1 00:00:13,360 --> 00:00:15,450 New York is a wonderful place to walk around 2 00:00:15,530 --> 00:00:18,450 and see how letters exist in the environment. 3 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:21,410 I think, as a typeface designer, 4 00:00:21,500 --> 00:00:23,790 you can't help but look at the typography of everything. 5 00:00:25,920 --> 00:00:28,540 One of the really fun things about typeface design 6 00:00:28,630 --> 00:00:30,760 is nothing is out of bounds. 7 00:00:31,260 --> 00:00:33,800 You can love rare manuscripts. 8 00:00:34,220 --> 00:00:39,100 You can love graffiti. You can love logos done by Madison Avenue design agencies. 9 00:00:40,140 --> 00:00:43,680 Everything you've ever read has been shaped by hand. 10 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:47,940 It's a profound thought that every single letter you consume, 11 00:00:48,020 --> 00:00:50,650 that there is somewhere a person, or a team of people, 12 00:00:50,730 --> 00:00:51,980 who have drawn this thing 13 00:00:52,070 --> 00:00:54,200 and released it into the world. 14 00:00:55,070 --> 00:00:57,320 We reach a point where everybody has a favorite typeface. 15 00:00:57,410 --> 00:01:01,080 The fact that you can choose the font on your phone or your computer 16 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:04,210 has really sensitized everyone to what typography can do. 17 00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:08,460 We're making raw materials that are open to interpretation. 18 00:01:08,540 --> 00:01:11,800 That's really what it is that moves visual culture forward. 19 00:01:28,230 --> 00:01:30,310 Jonathan was this wunderkind. 20 00:01:30,400 --> 00:01:33,280 You know, he had such an amazing way of thinking about type. 21 00:01:34,030 --> 00:01:36,450 He started young and almost instantly became 22 00:01:36,530 --> 00:01:38,910 one of the most influential designers of our time. 23 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:43,370 It's rare when you meet someone with such relentless desire for perfection. 24 00:01:43,450 --> 00:01:46,410 He has a complete awareness of time and place. 25 00:01:47,580 --> 00:01:50,170 Jonathan's right up there with the best of the best. 26 00:01:50,250 --> 00:01:52,000 He is the best of the best. 27 00:01:57,800 --> 00:01:59,220 Typography is a dialogue 28 00:01:59,300 --> 00:02:01,890 between typeface designers who create alphabets 29 00:02:01,970 --> 00:02:03,890 and graphic designers who use them. 30 00:02:03,970 --> 00:02:05,470 And it's a two-way street. 31 00:02:05,930 --> 00:02:09,520 The Public Theater behind us has an identity designed by Paula Scher, 32 00:02:09,690 --> 00:02:11,360 who was in season one of Abstract. 33 00:02:11,440 --> 00:02:14,530 I grew up at a time when Paula's work was everywhere. 34 00:02:14,610 --> 00:02:17,110 And I grew up, therefore, with a sense that wood type 35 00:02:17,190 --> 00:02:19,110 was part of the fabric of typography. 36 00:02:19,610 --> 00:02:21,700 In the early '90s, I began 37 00:02:21,820 --> 00:02:24,410 creating a typeface family of my own called Knockout. 38 00:02:24,580 --> 00:02:27,580 It's meant to be inspired by these kinds of wood types. 39 00:02:27,910 --> 00:02:29,920 So, it was really kind of a delight that 40 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:32,460 Paula, when she designed the identity for the Public Theater, 41 00:02:32,540 --> 00:02:34,170 used Knockout for the design. 42 00:02:34,420 --> 00:02:37,260 So, it's really this sort of wonderful synergy of... 43 00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:39,800 being inspired by graphic designers, 44 00:02:40,130 --> 00:02:42,510 creating typefaces that get used by graphic designers, 45 00:02:42,890 --> 00:02:45,140 and seeing the way they do things that are unexpected. 46 00:02:46,100 --> 00:02:48,020 Typefaces are a raw material. 47 00:02:48,230 --> 00:02:50,480 To be a typeface designer is like 48 00:02:50,560 --> 00:02:53,060 being the designer of a color of paint. 49 00:02:53,400 --> 00:02:55,940 We're not painting houses, we're not decorating houses, 50 00:02:56,030 --> 00:02:57,400 we're supplying the color. 51 00:02:59,950 --> 00:03:01,660 ♪ These are letters ♪ 52 00:03:05,580 --> 00:03:07,370 Typeface design is sleight of hand. 53 00:03:07,620 --> 00:03:11,500 Even a simple goal, like make all the letters the same size, isn't easy. 54 00:03:11,750 --> 00:03:14,500 To make the letters C and T appear the same height, 55 00:03:14,590 --> 00:03:17,380 the C has to be drawn so that it's actually taller. 56 00:03:17,760 --> 00:03:19,300 Round letters exceed flat ones 57 00:03:19,380 --> 00:03:21,970 by an amount the type designer has called overshoot. 58 00:03:25,180 --> 00:03:27,140 Another goal of typeface design is balance. 59 00:03:27,640 --> 00:03:31,060 To make a letter like B feel as if its top and bottom halves match, 60 00:03:31,140 --> 00:03:32,810 they often need to be drawn differently. 61 00:03:33,440 --> 00:03:36,730 Turn it over, and you'll see that it's actually smaller above than below. 62 00:03:38,690 --> 00:03:42,150 The humble letter T conceals one of the alphabet's great paradoxes. 63 00:03:42,450 --> 00:03:45,370 To make vertical and horizontal strokes look equally thick, 64 00:03:45,530 --> 00:03:48,620 the verticals are drawn much thicker than the horizontals. 65 00:03:48,700 --> 00:03:52,460 This is called anisotropic contrast, and it affects all the letters, 66 00:03:52,540 --> 00:03:55,170 none more so than the diabolical letter S. 67 00:03:55,670 --> 00:03:59,000 An S that's balanced and centered looks bizarre when turned around. 68 00:03:59,090 --> 00:04:01,170 It's thinner at the top and bottom, 69 00:04:01,470 --> 00:04:04,010 thicker in the middle, and it leans slightly backwards. 70 00:04:16,110 --> 00:04:19,650 Typeface design is a slow process. It can take decades, sometimes. 71 00:04:19,730 --> 00:04:23,030 There is no obvious route from beginning to end, 72 00:04:23,110 --> 00:04:25,820 and there's no guarantee of getting to the end, either. 73 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:28,780 About ten years ago, 74 00:04:28,950 --> 00:04:31,500 I had an idea that I'd buy a wristwatch. 75 00:04:32,290 --> 00:04:34,620 As I began really looking critically at watches, 76 00:04:34,710 --> 00:04:37,960 I noticed that a watch that's 40 years old or older 77 00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:41,210 has a characteristic kind of lettering on it 78 00:04:41,510 --> 00:04:43,050 that's really quite beautiful. 79 00:04:44,010 --> 00:04:47,970 I was thinking that there might be something in this whole milieu 80 00:04:48,050 --> 00:04:50,310 that could inspire a family of typefaces. 81 00:04:51,560 --> 00:04:53,310 This thing is great. This is like a... 82 00:04:53,730 --> 00:04:56,940 heavy metal sans-serif with these sort of hexagonal, 83 00:04:57,020 --> 00:04:59,860 bone-shaped figures that are just fantastic. 84 00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:02,916 But I really love these kinds of things that are so much simpler. 85 00:05:02,940 --> 00:05:06,240 I mean, this is a very boxy, almost octagonal 86 00:05:06,490 --> 00:05:08,570 form of lettering and numbering. 87 00:05:08,660 --> 00:05:10,256 And you see the same kind of thing here, 88 00:05:10,280 --> 00:05:12,490 but a little more sophistication in this one. 89 00:05:13,910 --> 00:05:16,120 Michael Bierut once described what I do. 90 00:05:16,330 --> 00:05:20,130 He compared it to the archaeologist who finds a bone, 91 00:05:20,290 --> 00:05:22,590 and from the bone, like, creates the entire dinosaur. 92 00:05:23,090 --> 00:05:25,760 A lot of what I do is finding those bones 93 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:28,970 and trying to imagine what kind of creature they came from. 94 00:05:37,980 --> 00:05:40,940 Type design is different now than when I started doing this. 95 00:05:41,270 --> 00:05:42,940 To be a type designer was to be a freak. 96 00:05:44,230 --> 00:05:47,780 I always dreaded the conversation on an airline 97 00:05:47,860 --> 00:05:50,060 with my seat mate saying, "What do you do for a living?" 98 00:05:50,280 --> 00:05:52,200 People would think I designed the magazine itself 99 00:05:52,280 --> 00:05:55,160 or I wrote the magazine, or I, you know, made the ads or something. 