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Fonts of Inspiration
by Andrea Chalupa
Dec 26 2007
Dec 26 2007
Typographers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones design many of the typefaces that we see all around us.
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Job title: Typographer
Companies that hire them: Large corporations and nonprofit groups, advertising agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA/Chiat/Day, art and design studios, and newspapers and magazines.
How to find out about openings: Trade sites like Typophile.com and Typographica.org list regular job openings.
How much you can earn: According to the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 2007 Survey of Design Salaries, starting pay is about $30,000. A principal or creative director typically earns about $120,000.
Useful skills: Tenacity and patience are paramount, as are good problem-solving and analytical skills. A knowledge of computer programs such as OpenType, PostScript, and TrueType, as well as familiarity with the computer-programming language Python, is extremely helpful. Some typographers get degrees in design, with a few schools even offering degrees in type and media.
Number of jobs in the U.S.: Not more than a few dozen.
Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones see their work wherever they go: on the packaging for airline food, on New York City bus ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, even on a banner on the storefront of a tarot card reader.
“We once saw this lost-dog flier in Soho in a font called Verlag that we had just released four days before,” says Frere-Jones. “It’s fantastically satisfying, but it’s still sort of strange,” adds Hoefler, whose Hoefler Text is one of the fonts included in Microsoft Word. “All the memories of that time when you worked on that font—where you were, the cans of Coke all around you—come back to you.”
Hoefler and Frere-Jones are font designers, and their digital type foundry, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, has created more than 500 different fonts for everyone from
Tiffany & Co. and Nike to the New York Jets and the rock band They Might Be Giants.
In order to come up with ideas for new fonts or modifications to old ones, they carry around small sketchbooks. “You see bits of lettering anywhere and inspiration just strikes,” says Frere-Jones. “I’m still fascinated by signs on the corner grocery store selling strawberries or an old bank note; I get transfixed by that.”
But the process from initial idea to finished product is a grueling one; it can sometimes take their seven-person shop up to four years to complete one font. “As a designer, you need to be scientific. This process is trial and error; there’s more error than success,” says Hoefler. “You have to be ruthlessly critical of your work. We’ve done 1,000 fonts but only released 500.”
The process is still much easier than it once was. As recently as 20 years ago, typography was primarily an industrial process involving dozens of people in a factory assembly line. Factory workers, using molds and hot lead, churned out little metal blocks of engraved letters. Today, it’s all done digitally using software programs like FontLab. Hoefler and Frere-Jones even write their own software code to create and update their own set of computer program tools.
The pair redesigned the fonts for the Wall Street Journal when the paper shrank its width by three inches earlier this year. One font, in six-point type for the stock listings, is called Retina; the other, in nine-point type for the main body copy, is called Exchange. The new fonts preserved the paper’s word count per page without making the stock listings too small to read.
Hoefler and Frere-Jones found each other at a book fair, where they discovered a mutual interest in the same typeface books—and a longtime love of fonts. Frere-Jones, then working at typography firm Font Bureau after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, had grown up in a family of writers (his brother Sasha is the music critic for the New Yorker) and always figured he’d do the same. But he discovered that it wasn’t the words on the page that intrigued him—it was how they looked. Hoefler, a subscriber to typography trade magazine Upper & Lower Case since the age of 11, didn’t go to college after high school, instead founding the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989. Frere-Jones joined him later that year, and in 2004, the firm was renamed Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
The pair has their hands full with assignments. Frere-Jones says that the public’s awareness of typefaces is growing thanks to sophisticated ad campaigns that prominently feature fonts.
“Everyone knows what a font is, at some point of the day they have to reckon with it, and in the end that awareness can only be good for how the field is regarded,” he says.
Companies that hire them: Large corporations and nonprofit groups, advertising agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA/Chiat/Day, art and design studios, and newspapers and magazines.
How to find out about openings: Trade sites like Typophile.com and Typographica.org list regular job openings.
How much you can earn: According to the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 2007 Survey of Design Salaries, starting pay is about $30,000. A principal or creative director typically earns about $120,000.
Useful skills: Tenacity and patience are paramount, as are good problem-solving and analytical skills. A knowledge of computer programs such as OpenType, PostScript, and TrueType, as well as familiarity with the computer-programming language Python, is extremely helpful. Some typographers get degrees in design, with a few schools even offering degrees in type and media.
Number of jobs in the U.S.: Not more than a few dozen.
Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones see their work wherever they go: on the packaging for airline food, on New York City bus ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, even on a banner on the storefront of a tarot card reader.
“We once saw this lost-dog flier in Soho in a font called Verlag that we had just released four days before,” says Frere-Jones. “It’s fantastically satisfying, but it’s still sort of strange,” adds Hoefler, whose Hoefler Text is one of the fonts included in Microsoft Word. “All the memories of that time when you worked on that font—where you were, the cans of Coke all around you—come back to you.”
Hoefler and Frere-Jones are font designers, and their digital type foundry, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, has created more than 500 different fonts for everyone from
Tiffany & Co. and Nike to the New York Jets and the rock band They Might Be Giants. In order to come up with ideas for new fonts or modifications to old ones, they carry around small sketchbooks. “You see bits of lettering anywhere and inspiration just strikes,” says Frere-Jones. “I’m still fascinated by signs on the corner grocery store selling strawberries or an old bank note; I get transfixed by that.”
But the process from initial idea to finished product is a grueling one; it can sometimes take their seven-person shop up to four years to complete one font. “As a designer, you need to be scientific. This process is trial and error; there’s more error than success,” says Hoefler. “You have to be ruthlessly critical of your work. We’ve done 1,000 fonts but only released 500.”
The process is still much easier than it once was. As recently as 20 years ago, typography was primarily an industrial process involving dozens of people in a factory assembly line. Factory workers, using molds and hot lead, churned out little metal blocks of engraved letters. Today, it’s all done digitally using software programs like FontLab. Hoefler and Frere-Jones even write their own software code to create and update their own set of computer program tools.
The pair redesigned the fonts for the Wall Street Journal when the paper shrank its width by three inches earlier this year. One font, in six-point type for the stock listings, is called Retina; the other, in nine-point type for the main body copy, is called Exchange. The new fonts preserved the paper’s word count per page without making the stock listings too small to read.
Hoefler and Frere-Jones found each other at a book fair, where they discovered a mutual interest in the same typeface books—and a longtime love of fonts. Frere-Jones, then working at typography firm Font Bureau after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, had grown up in a family of writers (his brother Sasha is the music critic for the New Yorker) and always figured he’d do the same. But he discovered that it wasn’t the words on the page that intrigued him—it was how they looked. Hoefler, a subscriber to typography trade magazine Upper & Lower Case since the age of 11, didn’t go to college after high school, instead founding the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989. Frere-Jones joined him later that year, and in 2004, the firm was renamed Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
The pair has their hands full with assignments. Frere-Jones says that the public’s awareness of typefaces is growing thanks to sophisticated ad campaigns that prominently feature fonts.
“Everyone knows what a font is, at some point of the day they have to reckon with it, and in the end that awareness can only be good for how the field is regarded,” he says.
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