Design Fundamentals Wk 4: Typography

Prior to watching this episode, it honestly never occured to me that people who are typographers actually design each letter and each little curve of a typeface. In the past, I’ve kind of just run with the assumption that typographers are people who put together different fonts that look good. I guess that’s more in the realm of Logo designers. As for how fonts came to be, I just assumed that they were always there — never really realizing that people are actively releasing them.

With that being said, however, typography seems to be one of the rare aspects of design that I can’t bring myself to enjoy… Previously, I’d thought that putting fonts together was somewhat interesting at best, and really tedious at worst. Now, having seen what these type designers actually do, I’m more convinced of that fact. I can appreciate it as an art form that takes a lot of attention to detail and fine adjustment, but it just seems super taxing to have to stare at the same letter for hours on end making tiny adjustments that your brain ends up distorting.

I think the episode actually does a great job showing how Jonathan goes and finds inspiration through the city. This part of the process was something that I could connect to. The gathering inspiration and finding your own style from the compiled research is what I find to be the most enjoyable aspect of design in general. Finally, just seeing how much satisfaction Jonathan felt at having many of his styles be widely used was really fascinating. For me, designing type feels really small on the scale of artistic displays, but it seems like it can have one of the most far reaching impacts on society.