100 00:05:55,250 --> 00:05:58,396 And I'd say, "No, I design the alphabet being used for the text you're reading." 101 00:05:58,420 --> 00:06:00,790 And it was the incredulity of like, "What do you mean? 102 00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:03,590 That's like designing oxygen. No... No one designs that." 103 00:06:05,170 --> 00:06:07,420 That gave way to a period of greater understanding, 104 00:06:07,510 --> 00:06:10,010 as digital tools made fonts 105 00:06:10,090 --> 00:06:11,930 something palpable to people. 106 00:06:12,010 --> 00:06:15,390 Grade schoolers choose a font to write a term paper in. You can't not choose. 107 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:19,770 But now we've entered this third phase where people have favorite fonts. 108 00:06:19,850 --> 00:06:22,131 Now when I'm asked what I do, I say, "I design typefaces," 109 00:06:22,190 --> 00:06:23,650 and people say, "I love typefaces! 110 00:06:23,730 --> 00:06:25,820 Do you guys know the guy that made Papyrus?" 111 00:06:25,900 --> 00:06:26,900 Or whatever it is. 112 00:06:28,860 --> 00:06:31,870 It's funny going through life as somebody who is attentive to type. 113 00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:39,080 There was this fantastic Saturday Night Live sketch 114 00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:41,750 in which Ryan Gosling is driven crazy by this ubiquitous typeface. 115 00:06:42,130 --> 00:06:43,750 And what's so hilarious about it is 116 00:06:43,840 --> 00:06:46,840 typeface designers who quietly suffered with this all these years, 117 00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:49,201 and to find that actual other people do as well is this... 118 00:06:49,630 --> 00:06:52,550 kind of hilarious and great moment of kinship with the world. 119 00:06:52,640 --> 00:06:54,510 Do you remember the Avatar logo? 120 00:06:54,890 --> 00:06:58,430 I... Yeah. It was tribal yet futuristic. 121 00:06:58,520 --> 00:06:59,890 Papyrus! 122 00:07:02,350 --> 00:07:03,190 Good morning. 123 00:07:03,270 --> 00:07:06,780 Hoefler and Company is a 16-person studio. 124 00:07:07,030 --> 00:07:10,400 We are best known to the world through our website, 125 00:07:10,490 --> 00:07:11,860 typography.com. 126 00:07:11,950 --> 00:07:14,700 That is really the repository for all the things we do here. 127 00:07:15,080 --> 00:07:17,740 We have more than 1,500 styles. 128 00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:21,560 We may have the goal of releasing three typefaces this year, 129 00:07:21,620 --> 00:07:24,040 but we're probably working on nine or ten right now. 130 00:07:24,130 --> 00:07:25,130 Good morning. 131 00:07:40,850 --> 00:07:43,850 One of the hardest things about a typeface is finding a name for it. 132 00:07:43,940 --> 00:07:45,310 We've settled on Decimal. 133 00:07:45,650 --> 00:07:48,360 Decimal watches are watches that the number of seconds 134 00:07:48,440 --> 00:07:51,150 is divided not into 60, but into one-hundredths. 135 00:07:51,240 --> 00:07:54,320 The 12-hour, 60-minute, 60-seconds system, 136 00:07:54,410 --> 00:07:56,280 and the scientific system of base ten. 137 00:07:56,950 --> 00:07:58,750 Something about this is very intriguing to me, 138 00:07:58,790 --> 00:08:01,620 these ideas of two different systems crashing together. 139 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:03,870 So, I think Decimal's it. 140 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:08,380 Oh, there's a V. 141 00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:12,420 And this is interesting. It's got the E with a crossbar that's dead center. 142 00:08:12,510 --> 00:08:14,130 Then on the same watch, 143 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:16,850 it's got an E that is above center. 144 00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:18,970 Pi symbol... 145 00:08:19,430 --> 00:08:21,180 I've never seen on a watch before. 146 00:08:23,310 --> 00:08:27,110 There's a great kind of signature moment in almost every old watch dial 147 00:08:27,190 --> 00:08:28,610 in the design of the number four. 148 00:08:28,690 --> 00:08:30,860 It's got that wonderful flat top to it. 149 00:08:31,690 --> 00:08:35,240 This is a detail not seen in, really, any typeface I can think of. 150 00:08:36,780 --> 00:08:38,160 Here's another watch. 151 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:40,370 A different manufacturer, different period, 152 00:08:40,870 --> 00:08:42,160 but that same detail. 153 00:08:43,330 --> 00:08:48,000 I started wondering why this one character has been kind of fetishized in this way. 154 00:08:48,540 --> 00:08:52,050 The best I can guess is that in working at small sizes, 155 00:08:52,170 --> 00:08:56,050 a designer does everything to get as much air into a character as possible. 156 00:08:57,430 --> 00:08:59,850 So, maybe this can be the theme of the typeface, 157 00:08:59,930 --> 00:09:01,640 these opened up, squared areas. 158 00:09:02,390 --> 00:09:05,770 I'll probably not find an entire alphabet, but it's far deeper than that. 159 00:09:05,850 --> 00:09:08,360 It is what the punctuation looks like, 160 00:09:08,440 --> 00:09:11,480 what the lowercase might look like, what an italic might look like. 161 00:09:11,570 --> 00:09:13,110 I've never seen italics in watches. 162 00:09:13,530 --> 00:09:15,490 Can you abstract from this a larger theme 163 00:09:15,570 --> 00:09:17,820 about what a whole typeface might look like? 164 00:09:18,490 --> 00:09:19,490 It's a gamble. 165 00:09:20,030 --> 00:09:22,290 This is my first time looking at watchmakers' letters 166 00:09:22,370 --> 00:09:25,870 and it's kind of a scary empty canvas when it begins 167 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:28,750 without really any assurance that it's going to work. 168 00:09:34,210 --> 00:09:36,380 Humor is such a great way into design. 169 00:09:36,470 --> 00:09:38,470 You know the fold-in, right? In the back cover. 170 00:09:38,550 --> 00:09:40,180 - You've seen how this works? - Yes. 171 00:09:40,260 --> 00:09:44,180 The question is, "What remarkable trick did you learn from this magazine?" 172 00:09:48,600 --> 00:09:49,940 The remarkable trick is... 173 00:09:50,610 --> 00:09:53,110 making 90 cents disappear down the drain. 174 00:09:53,190 --> 00:09:54,940 So stupid. 175 00:09:56,740 --> 00:09:58,450 I loved Mad magazine growing up. 176 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:01,370 I've always been a lover of satire. 177 00:10:01,780 --> 00:10:04,580 Not just because it was funny, but because it used this whole... 178 00:10:04,660 --> 00:10:07,290 sophisticated visual language to tell the joke. 179 00:10:08,290 --> 00:10:11,420 The cover about video games with the little video game typeface. 180 00:10:11,500 --> 00:10:15,130 The wacky book covers we'd like to see. 181 00:10:15,210 --> 00:10:17,010 That was probably my introduction to the idea 182 00:10:17,090 --> 00:10:18,800 that type has a cultural dimension to it. 183 00:10:19,430 --> 00:10:21,720 This was probably the first issue of Spy I ever saw. 184 00:10:21,930 --> 00:10:23,180 Uh, the Kennedy-bashing issue. 185 00:10:23,680 --> 00:10:28,060 Spy was the first magazine I'd ever seen where I'd become aware of the design. 186 00:10:28,390 --> 00:10:31,360 Alex Isley was doing these extraordinary things, 187 00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:34,690 using unusual scales, making them feel tongue in cheek. 188 00:10:34,980 --> 00:10:37,900 It felt like the perfect marriage of art editorial to me. 189 00:10:38,280 --> 00:10:39,860 I just love things like this. 190 00:10:39,950 --> 00:10:42,780 The story is told with an X-Acto knife cutting through one line 191 00:10:42,870 --> 00:10:44,506 of Alternate Gothic that's letter spaced. 192 00:10:44,530 --> 00:10:45,530 That's incredible to me. 193 00:10:46,500 --> 00:10:49,160 That was the turning point. That was the way out of 194 00:10:49,250 --> 00:10:52,580 type as a part of satire into type as a part of communication. 195 00:10:53,590 --> 00:10:56,050 Oh, I can't believe Donald Trump's gonna be in this episode. 196 00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:00,010 I never went to college. 197 00:11:00,090 --> 00:11:02,590 Typeface design wasn't something you could study back then. 198 00:11:03,510 --> 00:11:05,220 In 1989, 199 00:11:05,310 --> 00:11:08,350 I made a little self-promotion piece as a mailer. 