อนุทิน วงศ์สรรคกร
สิงหาคม ๒๕๔๔
บันทึกสนทนาระหว่าง อนุทิน วงศ์สรรคกร และ คริสเตียน ชวาสท์
ตีพิมพ์ครั้งแรกใน นิตยสาร อาร์ตโฟร์ดี ฉบับที่ ๗๕ ประจำเดือน กันยายน ๒๕๔๔
(ไฟล์บทแปลภาษาไทยได้เกิดสูญหาย ขณะนี้อยู่ในขั้นตอนของการจัดทำใหม่)
----->Christian Schwartz was born in 1977 and grew up in a small town in New Hampshire. He attended Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1999 with a degree in Communication Design. While in school, he had summer internships with The Font Bureau, Inc. and Corey McPherson Nash, both in Boston, and worked as a freelance graphic designer in Pittsburgh.
After graduation, Schwartz spent 3 months as the in-house type designer and "type expert" at MetaDesign Berlin, a corporate identity firm in Germany, under the supervision of Erik Spiekermann. In January, 2000, he returned to Font Bureau, joining David Berlow, Jill Pichotta, and Cyrus Highsmith as a member of the full-time design staff. He spent most of his time customizing existing typefaces and drawing original typefaces for Font Bureau’s clients, mostly for use in publications or corporate identities. He was also resposible for developing their marketing materials. Near the end of 2000, he founded Orange Italic with Chicago-based product designer Dino Sanchez. Currently just a web site, they will soon release their first set oftypefaces, and plan to expand into a complete design consultancy. Recently, he left Font Bureau to concentrate full-time on independent projects and further developing Orange Italic.
How did you become a type designer? What excites you most about designing typefaces?My parents run an animation studio out of their home, so when Iwas growing up there were always type specimens and sheets of dry-transferlettering around, for when my father had to design title sequences. I think I became aware of the limitless number of ways a typeface can possibly look at a very early age.
In high school, I did some freelance graphic design and realized that there were typefaces I wanted to use that I couldn't find anywhere, because they didn't exist yet. I drew my first typeface when I was 14, and immediately started using it. It's embarrassing to look at it now, because I really had no idea what I was doing ú the spacing is terrible, the weights aren't well-resolved, etc ú but it was a good first taste of creating, in addition to using, type.
For me, the most exciting thing about designing a typeface is the moment when I look at the first proofs of a new typeface: after zooming in and concentrating on details, I can see for the first time how the whole system works together. Seeing my finished typefaces used in unexpected (usually funny) places is also exciting. It makes the effort seem more worthwhile.
After Macintosh was born, we saw alot of graphic designers start making font. Tons of them are cut and paste design typefaces and scanned-autotraced, what are your thoughts on this phenomenon?This has really played itself out at this point. In Europe and the States, at least, the grunge aesthetic has gone out of style. I think a lot of the graphic designers who made these cut-and-paste typefaces learned just how difficult it is to create a successful typeface and have decided to leave it to the experts. The best of these typefaces ( P. Scott Makela’s Dead History, for instance, really sticks out in my mind) will probably be remembered. The rest have already started to fade away, like the psychedelic typefaces made possible and popularized by phototype in the 1960s and 1970s. Autotraced typefaces are part of a long tradition of unauthorized copying of existing typefaces. They’re nothing new, and not particularly interesting. I think the most lasting impact of the Macintosh on type design was making it much more democratic. Anyone can design a typeface now, for better or worse. On one hand, type design can now be a hobby. On the other, custom typefaces for the exclusive use of publications or corporate identities have never been so affordable before.
Is it true that most type designers are self taught? In your case, how did you learn to design type?I made enough mistakes on my own, and learned enough from them, to get me about halfway there, but I didn’t draw anything I really feel confident in until interning for a summer at Font Bureau, where Tobias Frere-Jones and David Berlow helped me lose my bad habits and start over from the basics. I also learned a whole lot working with Erik Spiekermann. I think most type designers learn through individual trainingÑknowledge is handed down through apprenticeships, and we can all trace our roots. I was lucky to have learned two methodologies: David and Tobias’s methods of drawing descend from the Linotype drawing office, while Erik was trained at Berthold. It gives me more ways of solving problems.
