Making good typefaces requires an understanding of how typefaces are chosen and used in graphic design. If you're a graphic designer with solid typographic skills, you can apply that knowledge to making better fonts. Conversely, the specifics of designing type will teach you a lot about using type well.
- Type design is a series of decisions, and studying typography will help you make informed decisions. As you dive into the world of type design, you will discover that there are many layers to it. There are, to be sure, a number of big decisions, like whether is a serif or sans serif, how many weights and styles it will have, and what the character set will include. There are literally thousands of micro-decisions made throughout the process, like where does a straight line become a curve and how may points best define a shape, and where should they be placed? How wide should the curve of a lowercase p be, in relation to the lower case n.
The more carefully you study typography, the more automatic these decisions will become. As typographer, Martin Solomon, once said to me, Theory is the story we tell ourselves about what makes good design. This is why we study typography, to find good design, and to figure out how it was done. Studying typography, in this sense, is research, it leads us towards a deeper understanding. It helps us see why something is the way it is, and what decisions went into making it that way.
It also leads us to influences that informed our influences, this is history. The events and people that formed the evolution of our art, every book, every article and every typeface you study is a signpost to more. There is, of course, a down side to studying, it's possible to be too heavily influenced by a style or designer. There's much to be learned from the work of others, and the revival of old fonts is a noble pursuit, however, original design ideas keep the field moving forward, and add to the history rather than repeating it.
If you're a graphic designer, studying type design will help you in choosing type, it will help you in using type too, knowing where a type comes from, what related types exist, what characters are available and what all of the parts of the font are meant to do. In the course of studying type, you will see type used in ways that you haven't before, you'll see different ways of setting, different size combinations, and different type combinations.
- Why study typography?
- What makes a typeface great?
- Stroke angle, weight, and contrast
- Shape variations
- Finding good models
- Typeface vs. lettering
- Drawing the basic glyphs
- Producing a functioning font
- Printing, critiquing, and revising