200 00:11:08,430 --> 00:11:10,640 I sent this out with the very non-specific goal 201 00:11:10,730 --> 00:11:13,270 of getting some kind of work involving typography. 202 00:11:13,360 --> 00:11:14,440 But the first call I got 203 00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:17,000 was from the art director of Sports Illustrated, Steve Hoffman, 204 00:11:17,030 --> 00:11:18,030 and he asked... 205 00:11:20,030 --> 00:11:23,870 And for me, it meant the chance to design a typeface for this prestigious magazine. 206 00:11:29,450 --> 00:11:31,960 This was the first thing I did for them. Just these headlines. 207 00:11:32,040 --> 00:11:34,080 This little composition right here. 208 00:11:34,170 --> 00:11:37,420 And we decided we would do a full family of typefaces 209 00:11:37,500 --> 00:11:40,170 that would work in smaller sizes, each with its own width. 210 00:11:40,260 --> 00:11:41,970 That was a typeface called Knockout. 211 00:11:42,050 --> 00:11:45,140 Art directors could match the length of a headline 212 00:11:45,220 --> 00:11:47,970 to the measure of the space and always have a typeface that fit. 213 00:11:48,600 --> 00:11:51,480 And most crucially for a type nerd like me 214 00:11:51,560 --> 00:11:55,230 is you begin to see truly tiny things like this. 215 00:11:56,730 --> 00:12:00,900 What I love about a lot of Jonathan's catalog of type 216 00:12:00,990 --> 00:12:03,660 is that you're always coming from 217 00:12:03,740 --> 00:12:07,780 a really beautiful, brilliantly executed starting place. 218 00:12:09,950 --> 00:12:13,540 In the early '90s, I was at Rolling Stone, worked for Fred Woodward. 219 00:12:13,620 --> 00:12:15,420 We were at sort of the beginning 220 00:12:15,500 --> 00:12:18,210 of doing cool stuff that was getting some acclaim. 221 00:12:18,670 --> 00:12:21,840 And I was invited up to the Hoefler Type Foundry. 222 00:12:22,170 --> 00:12:23,930 So, we go upstairs and... 223 00:12:24,340 --> 00:12:27,640 it's, like, "This is... This is his apartment." 224 00:12:28,220 --> 00:12:32,730 And steps going up to a loft bed with type posters on the wall, 225 00:12:32,810 --> 00:12:37,270 and he had, you know, he had a Mac, and very few of us had a Mac then, and... 226 00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:39,440 And again, I'm like... 227 00:12:40,650 --> 00:12:42,030 "This is the Hoefler Type Foundry? 228 00:12:42,110 --> 00:12:44,110 This is crazy! This is Jonathan's bedroom!" 229 00:12:46,570 --> 00:12:49,990 The first typeface I designed for Rolling Stone was called Ziggurat. 230 00:12:50,160 --> 00:12:53,580 I was working with Gail at a time when Rolling Stone were, 231 00:12:53,660 --> 00:12:56,630 "We need to lose resources in the art department because of the recession." 232 00:12:57,710 --> 00:13:01,300 Gail and I hit upon the idea of taking this typeface and... 233 00:13:01,670 --> 00:13:03,760 essentially retooling it in different styles. 234 00:13:04,550 --> 00:13:07,180 The collection of typefaces, which we called the Proteus Project, 235 00:13:07,260 --> 00:13:08,550 and there are four of them. 236 00:13:09,050 --> 00:13:12,890 So, switching from one typeface to the next, from one cover to the next, 237 00:13:13,230 --> 00:13:15,060 the idea is these are all interchangeable. 238 00:13:15,140 --> 00:13:17,020 You can take one out, substitute the next 239 00:13:17,100 --> 00:13:19,610 and nothing really reflows in your page layout. 240 00:13:20,230 --> 00:13:23,360 They were so cool and so easy to work with. 241 00:13:23,780 --> 00:13:27,070 They represented a whole era of the magazine. 242 00:13:27,320 --> 00:13:29,320 He had this stuff down, as a kid, 243 00:13:29,410 --> 00:13:31,700 that we were just beginning to figure out. 244 00:13:32,240 --> 00:13:35,370 When you think about magazine design in the last 20 years, 245 00:13:35,910 --> 00:13:38,380 such a huge part of the way 246 00:13:38,460 --> 00:13:42,130 American magazines are designed are Jonathan's faces. 247 00:13:42,420 --> 00:13:43,420 He's everywhere. 248 00:13:43,510 --> 00:13:46,130 Come on, he was smart enough to buy typography.com. 249 00:13:46,220 --> 00:13:48,840 So, you know, that's Jonathan. 250 00:14:07,950 --> 00:14:10,780 One of my favorite details in a typeface are these things, 251 00:14:10,870 --> 00:14:13,370 they're called manicules or fists or indices, 252 00:14:13,450 --> 00:14:15,080 hands pointing in different directions. 253 00:14:15,330 --> 00:14:19,250 Manicules are just a way of attracting the eye to a particular detail on a page. 254 00:14:19,330 --> 00:14:21,460 It's been in printing since the first books. 255 00:14:23,210 --> 00:14:25,130 Something like this. That'll work. 256 00:14:26,380 --> 00:14:28,970 - Not bad. - Yeah, it's a start. We'll see. 257 00:14:32,430 --> 00:14:35,680 There's really no substitute for working with primary sources. 258 00:14:37,310 --> 00:14:38,850 These are type specimen books. 259 00:14:38,940 --> 00:14:42,940 Type specimen books are catalogs made by type founders. 260 00:14:43,020 --> 00:14:46,070 These are things produced just to advertise the fonts. 261 00:14:47,190 --> 00:14:49,360 While this book is from the 1870s, 262 00:14:49,450 --> 00:14:52,740 there are typefaces in here that go back 30, 40, 50 years. 263 00:14:52,820 --> 00:14:55,330 Styles that go back hundreds of years, in some cases. 264 00:14:55,410 --> 00:14:58,040 And a lot of these things had been lost to time. 265 00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:02,080 Uh, not one typeface on these pages is something you can buy today. 266 00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:05,460 In many cases, it's specimen books like these 267 00:15:05,550 --> 00:15:08,970 that are the only historical record of some of these typefaces. 268 00:15:11,340 --> 00:15:14,100 In the early '90s, I came across this thing, 269 00:15:14,180 --> 00:15:15,760 which I just fell in love with. 270 00:15:16,180 --> 00:15:19,980 It's a form of Black Letter, which some people call Old English, 271 00:15:20,770 --> 00:15:21,770 that looks like that. 272 00:15:23,770 --> 00:15:27,730 Black Letter typefaces really fell into disuse in the 18th century. 273 00:15:27,820 --> 00:15:28,820 It's alien. 274 00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:33,200 People don't recognize this letter as an E anymore. 275 00:15:33,660 --> 00:15:36,160 But in the early 19th century, 276 00:15:36,240 --> 00:15:39,410 Black Letter comes back into being just because it's eccentric. 277 00:15:39,870 --> 00:15:42,540 We think of this thing as being a fossil, 278 00:15:42,620 --> 00:15:45,630 but it's very much alive in typography today. 279 00:15:45,710 --> 00:15:47,710 And it's been co-opted in so many ways. 280 00:15:48,170 --> 00:15:50,920 Heavy metal uses Black Letters everywhere. 281 00:15:51,010 --> 00:15:54,590 But so does gangster rap. You'll find it in prison tattoos, 282 00:15:54,680 --> 00:15:56,300 Catholic church, satanism. 283 00:15:56,390 --> 00:15:58,680 And there's this sort of marvelous dualism, 284 00:15:58,770 --> 00:16:01,730 this sort of set of binary oppositions where the typeface can be used. 285 00:16:02,310 --> 00:16:03,600 So I began thinking, 286 00:16:03,690 --> 00:16:07,150 “What might we do with this idea, but take it further?” 287 00:16:08,230 --> 00:16:11,820 About 23 years ago, I started working on this typeface, 288 00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:14,280 which we're now calling Parliament. 289 00:16:14,700 --> 00:16:16,620 Embryonic, but, uh, a start. 290 00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:20,580 I started thinking, "Could we do a set of manicules in this style?" 291 00:16:20,660 --> 00:16:22,886 Spent a lot of time trying to figure out how these things 292 00:16:22,910 --> 00:16:25,330 might evolve into calligraphic forms. 293 00:16:27,710 --> 00:16:31,050 This is the final version of these, uh... these manicules. 294 00:16:37,470 --> 00:16:38,470 Thank you. 295 00:16:40,770 --> 00:16:44,100 One thing about typeface design is this constant feeling 296 00:16:44,190 --> 00:16:45,900 of not wanting to repeat yourself, 297 00:16:45,980 --> 00:16:49,400 to try to try something new every time. 298 00:16:49,820 --> 00:16:53,650 Challenges, in many ways, get more demanding as time goes on. 299 00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:56,360 The more interesting, the more specific, 300 00:16:56,450 --> 00:16:59,160 even the more esoteric a typeface you try to create, 301 00:16:59,240 --> 00:17:01,910 the more you have to figure out from scratch each time. 302 00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:03,250 It's a puzzle. 