of my first jobs at Fontsmith. I started with Rufus, then Dillon and some small work for Albert Pro. I have also worked with the team on many custom fonts like Champions League, Lurpak, Zain, Telefonica and Movistar. My first solo font for the library is FS Blake. I decided to test myself, I wanted to explore a high contrast sans family. It was a very personal project, tricky but fun, and I think it fits quite well into the variety of what the Fontsmith library offers.

What are you working on right now?
Lately I have been involved in custom projects by working on Greek and Cyrillic character set extensions for some of our existing library fonts. My non-Latin script love lies in the Arabic script, but I do enjoy exploring other forms.

What is your greatest (type design) achievement to date and why?
I think you can never forget your first typeface. Mine was a font titled Nabil which was designed during the MA Type design course in Reading. It was a double achievement for me, because I did include an Arabic counterpart, which was as much challenging as rewarding. Nabil also represents the start of my career as a type designer, it won type design prizes in Europe and Japan, a highlight being the trip to celebrate the TDC Tokyo Award in 2009. FS Blake also holds a special place as it was my first published font. It represents the translation of my type views on a sans family. With this project I also experienced a new approach in the design, drawing the extremes first (display and text), which was very inspirational. This allowed me to play with weights at an early stage, in order to see how the whole thing could work as a family.

Can you give us an overview of the process you would usually take when creating a new typeface?
In the studio, I get to be involved in both custom and self-initiated projects. The practical process for the two can be very similar, it’s just the brief comes from someone else rather than yourself. This can be helpful or tricky. As a first step, it is important to isolate an idea to shape into curves, a problem to solve, a goal to achieve, an inspiration to explore and so on. We search and ask questions that will find solutions within the design. This will help not only the identity of the design, but also the creation process itself, making it more focused. Good visual research is also useful to set the tone of what best fits the project’s needs. When the sketching time comes, I like to draw random letters, playing with weight, proportions, details and shapes. As much as I love sketching, drawing on screen is the real test of an idea, as details on paper do not always have the same effect when digitised and vice-versa. Unfortunately, it is quite pointless to have a beautiful letter if it doesn’t fit with the rest of the design. It can be hard to give up a pretty looking shape. When I start digitising, I usually begin with the lowercase “n” and “o”.  The main decisions about the design are then taken working with a word (usually “hamburgefonstiv”), which contains a good mixture of letter shapes. Using a few other testing words is also useful in order to have an immediate feel of the design’s direction. The character set extension and the production side is a bit tedious, especially when you are working with big families, but it represents the closure of the design circle. Spacing and kerning are like refining a drawing, and it is really satisfying at the end to see everything coming together, and working nicely.

What is your favourite part of that process?
The beginning of designing a typeface is always very exciting, because you get to experiment without the idea of what the final product will look like. I love diving into images and books, mostly old material (but keeping an eye on what’s new around it is important as well). It’s like setting my ming in black and white shapes, I find it very helpful. And obviously the sketching stage is very important. Drawing a shape is a way to visualise a thought, narrow down ideas, and define what could potentially work.

Do you find yourself drawing inspiration from any particular era, culture or movement, and how does that impact on your work?
As generic as this could sound, I am a lover of beautiful, well thought and well executed stuff. That is why I like to pick my inspiration from different eras and movements – it depends what kind of project I am working on. I highly appreciate the pre-digital lettering works and experimentation on type, logos and graphics, when the slower execution imposed by the means was certainly beneficial to a more considerate thinking in the first place. Talking strictly about type, I do have a soft spot for the nineteenth century. This period is generally considered to be a backwards step in the evolution of type design, as a period devoid of good taste and full of typographic excesses, between the classic era of the eighteenth century and the new typography of the twentieth century. I just love it as a time of great spur to explore all routes of creativity with surprising, beautiful, funny, sometimes unconceivable or just ugly results. Talking about the history of typography, I cannot avoid to mention the Italian Rinascimento and the calligraphy masters of the time: Arrighi, Tagliente, Palatino, Cresci and Griffo. I always love to look at their beautiful work, even if it hardly finds space in my everyday work.

