A Journey to Create a Novel Typeface

The lows and highs of a font design!

Waiting for a train at the subway, I can clearly recall a door with some letters on it. Some of the characters specifically drew my attention. It was written in hand but the curve of the 8 was impressive and the dangling tail of the “a” had a charm of its own. This was a unique typeface so I instantly went into my bag to grab the camera. From that moment, I knew that a unique font can be created out of this.

Being a logo designer, I have always been looking for new typeface. And those few minutes in the subway were the moments of inspiration. This was the onset of a passion that took me almost a year or rather a glorious journey of triumphs. Just like any other logo designer, I knew a lot about typeface. But in the industry of design, more is always less. Moreover, typography can have unimaginable aspects that remain uncovered to this day.

Since I had already captured the sign from the subway, it was time for action! I used illustrator and pulled out some of my favorite fonts from FontLab. By applying all sorts of tools to create a unique typeface, I discovered a lot and my passion proved out to be a self-learning experience. But this type of learning was not enough. I was still in search of a more structured tool. So I got myself enrolled in a type design class.

In those sessions, I was exposed to various typefaces and was also involved in different calligraphic exercises. At some point of time, it got hectic but overall, I had an incredible learning experience. And that was how I learned drawing for typeface design. Also, this was the best opportunity to interact with the professionals. We had several hours of discussions in which they would give out notes on my work and I communicated the idea I was trying to portray.

Besides that I did a lot of self editing which is indeed an essential part of the whole typeface design process. Contrarily, too much editing and corrections can spoil the personality of the font. For further professional advice, I went out to type designers whose work is universally acclaimed. That was a big help but what was even more encouraging was the fact that my work got unexpected appreciation when I submitted it in various online portals. In the end, the font had good portions of black and white characters that were optically correct.