303 00:17:12,590 --> 00:17:16,510 About 20 years ago, I was commissioned by the designer Abbott Miller 304 00:17:16,590 --> 00:17:18,600 to contribute a typeface 305 00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:21,220 to the rebranding of the Guggenheim that he was doing. 306 00:17:21,720 --> 00:17:24,890 We began with openness and roundness, given the rotunda. 307 00:17:25,140 --> 00:17:29,650 The idea of making something feel a little bit more elevated and lofty. 308 00:17:30,270 --> 00:17:34,570 It's always a challenge to try to relate architecture to typography. 309 00:17:35,570 --> 00:17:38,490 An obvious point of inspiration was this lettering on the facade. 310 00:17:38,570 --> 00:17:40,780 The nice thing that seemed to recommend it 311 00:17:40,870 --> 00:17:43,240 for adaptation for a text face 312 00:17:43,580 --> 00:17:47,750 was its stark geometry, which, in some cases, is perfect. 313 00:17:47,830 --> 00:17:51,040 This letter M has a beauty to it that is marvelous. 314 00:17:51,750 --> 00:17:54,460 But letters like E and H have this raised crossbar 315 00:17:54,550 --> 00:17:56,220 that makes them overly stylized. 316 00:17:56,590 --> 00:17:59,890 These are details that are overly distinctive, distracting. 317 00:18:00,050 --> 00:18:02,720 Our hope was to take some of these qualities 318 00:18:02,810 --> 00:18:05,180 and dial them back a little bit. 319 00:18:05,270 --> 00:18:08,600 And push the typeface from being a decorative signage face 320 00:18:08,690 --> 00:18:11,480 into a more conservative face for text and headlines. 321 00:18:12,820 --> 00:18:15,610 Small details helped. Giving the typeface a small lowercase 322 00:18:15,740 --> 00:18:17,860 made the capitals tower over it 323 00:18:17,950 --> 00:18:20,240 and made the whole thing feel a little bit more grand. 324 00:18:20,950 --> 00:18:22,950 Those in different moods 325 00:18:23,030 --> 00:18:26,540 really capture a lot of the qualities of the physical space we're in. 326 00:18:28,870 --> 00:18:31,380 When an institution like the Guggenheim adopt a typeface, 327 00:18:31,460 --> 00:18:33,210 the typeface gets used everywhere, 328 00:18:33,290 --> 00:18:35,880 not just in print publications and on the website, 329 00:18:35,960 --> 00:18:37,630 but in places like store windows, 330 00:18:38,090 --> 00:18:39,340 exhibition calendars, 331 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:40,970 facilities signage, 332 00:18:41,550 --> 00:18:42,680 way-finding graphics, 333 00:18:43,180 --> 00:18:45,970 floor plans, interactive applications... 334 00:18:46,520 --> 00:18:47,850 and even the guest pass. 335 00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:52,770 The test of that one for me 336 00:18:52,860 --> 00:18:55,780 is looking overhead and seeing the lettering of the name of the museum, 337 00:18:55,860 --> 00:18:57,990 but then seeing the actual lettering on the window. 338 00:18:58,070 --> 00:19:00,740 If those things present the same kind of feeling, 339 00:19:00,820 --> 00:19:02,570 then the typeface is a success. 340 00:19:06,830 --> 00:19:08,250 When you design a new typeface, 341 00:19:08,330 --> 00:19:11,330 the first two characters you draw are the capital H and the capital O. 342 00:19:11,790 --> 00:19:13,840 The principal is that the H is a straight character 343 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:15,710 with vertical stems and straight sides. 344 00:19:15,800 --> 00:19:17,880 The O is a round character with round sides. 345 00:19:17,960 --> 00:19:20,300 And in theory, once you've drawn these two characters, 346 00:19:20,380 --> 00:19:23,430 you've got a basic sense of the flavor of the typeface you're designing. 347 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:26,260 Unfortunately, it never seems to turn out that the H and the O 348 00:19:26,350 --> 00:19:29,070 are the characters that designers first draw, because they're boring. 349 00:19:30,890 --> 00:19:32,980 The drawings I've done up to this point 350 00:19:33,060 --> 00:19:36,440 are essentially an inventory of things that are interesting ideas. 351 00:19:37,730 --> 00:19:40,740 Here's that flat-top four, and some ideas about watches 352 00:19:40,820 --> 00:19:44,620 that have the same flat-top detail in letters like A and V and W. 353 00:19:44,780 --> 00:19:46,990 And by extension, what letters like K might do. 354 00:19:47,830 --> 00:19:50,290 It's essential at this point to begin working digitally, 355 00:19:50,370 --> 00:19:53,830 where you're working with the same kinds of outlines, character to character. 356 00:19:56,340 --> 00:19:58,670 I came to design through computers. 357 00:19:58,760 --> 00:20:00,720 I was a computer kid growing up. 358 00:20:00,970 --> 00:20:03,590 I was into video games when they were much simpler things 359 00:20:03,840 --> 00:20:05,180 and you could make one. 360 00:20:05,260 --> 00:20:07,640 As part of the graphics for it, I'd do letters. 361 00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:09,970 Every character had to be eight by eight pixels. 362 00:20:10,390 --> 00:20:13,600 And the question is, how do you give your Dungeons and Dragons-style game 363 00:20:13,690 --> 00:20:16,230 and your space game different typography? 364 00:20:16,650 --> 00:20:18,070 That's tough to figure out. 365 00:20:21,150 --> 00:20:24,740 I'm at the point with Decimal where I've drawn a couple of key characters 366 00:20:24,820 --> 00:20:28,200 that I feel are very watch-like in a nice way, 367 00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:30,290 a few more that are a little bit more neutral 368 00:20:30,370 --> 00:20:33,410 to help me figure out what the tenor of the design is going to be, 369 00:20:33,750 --> 00:20:35,710 and then some really challenging ones. 370 00:20:36,330 --> 00:20:39,800 There's a form of S that you see in watchmaking. 371 00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:41,710 It has these gestures 372 00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:44,380 that point very aggressively outward. 373 00:20:44,630 --> 00:20:46,180 But I've also found this J 374 00:20:46,260 --> 00:20:49,260 where the stroke at the bottom points up into the character. 375 00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:51,890 A lot of what you're doing in typeface design is 376 00:20:51,980 --> 00:20:54,890 finding these eccentric things and trying to figure out 377 00:20:54,980 --> 00:20:57,060 what center you can pull them toward. 378 00:20:57,150 --> 00:21:00,360 Does the S want to become more J-like, or the J more S-like? 379 00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:01,690 Or is it okay as it is? 380 00:21:02,490 --> 00:21:04,030 Even this S and A that I've drawn, 381 00:21:04,110 --> 00:21:07,280 the worst part of this for me right now is I don't like either one of them. 382 00:21:07,370 --> 00:21:10,010 I feel like as a designer I wouldn't use either of these typefaces. 383 00:21:10,410 --> 00:21:13,000 So, where in this continuum... 384 00:21:13,870 --> 00:21:15,580 is the idea of Decimal? 385 00:21:15,670 --> 00:21:17,040 What feels like a watch? 386 00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:20,300 All typefaces are full of these inconsistencies 387 00:21:20,380 --> 00:21:23,380 that are impossible to justify through anything except optics. 388 00:21:23,460 --> 00:21:26,050 And that really is a lot of where the art comes into play. 389 00:21:28,550 --> 00:21:32,470 Type design is not about drawing letters. It's about drawing systems of things. 390 00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:35,440 There are the letters in the alphabet, other cases, 391 00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:37,940 caps, lowercase, small caps, swashes. 392 00:21:38,020 --> 00:21:40,360 There's an italic, there's a bold, there's a bold italic. 393 00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:42,070 All of these have to be created. 394 00:21:42,150 --> 00:21:45,650 Our design team begins with Sara Soskolne, who is our senior designer. 