gordonated

Made with FontFont

I bought this book for a pretty decent RM184. I thought I would never get a chance to even browse through it. Lucky enough to have a book like this. I don’t mind reading the articles repetitively.

Designers have their own pet ideas about typography for sure. We stick to one idea about it that we have read or heard or maybe taught of from various sources. My typography teacher once had a written test done after every class to ensure we get something out of his lessons. Back then, all I heard of is Arial and Times New Roman, to be set in 12 point, double spacing, with bold headlines. We were told in secondary school the same. Who cares about typography, you don’t need to kern alphabets to pass your papers.

Anyway, this book brings out many perspectives about the issue. Some are in nature, radical while some purists. Separated by thought and interpretation but joint together in the coolest type library in the world.

While reading through, you will find that each FontFont typeface has its own unique identity. A very personalized history behind it. Carved deep in detail by its respective designers. FF Bau for example, is a revival of the Grotesk typeface Schelter Grostek. In creating FF Cocon and FF Balance, Evert Bloemsma stated this really interesting statement:

“Typography is full of traditions, and is therefore a field full of designer pitfalls. Before getting to work, you must be aware of all those conventions passed down to us, otherwise, you won’t succeed in adding something substantial.”

On the other hand, Hans Reichel, a musician by profession, playing regularly in jazz concerts, drew inspiration to name his typeface FF Dax from a Daxophone and had no idea about the fact that his typefaces were back then also digitized to work on a Macintosh. Martin Majoor strongly believes that you have to start from the alphabet ‘a (lower-case)’ when starting to design a typeface and follows a strict discipline of only moving to the italics and bold later on. Ole Schafer broke the record by creating 247 fonts for FF Fago, crafting it on the same baseline regardless of whether it is heavier or thinner in stroke. Amazing!

It also showcases stunning images of how and where FontFont typefaces have been use. Spawning a large collection of its entire type library, almost every FontFont typeface is covered in various sections throughout. Not all typefaces are covered in detail but generally, a handful of selected ones go beyond just the back pages of showcasing them being applied skillfully.

Out-takes were also featured such as both computer and hand sketches. Some were actually drawn of tissue papers or on newspapers. Seria, by Martin Majoor for example was drawn on a napkin.

One funny thing about this book is that “Serious” typefaces were actually referring to typefaces which have more typographic features (oldstyle, ligatures, mostly built on the purpose for book typography, e.g. FF Clifford, FF Nexus by Akira Kobayashi and Martin Majoor respectively). Meanwhile, “Radical” and “Functionalism” were referring to typefaces such as FF Scratch, FF Fudoni, both by Max Kisman. I thought it was genius to use that term next time.

You can read a little more about it here from FontFont’s official website. Or you can get a sneak preview of how it looks like in PDF form here.

Lastly, there are still many interesting facts not mentioned by me here about this book. Go read it if you can. Or buy it. If you have been studying Bringhurst’s ideas (which are awesome), maybe you might want to go less traditional and head other ways.

Oh, I’m so inspired to create my own typeface. Even if I could made one based on my own pet idea’s about the subject, it will be great. Well, I’m just a crappie designer making crappie things.