A recent discussion on Episode 19 of the Interrogang podcast touched on this topic, and my typeface Aligne, got a mention. They talk about how what we’re taught influences what we make as professionals and whether these habits are bad or what makes us different.
Here’s a little of what they had to say:
Kyle: “In type education programs, I see a lot of students, they try to bring all that baggage of what they think a font is ‘supposed to be’ into the process instead of saying ‘hey, let’s be open-minded about it.’ So this probably goes back to your question about breaking things down first, saying, ‘I don’t want to bring all of my preconceptions into the process; I just want to bring my skills into the process.’ And I think a lot of students do that; they tend to say, ‘Oh, a ‘g’ is supposed to look like this, or a ‘s’ is supposed to have this thing on the end of it. No, not necessarily, like you know, unlearn a little bit… so that might be a bad habit. I don’t know if that’s quite what you’re getting at.”
Kyle hit the nail on the head when he said: ‘I don’t want to bring all of my preconceptions into the process; I just want to bring my skills into the process.’
As students, we forget that type design is subjective; it’s personal, it’s how a particular individual sees the world. There are no rules or regulations; we are simply creating a system out of individual parts that must work together to create rhythm and an even texture. When you understand the system, you can break free of traditional models and be in a space where you can explore or invent something new.
