Type Design: A Process - Dalton Maag

How the type design process works between client and designer:

• what the clients like and dislike about gill sans - information gathering - small on screen
• core values of organisation in pictures - chose what people think best represent the brand
• typographic association with image - move from brand world into typographic world 
• bridging the two worlds
• grid with key words of the brand values - font cards - placed on grid where they feel the font style best sits - start to rank the fonts 
• BBC top 3 fonts were all designed by british type designers 
• look at design features that are shared between the fonts - sharp counters etc
• after workshop revisit the brief - start to sketch, discuss and digitalise 
• fonts that are information based - legibility concerns - use helvetica, want distinction and definition e.g. higher case I and lower case l looking the same
• spacing - need to have air in the counter forms - useful for when theres a lot of content on screen 
• describe the outside of the letter with dots - work with true type - online font format that allows font to be hinted - useful for screenbased font 
• work of 7 or 8 ideas at one time
• introduce uppercase characters and punctation to get a feel of how the font is going to work
• design regular weight at first 
• once signed off on contract move to 'extreme weights'
• provide client with weight test - get a feel for the regular, medium and bold - can generate weights easier if work with extreme 
• single story versions - explore the characteristics and details of the individual letters 
• softening / making connections smoother / do something with angle of terminal etc
• full character set produced - accented form - upper and lower - proportional figures - punctuation 
• interpolating between weights 
• move to kerning - reduce or increase spacing 
• Then get into engineering- fonts need to work consistently and stably across all platforms - use coding 
• look at hinted versions - pixelated 
• final delivery of font - desktop / web / app font versions  - condensed versions of each other 

Optical Principles

Looking at type characteristics in width, height and curve, as well as spacing, to achieve consistency and a visual understanding