Outside of Fontsmith whose work and faces do you most admire?
I think when a type is good, its voice speaks louder without trying too hard. I have a long list of types I like for different reasons, probably because I have used many of them as graphic designer. So I will mention just few that have stuck with me because they relate to a special project or a place: Spectrum by Jan van Krimpen, Sabon by Jan Tschichold, Dante by Giovanni Mardersteig, Johanna by Eric Gill, Galliard by Mathhew Carter, Scala by Martin Majoor, Fedra by Peter Bil’ak, The Sans by Lucas de Groot, Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko, Swift by Gerard Unger. I have a great appreciation for the playful yet functional designs of Underware and Alejandro Paul. Moving to Arabic fonts, I cannot avoid to mention Tim Holloway, whose work I look up to and admire. And last but not least, Thomas Milo and Mirjam Somers, whose tireless and dedicated work with Deco Type has represented and still is an invaluable contribution to the Arabic script knowledge, design and technology.

Where is the coolest place you’ve seen your work applied?
So far, it has to be the Champions League font. It was my first main project when I started at Fontsmith, and it represented such a present for me, since I am a huge football fan and a supporter of AC Milan. As soon as I could talk about it I told all my friends. My dad was obviously impressed, even if I can’t say for sure that he actually noticed the font during matches. I remember feeling really proud of it, and slightly moved when I first saw it used on TV during a match of my favorite team.

If you weren’t a type designer what would you be?
That’s a seriously hard question! I could write a few options if I think about it for more than five minutes. So I will go for the two that are on top of the ranking, which both have to do with enjoying beautiful things. I would either make them, as an accomplished Arabic master calligrapher like Mir ‘Imad al-Hasani, Hashim al-Khattat and Hasan Celebi, or I would travel around the world to discover them, ideally as Sir David Attenborough right-hand (wo)man.

Thank you Manuela for taking time out of your extremely busy schedule. Best of luck with all your future creations and enjoy those Arabic curves.

Fontsmith is a leading London based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients.

http://www.fontsmith.com/

For the last few weeks I have had the privilege to work (play) with FS Clerkenwell by Fontsmith. The description given by fontsmith is

Clerkenwell is an inspired design, based on influences in and around the lively area of London. FS Clerkenwell is quirky and useful for dramatic headlines, logos, and in large sizes.

I have to agree with them, but I also think it’s so much more. As I was tinkering around with layouts and manipulating the font I came up with the idea of using it to create a wayfinding system and, since Farringdon Station is the only one in Clerkenwell, it was the obvious choice. Whilst test printing points of interest and pinning them to my wall I had noticed that the letters are highly legible for a serif font. This is a great font to use large or small and directing information towards people.

Next was seeing how it might work in a modern context, so I went to my catalogue of music (what better way than creating a reproduction of a classic album?) I chose The House Of Love (Butterfly album). I found it worked very well; the shapes of the letters and consistency of the angles are quite perfect (maybe too perfect).

As you can see I had a wonderful time playing with it and hope you can appreciate such a well thought-out serif font as I did.

I would like to thank Phil Garnham and Fontsmith for giving us the opportunity to feature FS Clerkenwell.

You can purchase FS Clerkenwell  at Fontsmith.

You can purchase the web version of FS Clerkenwell at Fontdeck.

typetoken® site is featuring FS Clerkenwell.

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Credits:
The House Of Love front cover by Trevor Key
3D Rendering of Farringdon Station by Weston Williamson

Name: Fernando Mello
Time at Fontsmith: 3 years
Role in the studio: Senior type designer

Did you always want to design type and how did you get started?
I have a mixed creative background which travels through illustration, architecture and graphic design. During my childhood I was always into drawing, colouring and reading every kind of comic book, and when a teenager I was myself for years creating characters and graphic novels. When university time came, I tried architecture, for being related to drawing and apparently offering a more promising future. Although becoming an architect years later, I never really liked to design buildings and structures, it was boring, impersonal, not very creative to me, although I enjoy the history of architecture and looking at nice buildings or interiors. The good thing about it was that in this university I had my first contacts with typography as we had some graphic design assignments for the architecture course. I was very lucky to work later on with my former university teacher Vicente Gil, top-notch brazilian graphic designer and great type appreciator, and I can blame him and his peerless work for putting me on the road of learning type properly. In 2006 I decided to come to the UK to study on the MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, a course that changed my life and taught me a lot about type. After that, I moved to London and met Jason and Phil. The connection to their work and way of being was natural.