395 00:21:45,740 --> 00:21:48,780 Jordan Bell is a designer with a strong interest in lettering. 396 00:21:48,870 --> 00:21:50,870 Troy Leinster comes from graphic design, 397 00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:54,870 and Colin Ford is a typeface designer and Python programmer. 398 00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:59,630 These are just different things from different watches. 399 00:21:59,750 --> 00:22:03,380 That's a concordance of all the letters and numbers I found. 400 00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:06,420 - I like all the little... little serifs. - Awesome. 401 00:22:06,970 --> 00:22:08,680 Well, that's gonna be kind of a question, 402 00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:10,400 which is, Is this a serif or a sans-serif? 403 00:22:10,470 --> 00:22:12,760 And I've got my... my heart on it being a sans-serif. 404 00:22:12,850 --> 00:22:14,100 - Yeah. - Check that out. 405 00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:17,480 - Yeah. - I think those are fantastic. 406 00:22:17,940 --> 00:22:20,480 - Jonathan, there's our lowercase. - Yeah. Let's just do that. 407 00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:22,320 There you go. 408 00:22:22,610 --> 00:22:24,610 When I begin working with the designers, 409 00:22:24,690 --> 00:22:27,700 they begin asking questions about where the design is going, 410 00:22:27,780 --> 00:22:29,910 what motivates certain decisions. 411 00:22:30,030 --> 00:22:33,080 And that makes me realize that a lot of the things I've been thinking about 412 00:22:33,160 --> 00:22:35,240 really haven't been articulated in the right way yet. 413 00:22:35,660 --> 00:22:38,580 I think one of the key questions right now is what the curves look like. 414 00:22:39,210 --> 00:22:42,750 I was about to ask what you're thinking about the relationship between those two. 415 00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:45,300 - I think we need to pick a direction. - Yeah. 416 00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:47,340 I guess it's also a question of... 417 00:22:47,420 --> 00:22:50,220 There is a lot of chaos in the early days of a typeface 418 00:22:50,300 --> 00:22:53,350 in figuring out what's the signal and what's the noise. 419 00:22:53,970 --> 00:22:57,180 But I do find that working with a team is the best way to resolve that. 420 00:22:57,310 --> 00:23:00,560 Any last words before we jump off the cliff? 421 00:23:08,860 --> 00:23:14,240 It's difficult to find examples, historically, of italics on watch faces. 422 00:23:14,870 --> 00:23:17,950 Whenever I initially skew the Roman form, 423 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:19,910 it creates this distortion 424 00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:23,580 and pulls a lot of weight into this bottom left-hand quadrant 425 00:23:23,670 --> 00:23:25,920 and, uh, pinches up here. 426 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,050 These terminals, they're very uneven. 427 00:23:28,130 --> 00:23:30,260 It can be tedious, but it's a nice puzzle. 428 00:23:31,630 --> 00:23:35,850 Ultra is heavier than bold. It's as black as you can get. 429 00:23:37,010 --> 00:23:39,600 The urge is to add a lot of weight everywhere, 430 00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:42,310 but you need to pick and choose where that weight goes. 431 00:23:43,900 --> 00:23:48,150 I'll be trying to articulate what the thin version will look like, 432 00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,240 because there's not much weight there to hide detail. 433 00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,570 I'm trying to keep the same proportion between 434 00:23:54,660 --> 00:23:56,370 the bold and the thin. 435 00:23:56,450 --> 00:23:58,620 It's a bit of, uh, trial and error. 436 00:24:00,330 --> 00:24:03,370 Working with Jonathan is awesome. He's very, very collaborative. 437 00:24:03,670 --> 00:24:07,090 He'll make a prototype and give it to other people to run with, 438 00:24:07,170 --> 00:24:11,720 and be totally unprecious about other people's role in that design. 439 00:24:12,010 --> 00:24:15,470 He quickly handed me the medium weight to help with the prototype. 440 00:24:16,180 --> 00:24:19,430 I find that you cannot look at the shapes that you're making 441 00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:22,810 without also being very careful about how you space them. 442 00:24:22,890 --> 00:24:23,940 It's a huge thing. 443 00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:27,150 ♪ These are letters ♪ 444 00:24:30,780 --> 00:24:32,820 Most of the shapes that type designers draw 445 00:24:32,900 --> 00:24:34,660 are the ones that never get seen. 446 00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:37,490 These complex forms are carefully crafted 447 00:24:37,580 --> 00:24:39,870 in order to establish the fit of a typeface. 448 00:24:39,950 --> 00:24:41,950 These aren't the shapes of letter forms themselves. 449 00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:44,120 They're the invisible spaces between them. 450 00:24:44,790 --> 00:24:47,040 A well-fitted design has a consistent rhythm 451 00:24:47,130 --> 00:24:49,500 and strikes a perfect balance between the letters we see 452 00:24:49,590 --> 00:24:51,170 and the void that contains them. 453 00:24:52,470 --> 00:24:55,380 Even the most well-fitted letters need some extra helping hands. 454 00:24:55,890 --> 00:24:57,300 After the alphabet is drawn, 455 00:24:57,390 --> 00:25:00,010 a typeface designer will bring additional techniques to bear 456 00:25:00,100 --> 00:25:01,696 to ensure that letters can lock together 457 00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:04,100 into words and paragraphs with an even texture. 458 00:25:05,770 --> 00:25:08,730 The loose spacing of this H and O can be fixed through kerning, 459 00:25:08,810 --> 00:25:12,070 the individual adjustment of space between a specific pair of letters. 460 00:25:12,900 --> 00:25:14,610 But kerning is just the beginning. 461 00:25:14,700 --> 00:25:16,860 To improve the rhythm of this F and L, 462 00:25:16,950 --> 00:25:20,700 rather than kern the letters together, a type designer can provide a ligature, 463 00:25:20,790 --> 00:25:23,200 a specially drawn combination of two or more letters 464 00:25:23,290 --> 00:25:26,170 that's automatically substituted whenever it improves readability. 465 00:25:32,550 --> 00:25:34,550 It's often the case in a typeface 466 00:25:34,630 --> 00:25:36,630 that you find yourself 467 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,930 forced to follow tributaries in places you wouldn't expect. 468 00:25:46,350 --> 00:25:49,520 A reason to be in a graveyard like this one 469 00:25:49,610 --> 00:25:53,650 is to see how the mannerisms of Black Letter typefaces changed over time. 470 00:25:57,450 --> 00:25:59,700 One of the challenges with Parliament is... 471 00:25:59,950 --> 00:26:02,080 how do you modernize this truly ancient thing 472 00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,750 in a way that's actually useful, but also feels old? 473 00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:11,750 With typefaces that are rooted in history, 474 00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,090 I always want to go beyond what's been done. 475 00:26:14,550 --> 00:26:17,260 The idea of finding some attractive fossil 476 00:26:17,340 --> 00:26:19,970 and just reproducing it doesn't feel very interesting. 477 00:26:20,550 --> 00:26:22,050 Doesn't feel very original, either. 478 00:26:23,350 --> 00:26:24,180 This is great. 479 00:26:24,270 --> 00:26:27,100 It's the same Black Letter style on every surface of this thing. 480 00:26:27,980 --> 00:26:31,110 Incredibly hard to read there, a little bit easier here. 481 00:26:34,360 --> 00:26:36,320 But when the light catches it at the end, 482 00:26:36,780 --> 00:26:38,450 ah, this is just spectacular. 483 00:26:40,450 --> 00:26:43,660 The legibility of a lot of these characters comes from the way 484 00:26:43,740 --> 00:26:46,040 the sunlight strikes these letter forms. 485 00:26:50,830 --> 00:26:54,000 A lot of the typefaces we've been looking at for the Parliament project 486 00:26:54,250 --> 00:26:59,010 are Black Letter typefaces with these raised highlights. 