Typographica: Undergrad, Cooper, KABK — One Student’s Road to Learning Type Design

In 2009, after 13 years as a self-employed graphic designer, I decided to abandon the professional world and go back to school — this time to pursue a field that seems related, but is an entirely separate discipline: typeface design. Read more about my journey here ...

Luc Devroye: Best Typefaces of 2013

The Brisbane typeface, my graduation project for Type and Media 2013 at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, was recently included in Luc Devroye’s 'Best Typefaces of 2013'. This project is the result of a five month process from initial concept to the stage it was presented for final assessment. You can read more about the design process for Brisbane here.

Brisbane, a wayfinding typeface

Over the last five months I've been working on my final project for the TypeMedia masters program at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Here is a little about Brisbane, the typeface...

Brisbane is a relaxed, self-assured sans serif designed specifically for pedestrian wayfinding in the city of Brisbane, Australia. With a range of three weights in five styles and accompanying optical grades for inverted use, Brisbane’s functionality makes it 
a solid candidate for orientation systems in the city or suburb. OpenType features for Brisbane include superiors for setting times and distances, and a set of stylistic alternates for use in small text. A selection of pictograms and orientation devices have been 
designed to harmonise with Brisbane’s informal character forms.

The Brisbane Typeface Family
A = Positive Grade, for use on light coloured backgrounds
B = Inverted Grade, for use on dark coloured backgrounds

Brisbane has a mix of stylistic and functional attributes. An uncomplicated sans serif design reflects the personality of the city of Brisbane. Other stylistic features include a relaxed ‘y’ and ‘k’, and a single story ‘a’ and ‘g’. The flat top on the stem of the ‘a’ and ‘g’ morphs into a pointed feature in the italic. A large x-height, low cap height and narrow character width allows for maximum legibility when setting 
text tightly within limited vertical 
and horizontal spaces.



Many characters have been optically corrected to remove heavy spots and joins. A slight taper was used in diagonal shapes to lighten the joins 
with tight angles. A single story ‘a’ and ‘g’ was chosen not only for their relaxed personality, but also to avoid the complex shapes of the double story versions  which can be difficult to read at distances.

A set of stylistic alternates have been included to give the designer more control over the amount of character suitable for the orientation system they are working on. The alternates available can be changed as a set or by individual glyph. Superiors have been created to allow for setting times and distances. Included are lowercase characters, numerals, arrows, currency symbols and some basic punctuation. The set also includes stylistic alternates.

One of the technical features of Brisbane is the inverted grades for use on dark coloured surfaces. When white text is placed on dark backgrounds, the light refracting from the white area optically expands, making the text look bigger than its black counterpart. In order to make them appear the same, I’ve created additional grades that have been optically tested to match. You can see an example here by placing your hand over one eye.

Brisbane is still very much a work in progress. Read more about this 
project and my design process here...

Experimental writing tools

While exploring new ideas for typefaces using the broad nib and pointed pen, I also created some of my own writing tools from objects found around the house and in the hardware store. Below are the tools I made showing the marks they created.

Post-it notes create awesome marks when rotated

Roll-on deodorant bottle filled with ink resulted in a scaling effect

A felt furniture pad on the end of a piece of balsa  

Balsa and plastic pipe with a beveled edge

Post-it notes with a smaller width

Pipe insulation in a piece of plastic tube gave interesting stroke endings 

Stralia—An exercise in contrast

My latest project—typeface Stralia—is a study in contrast informed by the broad nib pen. It has certainly been a big learning curve. ‘Learning how to see’ would be the way I would describe the experience of designing this typeface. And still there is so much more learning to come. Balancing the weight of each character and making them all work together as a team is not something that comes overnight.

Stralia was designed for use in small text sizes. In larger sizes however you can see some of the small details that make Stralia organic and approachable.

Below is an example of Stralia’s character set showing Uppercase, Lowercase, Small Caps, Numerals and other non-alphabetics. Stralia also has stylistic alternates for C, G, Q, R, S and s, which change the feel of the typeface to something a little more serious. You can compare the two below in the word ‘ORGANICS’.

Greek companion typeface

I'm currently working on a Greek companion character-set at Type]Media. Directed by Peter Bi'lak we had to choose an existing typeface to then build the Greek upper and lowercase for. I decided to choose National Semi Bold by Kris Sowersby—Klim Type Foundry as it didn't have a Greek companion and I liked the idea of working with a bold sans for this project.

It's been a challenge working with forms that are unfamiliar to me. A great exercise in identifying the unique shapes of the existing typeface to carry into the new forms.

Below you can see my progress. The lowercase and a comparison of Greek and Latin. Uppercase still to come.

My next stone carving

The start and final version of my next stone carving. The thin strokes were completed first followed by the thicker strokes. My focus while carving was making the depth and angle of the walls of the similar weighted strokes consistent so the light is captured equally.

Stone Carving at KABK

Our first of 10 sessions with Françoise Berserik started this week at KABK. We learnt from this exercise that there is no difference when carving a serif or a sans serif. Both are created with the same chisel direction from the outside of each corner to the inside centre point of the stroke.

Typeface revival

Only week 2 and things are heating up. We've been doing brush work with Peter Verheul, the pointed pen with Erik van Blokland, python scripting with Just van Rossum, museum tours with Jan Willem Stas and the major project for the first term being a typeface revival with Paul van der Laan.

After searching book stores and markets I've found two contenders for a revival. One is a children's book with beautiful hand illustrations printed in 1948 and the second a type specimen from the Amsterdam Type Foundry of a Javanese type from around 1920.

Lots of research to be done this week before I make a decision.

Birthday lettering

My lovely Type]Media classmates individually hand lettered a beautiful birthday card for me to be included in a set tied together with twine. A piece for the time capsule I think.

Trip to Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany

Seven of the Type]Media13 crew took two cars to Mainz last week to visit the Gutenberg Museum.

The museum is one of the oldest printing museums in the world and houses two copies of the famous Gutenberg Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s. Only 21 complete copies have survived. Most were destroyed in World War II. I've also seen the copy located in the New York Public Library which was the first copy to go to the US.

Johannes Gutenberg born in Mainz around 1398, invented mechanical movable type which enabled the distribution of knowledge to the masses. Although different portraits of Johannes exist, none of them are authentic as he died a relatively poor and unknown person on February 3, 1468.

Orientation Day & Workshop at KABK

Finally the day arrived to meet my Type]Media 2012/13 classmates. Most of us have been intouch via Facebook and Twitter so when we met in person it was almost like we knew each other.

On day one we received an introduction by the faculty and an overview of the different study areas of the Royal Academy of Art. Afterwards we had a tour of the facilities, a few beers and then an evening bbq followed by DJ's.

On the second day we got to choose from a range of workshops. I participated in the 'Program or be programed' workshop. Normally programming would not be my choice but I thought it might be a good to experience something that I was not familiar with. We played around with Processing, a programming language for visual artists. We were able to make random sounds and images which can interact with movement and other input devices. Wefeelfine.org and Messa di Voce are awesome examples of what you can do with Processing.

Type]Media 2012/13 The Hague, Netherlands

I'm very excited to announce I will be attending the Type]Media MA program at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in the Netherlands starting in September 2012 finishing mid 2013. I will be making posts here and via twitter @7roy on my progress and adventures.