Which commercially available fonts from Fontsmith have you worked on?
My first job in Fontsmith was to create together with Jason a legible, unconventional but corporate font for a new video-on-demand service, which became the typeface FS Joey. I also developed together with Jason FS Jack, another corporate font which Jason had been designing for years in his spare time. Both of us are Gill-Kayo fans, I remember we had good fun designing the exaggerated poster weight. Moreover, I did some small work on new weights for FS Me, FS Albert Pro and FS Rufus, and worked on many custom fonts for clients such as Lurpak and Sky News. For the last two years I’ve been developing FS Pimlico in between jobs on my own, a special project where the guys gave me total freedom and support to experiment with my own ideas.

What are you working on right now?
I’m involved in a few custom font jobs and I’ve also been working on some Cyrillic and Greek extensions for some of our library fonts. I had contact with both of these scripts while studying in Reading, but now it is being the first time I have to work with them in a professional project, which is very exciting. I am passionate about type in general so studying different scripts and designing non-Latin typefaces is something that also interests me.

What is your greatest (type design) achievement to date and why?
I tend to think all of the fonts I have created have their specialty and significance to me. It is impossible not to mention the joint Latin-Tamil work I created in Reading, which has kickstarted my type career through recognition prizes in Latin America, Europe and Japan. FS Pimlico was also a very special moment to me because I could put a lot of energy in developing something highly personal, well-humoured, very related to the way I live my life but which also translates my concerns for a typeface to be very usable. It was an experience that will always be in that font and I will hardly forget (that is one of the nice things about fonts, we die, they live forever!). The process of designing FS Joey was also something which I consider very important, since it was the first time I was involved in a real, difficult brief of designing a very unique corporate typeface for a client.

Can you give us an overview of the process you would usually take when creating a new typeface?
Usually I start by analysing the brief thoroughly and then doing some visual research for references. The next step is to sketch ideas by hand. I quickly draw a few letters experimenting with basic features, but that is normally done very roughly, nothing very elaborate like old school type designers would do. After that point the experimentation continues through designing a few key glyphs in Fontlab (well, sometimes Illustrator), a stage where I can get much more precision through the Bezier tool. Then it takes some time, weeks or even months, for the design of basic letters to get consolidated, and it is after this stage that I start to extend the character set and create punctuation, diacritics, etc. A final stage comprises refining spacing, kerning, curves and shapes in general, and then testing the font in many different ways.

What is your favourite part of that process?
I think obviously the creative part is one of the best, when you start experimenting and ideas start to get materialised. But in my opinion, the very best part it is the final stage when you are refining the design, doing tests and putting it to work nicely. Reviewing and retouching the letters several times, seeing them working together again and again at the final stage, and imagining what people will think of them or how they will use them at the moment the font goes out to the world, is something very joyful and hard to describe.

Do you find yourself drawing inspiration from any particular era, culture or movement, and how does that impact on your work?
As it happens with music, I try to face graphic design placing it in a historical timeline and analyze it as a whole. I can love Müller-Brockmann grid-based solutions in the same manner I can love Victor Moscoso’s album covers. Although there are lots of things that interest me and lots that don’t, I try to be at least aware of everything which is happening culturally in the contemporary world–and that can be applied to design, music or technology. But I must confess that I was raised in the early 80s disco/synthpop era, and maybe because of that, I became a dedicated collector of old funk & disco vinyls, retro toys, books, dry-transfer sheets, Letraset catalogues, analogue synthesizers, early drum machines and sequencers, and anything else which may suggest a link to the 70s/80s. It may well be a personal preference but I just think those times were very important and full of breakthroughs, for both graphic design and music. This personal nostalgia thing obviously had a huge impact on FS Pimlico, but the typeface’s main idea is to bring back some kind of feeling related to the experimentation with type which guys like Lubalin, Carnase and Di Spigna were doing with fonts and logotypes in New York during the 70s. I believe during those days, when phototypesetting and early digital systems had started to make things a bit easier, designers in a way had some sudden kind of broader or less restrictive conceptual freedom if compared to contemporary designers confined to Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop environments and easy-to-use commands, and that’s what interests me. That was my inspiration for FS Pimlico, which is a very personal project. However, I also wanted to make it a very usable and versatile family, so I tried to put some kind of overall contemporary feel to it, since I personally think there is not much point of creating something vintage or retro just for the sake of nostalgia. Type design must be tied to a brief, to a purpose, this is what dictates how the font will or should look like, so I believe it is a good thing for a type designer to be flexible and open-minded, and not to be always tied to a certain style.

