Gotham

GOTH
HAM
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HOW LETTERS ARE SUPPOSED TO LOOK
The Type Specimen Book
by Abbas Deidehban
Typography GDES 1314.02
text by Elliott Earls
2009
Things have changed. No longer
do designers lust for the quick
buckandeasyfamethatasignature
font will bestow. The reasons
are legion and almost irrelevant.
The more interesting question
becomes: what did we learn
from this episode? I learned that
the craft of drawing by hand is
still a most valuable asset when
it comes to designing fonts, and
that computer tricks are a poor
substitute for intent. I know
what I’m talking about because I
was there, and I did inhale, happily
indulging in the so-called
typographic computer
“experiments”ofthe90s.I’vecometo
acknowledge their shortcomings.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
Light 21pt.-27pt. (All Caps)
 Type Design Has Lost Its
Urgency,
Type Design Has Lost Its
Urgency,
WhileType
making marksDesign Has
on paper, the internal Lostdia-Its
non-linguistic

Urgency,
log between retina and cortex may go something like this:

Type Design Has Lost Its

Urgency,
Type Design Has Lost Its
Urgency,
Type Design Has Lost Its
Urgency.
BlackItalic 28pt.
 It has spawned
a plague!
upon the house of
Montague!
Fontographer (the
computer) is a great tool
for some, but a terrible
tool for the tenderfoot, the
greenhorn, the neophyte,
novice, rookie, or initiate.
Fontographer has been a
pox. What is so inherently
stifling about drawing on
the computer? Tactility
and nuance are the first
casualties. Drawing with
a mouse or a tablet is
like driving a tank while
looking through a drinking
straw. How do you design
letterforms? Kick it old skool
style. Draw them big, with
a ruling pen and Plaka, and
some Pro White. Focus on
the serifs or the termination
of the character. Don’t so
much understand how a
letter is drawn: experience
Ulra Italic 31pt.
Black Italic 21pt.
how a letter is drawn. over plate bristol. I should
Then refine the letterforms provide you with a diagram
through successive on the proper method of
redrawing. Sit back, evaluate loading a ruling pen with
them optically (with your ink, and discuss how to
retina). Then draw them successfully transfer your
again. Making them thinner drawings into Fontographer.
here and thicker there.
Become intimately familiar
with the French curve. Is
it possible to achieve all
of the above using only
the computer? Of course,
given sensitivity, discipline,
and a true biological
understanding of some of
the preceding issues. At
this point, it would seem
prudent to have a lengthy
discussion about technical
considerations. We should
discuss what lead hardness
to use in your drafting pencil
or the benefits of vellum
Medium 8/9pt.
 Ultra
Successfully transfer your drawings 20pt.

ThinItalic
into Fontographer 42pt.

Black
The nuance is so important 26pt.

Ultra Italic
that any discussion 37pt.

Book
of them would be counter 28pt.

BookItalic

Thin
productive.
The gap between language and
64pt.

23pt.

Bold

XLight
experience
becomes a gaping hole
64pt.

31pt.

MediumItalic
as one begins to discuss issues of craft. 18pt.
How
How do
do you
you design
design letterforms?
letterforms?
How
How do you design letterforms?
do you design letterforms?

Kick it o
ThinItalic 23pt.

Kick it o
focus
focus
focus on the
focus
focus Thin 34pt. serifs
or the termination of
the character
BlackItalic 18pt.
old skool
old skool

Draw them
UltraItalic 99pt.

Don’t so much understand how a letter is drawn:

experience how a letter is drawn. Then refine the
letterforms through successive redrawing. Sit
back, evaluate them optically (with your retina).
Medium 14/16.8pt.

big Black 130pt. (all Caps)

Book 26pt.
Gotham Thin
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19pt.
We thought the chicks would dig it. Yeah, the chicks.
It was all about the girlies. And let me asure you, they
had an equally distorted and perverse interpersonal
aesthetic. It was the 80s. We were young, upper
middle class ultraconservative Catholic boys and
girls and we had a paucity of suitably fashionable
role models. The guys had mullets or ?boy hair,? and
the girls wore tons of foundation, white lipstick, and
blue eyeshadow. I should point out that these young
women wore heavy blue eyeshadow regardless
of their complexion or eye color. Because at that
historical moment it was an established scientific
fact that if one wore enough blue eyeshadow, the
eye would look blue! Now, even at the tender age of
sixteen, before my acquaintance
with Josef Albers or color theory,
this seemed all wrong. Even then,
I often found my gaze transfixed,
nay locked, upon the upper eyelid
of a typical brunette with brown
eyes. Something was horribly wrong here!
Book 14/16.8pt.
back
the
f@*k
up.
BlackItalic 85pt.
Type design
has regained
its soul.
BlackItalic 55-60pt.
 While making marks on paper,
the internal non-linguistic dialog between
retina and cortex may go something like
this: How thick? How black? How thin?
Thinner? Thicker! Bigger! Blacker! Smaller!
Whiter! Grayer? Closer? Farther! Tighter?
Too tight! I stress that this process, in order
to be successful, is non-linguistic. The As the letterform progresses through
hand moves, the mark changes, and the successive stages of development
eye responds. The eye, and how it relates and refinement, the process becomes
to mark making, or more accurately, how increasingly optical. When the impulse or
it responds to the mark made, is the most the “idea” for a font springs primarily from
important thing. optical phenomena, such as mark making,
drawing, handwriting, or manipulation
Letterforms are in large of formal elements, it may be considered
measure governed by social contract to have sprung from exclusively formal
and simple optical principles, such as extrapolation. The resolution of a font, the
the ones’ preached by our now debased successive development. refinement, is
and debunked High Priest of Visual always an endeavor.
Thinking, Rudolf Arnheim. And while
there are obviously far hipper and much
more contemporary developments
within cognitive science and perceptual
psychology, issues of balance, harmony,
scale, as well as principles of gestalt, all
have a bearing on the letterforms.

BlackItalic 8/9pt.
 Gotham
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