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 5
Bodoni is a serif typeface first designed by Giambattsta Bodoni in 1798.

Giambnattista Bodoni acheieved an unprecedented level of technical

refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very fine
harilines contrasted sharply with bolder stems, and serifs that are often
un-bracketed. In addition to extreme contrast between thick and thin
strokes, the emphasis of stress is purely vertical. This typeface has a
clean, graceful, and elegant appeal that lends a striking visual quality.
g AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYy
Bold Condensed
18 pt

r
Zz Zz Zz

r
When one is giving birth to a font not spawned directly from an existing model,
Poster Compressed pt 72

Poster
Bold
Roman
16 pt

what is needed most is the establishment of a biological discourse

Bold Condensed

between looking and drawing — between retina and

Zz Zz Zz
Book

Poster Italic
Bold Italic
Book Italic
cortex. To be successful in this process, one learns
Roman

that the mind must be quieted. The hand and retina must

Zz Zz Zz
Book Italic

Book
Bold Condensed
Poster Compressed
move in symbiotic lock step as they both trace the
Italic

physical line. It’s through this process that one

Bold

can learn to trust not the mind, but the retina. I Letterforms are in large measure governed by social contract and simple
Bold Italic
optical principles, such as the ones’ preached by our now debased and
stress that this process, in order to be debunked High Priest of Visual Thinking, Rudolf Arnheim. And while there
Poster
are obviously far hipper and much more contemporary developments within
cognitive science and perceptual psychology, issues of balance, harmony, scale,
successful, is non-linguistic.
Poster Italic as well as principles of gestalt, all have a bearing on the function and legibility
Italic of letterforms.
12/14
 Roman Italic Bold

o 300 pt
The letterforms produced in this way were a complete rejection
of everything that type design represented to this point.
Bold Italic
14/12

I
am resolute in my belief that there is simply no correlation
between time and quality, and that all things historical are not
necessarily bad. The geezers didn’t get everything wrong. Al-
though Modernism has become shorthand for dogmatic, imperi-

pS Sp
ous, doctrinaire, dry and anal, it is also rigorous, studied, quintessen-
tially optimistic and highly formal. In a recent Print magazine article,
Kathy McCoy encourages educators to abandon hand-based exercises
in favor of the computer. I would absolutely agree if it pertains to
typographic skills for tracking, kerning, leading, comping, font selec-
tion, etc. I would completely disagree when it comes to the typographic
skills of letterform design.
Roman
12/16

The ability to see, (not to feel) the Does this imply that all letterforms must have
correlation between the ruling
Bold
16 pt December 1, 1991 - February 3, 1993 pen, nib, chisel and/or brush and
the final letterform is essential.
serifs or strokes that are in some way informed by
A bried moment when a Fontographer approch to letterform design was culturally redeemable. As a matter of fact, some of the
most interesting typographic the ruling pen, nib, or chisel?
Access to Fontographer enabled the designer, for better or worse, to cut thedevelopment time specimens bear no correlation to Bold
these tools. 9/23
and cost of creating an alphabet to almost nothing. The “Blend” menu in Fontographer would Bold
8/10

Of Coarse Not!
take two fonts and mathematically extrapolate, toproduce a third new font. This process took
seconds, and the results were fluid, kinetic, and seemed, from an historical perspective,
refreshing.
Book Poster Italic
11/16 47 pt
 R
. .
Ri
Biological process
B

j
j
flush left
As the letterform progresse through flush left Excuse the digression, but when 90 pt

successive stages of development I talk about developing a feel, I know

and refinement, the process becomes that some of you are rolling your eyes.
Some of you may think that the term
increasingly optical.
flush right flush right “feel” might be likened to the term Bold Condensed
When the impulse or the “idea” for “taste,” with all of its class overtones

B
a font springs primarily from optical and attendant critiques. Well, back the
phenomena, such as mark making, f@*k up. I’m suggesting that one
drawing, handwriting, or develops a feel not magically, or
manipulation of formal elements, it may be through attendance at the finest
considered to have sprung from schools, but through rigorous Book

application, and through working

B
exclusively formal extrapolation. centered
centered damn hard at acquiring a set
The resolution of a font,
of very concrete
the successive development and skills, then forgetting them.
refinement, is always an optical And what would those skills be to which
endeavor. The simple process of one must dedicate him or herself Book Italic

making marks on paper is less of only to eventually forget?

B
an intellectual process than a Manipulative skills, first person,
biological process. hand/eye-coordinated, flesh based
mixed
allignment
One must cultivate mixed
skills
allignment
What in jazz they call “chops,”
a feel
and in design they call
for proportion, solidity, balance, “fundamental graphic exercises”
Bold Italic

etc.
Book Italic, Bold, Poster Compressed Poster Compressed Poster, Roman, Bold Italic
14/18 80 pt 12/16
Theory is study understood and finally

Bold Condensed
16/34
%
££
If at this point you feel th
applied. But the essence is that theory (or
need to accuse me of anti
thinking) is forgotten in the moment of
intellectualism,you’d be b
performance. In the visual arts, as in
barking up the wrong tre
music, it is important to follow a
I’m an advocate of practi
developmental trajectory that after
informed by theory and li
diligent application ultimately includes
Its really a question of pr
not so much forgetting, as not paying
and balance. And I like to
active attention to these principles. You
be clear here. I am not su
must trust yourself, and work by feel. Rely
that the type desi process
on the totality of your experience. Rely on
necessaril adheres to a su
your history to guide you. Think through
strict taxnoic progression
“ ”
Its my contention that the edge
condition, the tension that exists in
the gap, is where the action is
Bold Italic
18/14

the body. Arrive on the beautiful shores of Poster Italic

20/34
 F F 123
k
“start
Bold Italic
from zero...”
32 pt

z 456
z
W

7 89
alter Gropius was famous for his exhortation to his
students in Weimar to “start from zero.” It’s when
you invent the way a stroke terminates, or when you
devise a new armature, that you can benefit most from
traditional techniques. It’s when you begin with the blank
page of purely formal extrapolation that the old skool
skills are most important. The geezers passed these
methodologies down in a master/apprentice environment.
Roman
15/19.2

Bold
192 pt
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