Outside of Fontsmith whose work and faces do you most admire?
I am a great appreciator of fonts which work well but have something unique, weird, ownable. Like Eric Gill said, “letters are things, not pictures of things”, and we type designers deal with well established standard shapes when creating letters, in the same manner illustrators deal with standard forms and features for things they draw, like let’s say, an elephant or a tree. The thing about type is that we have to design a bunch of standard shapes in a way that they work together, but if that was the only thing to be achieved, we wouldn’t need more fonts in the world. Like we need new shoes, new cars, new shirts, I believe that yes, we will always need new and fresh fonts, that kind of necessity is the human reason for design to exist. To me the most interesting fonts play with these standard shapes in their very own, intelligent way, it doesn’t matter if they are display or text fonts. I am a big fan of Martin Majoor’s Scala Serif, Chauncey Griffith’s Bell Gothic and W.A. Dwiggins Electra, they are all full of ‘weird’, very personal and uncommon details, but do their job in an impressive and efficient way. Going back in time, I greatly admire the work of Nicholas Jenson and Claude Garamond, I think the roman typeface Jenson created in the 1400s will always be the great standard, the most perfect or default model for how each of our Latin letters look like in essence. Oh, yes, and I cannot avoid to mention I love Cooper Black. Speaking of more contemporary stuff, there are too many nice fonts, but if I would have to pick five, I would choose Ratio by Mark Caneso, Klavika by Eric Olson, Caput by Natascha Dell & Kai Oetzbach, Motet by Sarah Solskolne and Maiola by Veronika Burian – these are five original and beautiful fonts that I admire every time I look at them.

Where is the coolest place you’ve seen your work applied?
I really enjoy the fonts we designed for the running ticker strip for the Sky News HD TV channel. They were created to substitute Helvetica Bold in that context. The design took into consideration the fact that the letters had to work well in caps text setting and that the text would be moving on-screen. Everything was designed taking that into account, including the spacing of the letters, and this was something interesting to experiment with. The typeface results are quite simple, legible, it has more open terminals and more generous counters than Helvetica Bold, and that makes it fresh and easier to read on TV screens.

If you weren’t a type designer what would you be?
I wish I could be a synthesizer genius such as Herbie Hancock. Or maybe, a great controversial comic book illustrator like Robert Crumb!

Thanks to Fernando for taking the time to talk with us. FS Pimlico is available to view / buy from here

Fontsmith is a leading London based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients.

http://www.fontsmith.com/

Here is the first in a series of 4 exclusive interviews with the über-talented Fontsmith team. We start with bass wielding, graphic loving, print obsessive Type Design Director Phil Garnham.

Name: Phil Garnham
Time at Fontsmith: 8 Years
Role in the studio: Type Design Director

Did you always want to design type and how did you get started?
I really liked the idea, but I never actually believed that I could make it my full-time career. As a kid, I used to spend a lot of time with crayon’s, copying other peoples drawings and letters. I clearly remember my first lettering book that showed me how to draw proper bubble lettering and go-faster stripes. It wasn’t until many moons later, at Middlesex University, under the guidance of Andy Gossett (ex-Total Design, now Studio Gossett), that I got an opportunity to get stuck in properly by designing two very simple alphabets. When I left university, I knew that I had very strong opinions about type, I found that type was something I could intricately handle and it’s tone, texture and placement really mattered to me. In 2002, I met Jason Smith by chance whilst I was working my portfolio on the internship circuit and we got along right from the off. I think he was intrigued by my peculiar ‘graphic design’ thinking approach to type and I wanted to learn more about his ‘crafted lettering’ approach. Jason set about teaching me how to draw letterforms on-screen, how to craft their relationships, how to space, kern, critique and sculpt typographic form into a visual voice. I became more confident in my new skills and so I began exploring typographic form with real conviction.

Which commercially available fonts from Fontsmith have you worked on?
My first commercial typeface was FS Clerkenwell which was a real push and pull creation between myself and Jason. With my initial ideas, it soon became clear that is was Jason’s job to pull me back into realms of legibility. I’ve never had any difficulty in injecting personality into type, but in the early years I found it hard to retain focus and that practical continuity required in a type’s design.

My first 100%, solo effort was FS Lola. At the time I wanted to create something that was beautifully crafted, something that had a fast-paced energy and rhythm but retained a graphic impact. I would like to think that it has turned into something of an understated modern classic. It is used so widely, but it’s not overtly obvious or imposing, Lola’s character changes so much depending on how he or she is applied.