487 00:26:59,430 --> 00:27:02,430 It's very fun to have an actual three-dimensional model to work with 488 00:27:02,510 --> 00:27:06,600 and see how you can change the overall construction of the character. 489 00:27:07,020 --> 00:27:09,576 And I'm curious to see, when we get to working on this digitally, 490 00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:12,520 how we can, uh... how we can achieve the same kind of effect. 491 00:27:13,770 --> 00:27:18,490 The effort involved in drawing contours within contours within contours 492 00:27:18,650 --> 00:27:20,950 is impossibly complicated. 493 00:27:21,030 --> 00:27:24,080 So, something we've been doing is developing a tool to help us do this 494 00:27:25,330 --> 00:27:27,426 which, for the first time, allows designers to control 495 00:27:27,450 --> 00:27:29,620 more than one contour at the same time. 496 00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:32,420 Working with this tool in this way, that'll enable us 497 00:27:32,500 --> 00:27:35,840 to not just make one or two varieties of an element, 498 00:27:36,420 --> 00:27:37,460 but up to five. 499 00:27:40,130 --> 00:27:43,050 Programming has always been an important part of what we do. 500 00:27:43,890 --> 00:27:46,890 In 1991, I got a commission from Apple. 501 00:27:47,220 --> 00:27:50,940 They were developing new technology to imbue a font with intelligence, 502 00:27:51,020 --> 00:27:54,730 to know how to insert special characters in certain circumstances. 503 00:27:55,610 --> 00:27:58,320 I had been designing a typeface myself called Hoefler Text. 504 00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,780 And I had been giving this typeface a lot of automated features 505 00:28:01,860 --> 00:28:04,160 like lots of ligatures and swashes and things. 506 00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:07,490 And Apple licensed it for inclusion on the Macintosh. 507 00:28:07,580 --> 00:28:11,250 And subsequently on every iPhone and iPad ever made. 508 00:28:14,460 --> 00:28:17,880 Today, the typefaces that we create need to be designed 509 00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:21,880 in often distinctively different ways to succeed in different places. 510 00:28:21,970 --> 00:28:24,430 A typeface designed for screens 511 00:28:24,510 --> 00:28:27,850 needs to be imagined differently with applications in mind, 512 00:28:28,220 --> 00:28:30,020 imagining how it would work on a smartphone, 513 00:28:30,100 --> 00:28:31,640 how it would work on a watch. 514 00:28:32,390 --> 00:28:34,900 There can be the typeface originally designed for print 515 00:28:34,980 --> 00:28:37,270 that is revisited with screens in mind. 516 00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:39,900 They'll do things like change proportions of letter forms, 517 00:28:39,980 --> 00:28:43,820 take gestures that are prone to congestion at small sizes and open them up. 518 00:28:43,900 --> 00:28:46,120 They'll change the spacing of a typeface. 519 00:28:46,620 --> 00:28:50,240 I think, as with all technologies, it's given rise to new solutions, 520 00:28:50,330 --> 00:28:54,210 but also opportunities to do more sophisticated things. 521 00:28:58,710 --> 00:29:00,800 We've been working on Decimal for a while now, 522 00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:04,220 and I think we're at a fork in the road. 523 00:29:05,430 --> 00:29:07,680 - How's it going? Oh, good. - Pretty good. 524 00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:09,640 There are two different ideas going on 525 00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:11,680 in the lettering on watches we're looking at. 526 00:29:11,890 --> 00:29:14,570 That's something we've been working on in the last couple of months. 527 00:29:15,350 --> 00:29:16,400 None of these feel right. 528 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,600 I mean, including what I gave you to begin with, so... 529 00:29:18,770 --> 00:29:19,650 It's a real question. 530 00:29:19,730 --> 00:29:23,490 This is where I always get fearful that this is actually a bum idea. 531 00:29:23,570 --> 00:29:25,200 We should abandon ship. 532 00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:27,990 In a lot of the watch lettering we'd seen, 533 00:29:28,070 --> 00:29:30,490 there are some curved letters that are very round. 534 00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:32,410 An O is almost a perfect oval. 535 00:29:32,580 --> 00:29:35,750 Some that are very square. Like the U, occasionally at the bottom. 536 00:29:36,580 --> 00:29:39,340 There's a tension there between these things that's not desirable. 537 00:29:39,420 --> 00:29:41,420 It's much more disruptive than I would like. 538 00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:43,960 Here's what it looks like in text. 539 00:29:44,050 --> 00:29:46,430 The thought that a typeface might not work out, 540 00:29:46,630 --> 00:29:48,840 there's definitely a cost of failure attached to that. 541 00:29:48,930 --> 00:29:51,760 Would either that or this work? I'm not sure. 542 00:29:51,930 --> 00:29:55,520 As somebody who has a team of type designers working for him, 543 00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:57,650 it's a monetary cost as well. 544 00:30:00,190 --> 00:30:03,190 When you hit a snag, you've got a couple of options. 545 00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,360 One is to just push through with brute strength 546 00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:07,200 and hope that it all comes out in the wash. 547 00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:08,950 That never really seems to work out. 548 00:30:09,030 --> 00:30:10,280 The second is to abandon ship, 549 00:30:10,370 --> 00:30:13,290 to just decide this idea is not working out and to put it down. 550 00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,120 The third option is to just kind of... 551 00:30:16,910 --> 00:30:20,840 squeeze the brief a little bit harder and see if you can add more things to it 552 00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,710 that might make it more flexible, more interesting. 553 00:30:25,380 --> 00:30:29,840 I wanted to look at some other examples of lettering from very small sizes. 554 00:30:29,930 --> 00:30:32,260 Uh, watches, obviously, are painted in small sizes, 555 00:30:32,350 --> 00:30:33,950 but here at the New York Public Library, 556 00:30:34,010 --> 00:30:36,640 the map room has a collection of engraved lettering in small sizes 557 00:30:36,730 --> 00:30:38,440 from centuries' worth of maps. 558 00:30:41,610 --> 00:30:44,730 The question in a typeface is, "Will it be square or will it be round? 559 00:30:45,150 --> 00:30:46,870 How do you resolve these different systems?" 560 00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:52,240 - Thank you. - The height of... 561 00:30:52,700 --> 00:30:54,260 19th-century map production right there. 562 00:30:55,330 --> 00:30:56,950 This really is insane. 563 00:31:05,090 --> 00:31:06,300 That is great. 564 00:31:15,430 --> 00:31:17,730 I think this is gonna be our answer in Decimal. 565 00:31:20,140 --> 00:31:24,940 Some really nice examples of rounded and then not so rounded lettering. 566 00:31:27,570 --> 00:31:28,860 This is an interesting atlas 567 00:31:28,940 --> 00:31:32,990 because you begin to see a different shape of curves working into this. 568 00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,370 There's a great moment over here on the left side 569 00:31:35,450 --> 00:31:37,040 where it says, "Great Barrington." 570 00:31:37,410 --> 00:31:39,410 And the O has a squareness to it. 571 00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,460 That's exciting to see here, but then equally fun 572 00:31:44,540 --> 00:31:46,090 in subsequent pages, 573 00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:48,680 there are a pair of streets in this one map, 574 00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:50,170 Hubbard Street and Charles Street. 575 00:31:50,260 --> 00:31:53,470 And Hubbard, the bottom of the U has this very shallow curve, 576 00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,350 but then Charles Street below it has a very rounded C. 577 00:31:57,430 --> 00:31:59,350 So, I feel like this designer is struggling 578 00:31:59,430 --> 00:32:02,060 with a lot of these same ideas that can be resolved. 