In 2006-ish I put together a series of headline fonts in the form of FS Alvar, FS Kitty, FS Pele, FS Sinclair and then I jumped back into the world of formal serif type design with the FS Sally typeface. I think as a typeface Sally has so much to offer, it is quite underestimated and beautiful.

At Fontsmith, we have a very good team spirit, each of us sees things a little bit differently and that’s a great thing for us in terms of developing our work and injecting just that little bit more into each project. Our process can be quite collaborative, we all worked on our FS Rufus typeface at one time or other, I designed the curly ligatures. I also developed additional weights of FS Joey and FS Me, and helped to turn FS Albert into FS Albert ‘Pro’ with it’s Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.

What are your working on right now?
A typeface for the discerning millennial modernist. Top secret.

What is your greatest (type design) achievement to date and why?
Designing FS Conrad was a big thing for me. We were approached by the artist, Conrad Shawcross to investigate how a typeface could take on the aesthetic of an artwork. Conrad was in the process of creating a giant mechanical installation entitled ‘Chord’ and he wanted us to help bring a typographic continuity and visual harmony between the artwork and it’s promo material. I created a fine linear and modular alphabet which overlaps and entwines in the same nature as his sculpture. Despite it’s appearance FS Conrad is not a strictly rigid typeface. It has varying character widths, it is informed by real typographic proportions. It certainly isn‘t the most versatile of alphabets, you can only really use it at super large sizes and its character is very imposing, but that’s why I love it so much.

Can you give us an overview of the process you would usually take when creating a new typeface?
I initially set about understanding the intentions, the context and the mood. I like to make notes and spend a few days scribbling in my sketchbook before working on screen. It’s more instant and decisions can be made much more swiftly. I sketch a few of my thoughts on-screen, I draw in colour, or on-top of images. I design the personality by using short test words with a variety of formal character. When I get to a happy place, I push things onto Fontlab and start thinking more seriously about craft, balance, spacing and letter-relationships. The whole process is documented, we show each other where things are going and all offer our ideas and thoughts along the way.

What is your favourite part of that process?
The inner conversation. I literally just talk things through with myself whilst I’m drawing. I talk about the shapes and whether they fit the objective. Designing type for type’s sake is a pointless exercise, there should always be a brief, something to bounce your idea off. This constant private discussion helps me to push, pull, chop, slice and scribble. It helps to mould the visual tone of what’s before my eyes.

Do you find yourself drawing inspiration from any particular era, culture or movement, and how does that impact on your work?
I am influenced by graphic and visual fashions. I simply think that it’s impossible to not be. I like what I like but I’m also a very firm believer that the brief is everything. When we design new typefaces for our library, we discuss our ideas and put together an objective. We don’t create type for the sake of more type, we want to offer something new, unique and with focus. I do think that design movements and visual styles are important for us in the sense that they are visual markers that we can pitch our ideas in and around but I don’t think that I’m a subscriber to just one specific way of thinking. I would like to  think that the broad variety of my work and ours as a foundry is testament to that.

Outside of Fontsmith whose work and faces do you most admire?
In terms of typography, nobody can touch Emil Ruder, Wolfgang Weingart and Wim Crouwel. Their design philosophy – simple, direct and inventive, like graphic scientists. Type foundries that I admirer are Jean François Porchez / Jeremy Tankard /  Fred Smeijers. Their types are carefully balanced with beauty, craft, function and flamboyant creativity. Those guys know how to deliver exciting ideas without sacrificing purpose.

Where is the coolest place you’ve seen your work applied?
It’s very difficult to say what the ‘coolest’ place or execution is. Peter&Paul have done some superb work for Jefferson Sheard Architects using FS Pele, and Vince Frost have done great things, again with FS Pele, for D&AD’s Ampersand booklet.I’m a huge print fan but seeing our television brand typefaces daily is pretty special. Our types are talking to millions of people in the UK everyday… now that’s pretty cool.

If you weren’t a type designer what would you be?
Bass Guitarist. Peter Hook style.

Thank you Phil for getting involved and we look forward to seeing your upcoming fonts as they are released. Seriously top bloke on all accounts.

Fontsmith is a leading London based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients.

If you want to follow Phil on Twitter you can find him here

http://www.fontsmith.com/