579 00:32:02,190 --> 00:32:04,230 This is great. This is really... It's interesting. 580 00:32:04,940 --> 00:32:08,070 So many of its letters seem to be drawn to be compact. 581 00:32:08,150 --> 00:32:10,240 They try to fill their space as much as possible, 582 00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:12,400 like inflating a balloon inside a box. 583 00:32:13,570 --> 00:32:17,160 We can create forms that are curved but squarish. 584 00:32:17,740 --> 00:32:19,750 Now, we can redefine the brief for Decimal 585 00:32:19,830 --> 00:32:21,830 in terms of compactness. 586 00:32:22,790 --> 00:32:25,790 We've finally reached the point that there is a theme to this typeface. 587 00:32:31,590 --> 00:32:33,340 ♪ These are letters ♪ 588 00:32:35,930 --> 00:32:38,390 Our attempts to truly see two-dimensional forms 589 00:32:38,470 --> 00:32:41,680 are bedeviled by optical illusions from our three-dimensional world. 590 00:32:42,020 --> 00:32:44,020 Typeface designers compensate for these illusions 591 00:32:44,100 --> 00:32:47,230 by focusing not on the letter's construction, but on its appearance. 592 00:32:47,310 --> 00:32:49,400 And the simplest letters can be the trickiest. 593 00:32:49,610 --> 00:32:53,280 The letter X appears to be made from two continuous lines that cross. 594 00:32:53,490 --> 00:32:57,070 But to have the appearance of continuity, the lighter stroke needs to be broken 595 00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,580 in a phenomenon known as... 596 00:33:01,410 --> 00:33:03,790 Disassembled, type doesn't even look like type. 597 00:33:03,870 --> 00:33:06,920 Complex shapes like these can be rife with subtle adjustments 598 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,210 needed to provide the illusion of continuity. 599 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,340 A small curve next to a larger one is something you see a lot on a typeface. 600 00:33:13,420 --> 00:33:16,800 But setting aside what we think we see and measuring what's actually there, 601 00:33:16,930 --> 00:33:19,810 we find that these small and large curves are identical. 602 00:33:20,310 --> 00:33:22,890 This is a crafty effect known as... 603 00:33:22,980 --> 00:33:24,560 And it's hard at work in typography 604 00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,690 anywhere you find a pair of closely related nested shapes. 605 00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:30,400 Context means everything in a typeface. 606 00:33:30,610 --> 00:33:33,530 Whether to give a letter form thick strokes and blunt corners 607 00:33:33,610 --> 00:33:37,910 or delicate strokes and a sharp point isn't only about style, it's about size. 608 00:33:38,410 --> 00:33:39,870 These two letter forms are designed 609 00:33:39,950 --> 00:33:42,490 to feel like expressions of the same underlying idea, 610 00:33:42,620 --> 00:33:45,500 but one is designed for small sizes and the other for large ones, 611 00:33:45,580 --> 00:33:47,370 a phenomenon type designers call... 612 00:34:01,260 --> 00:34:05,230 About 20 years ago, Tiffany and Company commissioned me to draw their logo 613 00:34:05,310 --> 00:34:07,310 and then to do a family of typefaces. 614 00:34:08,270 --> 00:34:10,190 Both of these things were designed 615 00:34:10,270 --> 00:34:12,390 to, in some way, come from the tradition of engraving. 616 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,740 Obviously, an engraved piece of jewelry is, a, uh... 617 00:34:14,860 --> 00:34:16,570 mm, iconic Tiffany product. 618 00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,000 The logo was an interesting challenge, though, 619 00:34:19,030 --> 00:34:21,530 in that it's meant to seem consistent everywhere, 620 00:34:21,910 --> 00:34:25,330 but behind the scenes, we design logos in a variety of different forms. 621 00:34:25,830 --> 00:34:28,960 The logo will be appearing on a flexible hanging flag 622 00:34:29,250 --> 00:34:30,880 or on a flat awning 623 00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,630 or in three-dimensional relief in metal. 624 00:34:33,710 --> 00:34:36,220 It means making compensations in the letter forms, 625 00:34:36,300 --> 00:34:38,130 so that each thing presents the same way. 626 00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,680 This project began in 1999, 627 00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,970 and in 2000, I got engaged. 628 00:34:44,060 --> 00:34:46,770 And there was this strange moment 629 00:34:46,850 --> 00:34:50,690 where I had just finished invoicing my client for lettering 630 00:34:51,190 --> 00:34:54,570 and went to pick up our wedding bands, 631 00:34:54,860 --> 00:34:58,200 and, uh, there was an item on the receipt for lettering. 632 00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,700 And, of course, it's the inscription inside our rings, 633 00:35:02,450 --> 00:35:05,200 which includes the Tiffany and Company logo in small sizes. 634 00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:10,210 Carleen and I began dating in 1999. 635 00:35:12,170 --> 00:35:15,750 She joined the company a few years after that and is now our CEO. 636 00:35:16,210 --> 00:35:20,010 She spent years directing marketing here, and now really directs the business. 637 00:35:20,590 --> 00:35:21,590 Dude! 638 00:35:23,890 --> 00:35:26,970 What's the benefits of being married and working together? 639 00:35:28,430 --> 00:35:30,100 I think... You know what's nice? 640 00:35:30,770 --> 00:35:33,190 Neither one of us can ever 641 00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,860 get annoyed with the other person because they have so much work to do, 642 00:35:36,940 --> 00:35:39,900 because you totally know how much work they have to do. 643 00:35:39,990 --> 00:35:42,700 I've driven Carleen nuts for almost 20 years with... 644 00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:44,756 a typeface that's launching in January, 645 00:35:44,780 --> 00:35:47,160 then suddenly it's March, and it's like, "It's almost done," 646 00:35:47,240 --> 00:35:50,620 and then it's June and it's like, "Okay, now it's done, but I've got a new idea." 647 00:35:50,710 --> 00:35:53,670 Um, you know I know I make you nuts with that and that's... 648 00:35:53,750 --> 00:35:55,230 - You do. - will always be that way. 649 00:35:55,290 --> 00:35:56,130 Um... 650 00:35:56,210 --> 00:35:59,670 But I think, I mean, we're definitely both able to commit to doing the things 651 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:01,550 that we want to do the right way. 652 00:36:02,340 --> 00:36:04,680 Carleen handles the business, and I handle the creative. 653 00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,220 We both find those two things to be inseparable. 654 00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:11,190 Carleen had this idea that we needed a sort of store window 655 00:36:11,270 --> 00:36:13,560 where we can promote our typefaces. 656 00:36:14,230 --> 00:36:17,110 So, we created this thing called Discover Typography 657 00:36:17,190 --> 00:36:21,240 where we can create themes that are interactive. 658 00:36:21,610 --> 00:36:23,280 - We did... - Well, there are 12. 659 00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:25,030 - Yeah. There should be more. - The... 660 00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:25,950 They're hard to do. 661 00:36:26,030 --> 00:36:29,200 Wanderlust was based on vintage luggage tickets. 662 00:36:29,950 --> 00:36:31,540 Barrel Proof was based on 663 00:36:31,620 --> 00:36:33,330 - whiskey ephemera. - Yes! 664 00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,710 Redline is based on things with numbers. 665 00:36:36,790 --> 00:36:37,840 Menus. 666 00:36:38,130 --> 00:36:40,590 Take a Number was numbers you just run into. 667 00:36:40,670 --> 00:36:42,340 - That was a fun one. - Matchbooks. 668 00:36:42,720 --> 00:36:45,930 Trail Mix, we thought about the connection between camping and designing. 669 00:36:46,430 --> 00:36:48,100 This is... 670 00:36:48,180 --> 00:36:51,600 really a new way for us in marketing typefaces. 671 00:36:56,810 --> 00:36:58,730 Parliament is done. 672 00:36:58,860 --> 00:37:01,740 Now, we're executing the eleventh-hour stuff. 673 00:37:01,940 --> 00:37:04,280 I'll sit down with Brian Hennings, our creative director, 674 00:37:04,910 --> 00:37:08,160 and try to find ways to present the typefaces 675 00:37:08,240 --> 00:37:09,990 in ways that are compelling, 676 00:37:10,370 --> 00:37:12,830 that show off the best things of what the fonts can do, 677 00:37:12,910 --> 00:37:15,750 but also to help create the kind of culture 678 00:37:15,830 --> 00:37:19,000 that people will understand about what a typeface is meant to connote. 679 00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:21,380 Parliament is so eccentric. 680 00:37:21,460 --> 00:37:23,840 What I'm looking forward to is seeing where it gets used. 681 00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,260 I've been working on Parliament for 25 years. 682 00:37:26,340 --> 00:37:29,470 And the final act of the typeface will be seeing it used in the world 683 00:37:30,220 --> 00:37:32,560 and seeing what other people think of it. 684 00:37:37,100 --> 00:37:40,400 The dream has never died, it lives on. 685 00:37:40,690 --> 00:37:42,780 One of the treats of being a typeface designer 686 00:37:42,860 --> 00:37:44,860 is you don't know where the work's going to wind up 687 00:37:44,950 --> 00:37:48,410 and you can suddenly find yourself confronting it in the public sphere. 688 00:37:48,700 --> 00:37:51,620 Gotham is a great example of this. It's something we designed 689 00:37:51,700 --> 00:37:53,830 when Tobias Frere-Jones and I were working together. 690 00:37:53,910 --> 00:37:56,080 It's certainly one of our best-known typefaces. 691 00:37:56,420 --> 00:38:00,540 In the late '90s, I came upon the Port Authority Bus Terminal, 692 00:38:00,630 --> 00:38:03,590 which has these marvelous letters on the Eighth Avenue facade. 693 00:38:03,710 --> 00:38:07,180 They looked like somebody's elemental idea of just letters. 694 00:38:07,630 --> 00:38:11,890 I wanted to do a typeface based on this because it felt so iconic and so familiar. 695 00:38:12,470 --> 00:38:17,810 I was the design director of the 2007-2008 Obama presidential campaign. 696 00:38:18,350 --> 00:38:20,940 Gotham really did speak of American values. 697 00:38:21,270 --> 00:38:24,570 Having that boldness and having that candor and that honesty 698 00:38:24,650 --> 00:38:27,950 that you just see when you lay out the letters C-H-A-N-G-E. 699 00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:32,700 It always starts with when you look at a letter form, 700 00:38:32,780 --> 00:38:33,830 or you look at a word, 701 00:38:33,910 --> 00:38:38,170 does it actually communicate something deeper than the word itself? 702 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:41,840 Does it actually drive some other meaning to you? 703 00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,380 And, subconsciously, I think all letter forms do. 704 00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:46,510 It comes down to 705 00:38:46,590 --> 00:38:49,351 what is the emotional quality that we're trying to say with this word? 706 00:38:49,550 --> 00:38:52,720 And I think that that's the opportunity that we have with typography. 707 00:38:52,890 --> 00:38:55,060 It's impossible for me to say that... that... 708 00:38:55,470 --> 00:38:59,810 uh, there is something about the typeface that it was instrumental to the campaign. 709 00:39:00,350 --> 00:39:02,190 But in the last House race, 710 00:39:02,270 --> 00:39:06,320 69 different candidates used Gotham on both sides of the aisle. 711 00:39:06,820 --> 00:39:10,990 We're starting to see Gotham become the typeface that politicians use 712 00:39:11,570 --> 00:39:13,490 because it has a track record of success. 713 00:39:14,830 --> 00:39:17,346 It's a thrill to realize the thing you put all this effort into, 714 00:39:17,370 --> 00:39:19,710 at least one other person in the world also likes enough 715 00:39:19,790 --> 00:39:21,120 to use them in something. 716 00:39:21,500 --> 00:39:23,300 The cornerstone for the new World Trade Center 717 00:39:23,380 --> 00:39:25,670 was designed by Michael Gericke at Pentagram, 718 00:39:25,750 --> 00:39:27,670 set in Gotham. 719 00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:30,590 Michael chose Gotham because it's of the city. 720 00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:32,220 It's a typeface that was 721 00:39:32,300 --> 00:39:35,430 designed based upon lettering here in New York. 722 00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,270 This was an amazing moment in my career. 723 00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:40,560 It was very... 724 00:39:41,020 --> 00:39:42,350 very moving, emotionally. 725 00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:46,150 I mean, you can't be a New Yorker and not have your own September 11th story. 726 00:39:46,650 --> 00:39:49,360 To have this particular connection to the rebuilding 727 00:39:49,820 --> 00:39:51,990 was really quite something. 728 00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:54,320 I think of all the places I've seen Gotham used, 729 00:39:54,740 --> 00:39:56,540 that's the most profound. 730 00:39:56,620 --> 00:39:58,330 It's one of the things I think of first. 731 00:40:04,580 --> 00:40:07,050 It's a strange feeling to complete a typeface. 732 00:40:09,590 --> 00:40:11,050 Decimal's been evolving. 733 00:40:11,130 --> 00:40:13,260 This is the G I had originally and... 734 00:40:13,590 --> 00:40:16,140 So, we've been very slowly making it squarer. 735 00:40:17,350 --> 00:40:19,060 This is how the S began originally. 736 00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:22,230 And it's gradually become squarer as well. 737 00:40:22,770 --> 00:40:24,350 This the four where we began, 738 00:40:25,230 --> 00:40:26,610 and this is the final version. 739 00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:29,030 We finally reached a point that 740 00:40:29,110 --> 00:40:32,176 the balance of the square and the round doesn't take two different approaches, 741 00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:34,910 but takes a single one through the execution of its letter forms. 742 00:40:36,370 --> 00:40:37,620 It's lookin' good! 743 00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:39,200 It is. 744 00:40:39,950 --> 00:40:42,750 - It's great to see the range of weights. - Yeah. 745 00:40:43,330 --> 00:40:46,840 I'm excited about Decimal. It's come a long way from watch lettering. 746 00:40:47,500 --> 00:40:49,580 You'd be hard-pressed to look at an actual wristwatch 747 00:40:49,630 --> 00:40:51,720 and see that Decimal came from this. 748 00:40:52,220 --> 00:40:53,220 I like that... 749 00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,601 I can't even describe it. It's almost like these are engraved letters. 750 00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,850 Like, the copperplate tradition or something. And yet it's not stuffy. 751 00:41:00,810 --> 00:41:02,170 You'll be able to use the typeface 752 00:41:02,230 --> 00:41:05,100 in a way that is completely divorced from its origins, 753 00:41:05,190 --> 00:41:07,230 which hopefully makes it versatile. 754 00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:09,120 But I'm curious to see how it gets used. 755 00:41:09,150 --> 00:41:12,400 Whether people sense in this that it has a heritage behind it, 756 00:41:12,490 --> 00:41:14,110 or whether it feels entirely new. 757 00:41:14,910 --> 00:41:19,080 I just... I gotta say, I love the way these little spurs worked out in the thin. 758 00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:20,450 So nice, Troy. 759 00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:23,460 It's obviously very rewarding 760 00:41:23,540 --> 00:41:29,090 to see that the very small and mysterious thing that we do 761 00:41:29,170 --> 00:41:33,510 become such a part of the fabric of communication and of the world. 762 00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,850 One of the most rewarding things to me is seeing the ways 763 00:41:38,930 --> 00:41:43,060 that people use the work that I do in ways I never expected. 764 00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:47,770 The way they find new voices of typography 765 00:41:48,020 --> 00:41:49,770 that's pushing things forward. 766 00:41:49,860 --> 00:41:52,480 It's changing how people speak to each other. 767 00:41:52,940 --> 00:41:54,360 It's an exciting thing to watch.