I’ve also learned a lot by looking at type specimen books. Taking apart other people’s typefaces, decision by decision, is an excellent way to learn. I think having at least a decent working knowledge of type history is essential to being a good type designer. That way you have a whole arsenal of other people’s tricks and shortcuts to borrow fromÑand you can also avoid making their mistakes! Even after drawing type for 9 years, i’m amazed at how much I don’t know. Each typeface I draw teaches me something new.
Can you give some examples of where the source of ideas for newtypeface can come from?Christian :: I consider all of my typefaces to be revivals, in one way or another, but I’m not much of a purist. Right now I’m simultaneously drawing a very faithful revival of the precursor to Akzidenz Grotesk (which, in turn, was the inspiration for Helvetica) and playing around with a face based on some Dutch type from the 18th century, and also working on a couple of other faces loosely based on typography from the "lowest" vernacular of American signage. In a lot of ways, I think classical beauty and the idea of "perfection" in type design are wonderful but overrated. They can close designers off to a lot of exciting possibilities.
Thai people are new to digital typography and digital type foundry, could you please tell us in general about Font Bureau library? The idea behind the Font Bureau Retail Library is completeness. We strive to have something for every possible need, without following fads or short-lived trends. It’s pretty evenly split between families we’ve drawn because we wanted to and families that have been drawn for clients. The tastes of the designers that have worked here over the years have tended to run toward an early 20th-century American look, so much of the library has this aesthetic, but I don’t think we’ve been completely boxed in by this. We’ve got a good variety. If we think something is well-drawn and has potential to be useful, we’ll release it although I suppose these are pretty subjective criteria!
You were working full time at Font Bureau and also working on side projects with House Industries, Font Shop and Emigre in some collections. These foundries have very different styles, which is really Christian?Both. Neither. I don’t know. Working for Font Bureau, I draw typefaces to fit our clients’ needs. I’m a "hired gun" for art directors, which is challenging and interesting, but means I’m rarely drawing things I would otherwise choose to draw. My working relationship with House Industries is similar. They come to me with an idea for a set of fonts they want to sell (usually with brilliant ideas for packaging already in place) and I draw them, which is always a lot of fun because the guys at House are really great to work with.
I don’t think I’ve designed enough typefaces to have developed my own distinctive style yet. I suppose that may be my styleÑnot to have one way of drawing. It keeps me from getting bored. I have more an approach than a style: I try to put some warmth into everything I draw; mathematical precision doesn’t interest me much. Beyond that, the typefaces I draw on my own are all over the map.
Your typeface Fritz was honored by Type Directors Club. What is the idea behind Fritz? Why do you think it made the final list?I saw a need for a new humanist sans serif; basically the opposite of Futura but nothing like Optima. Something you could set a whole book in and people could read it comfortably. I found some handlettering that Oz Cooper, a great American designer from the early 20th century, had done in 1909 for an advertisement. Cooper never drew a sans serif text face, so i tried to get into his head and figure out what he would have done if he had the chance to do this project. I determined that his handlettering, which seemed very loose on the surface, had really classical oldstyle proportions, so I looked at Nicholas Jenson and Ludovico Arrighi’s work from the 16th and 17th century, borrowed heavily from their proportions for the Book and Book Italic, respectively, and combined them with Cooper’s style of finish, as well as some of his quirkier characters, like the lowercase "g". The Bold combines the Book with some of the ideas in Cooper Black. The Robusto, a bizarre display bold, is based on a single word that Cooper drew in a letter to a friend. I saw enough similarities between it and the handlettering that inspired the Book weight that I decided it could fit into the family. It gave a lot of opportunities to play games with the weight, resulting in a really strange texture when it’s used for text. This has been the most popular style so far, which surprises me because it’s so weird!
I don’t really know why Fritz made the cut, but I was flattered to be in such good company: Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Zuzana Licko, Jonathan Hoefler, and Jim Parkinson were also among the designers whose typefaces made the final list.
What do you think about Thai graphic design typeface and Alphabet? (if you have no idea about Thai graphic design please say no and tell us a little about why Thai graphic design is not distinguished to you).I’m afraid I don’t know as much about Thai graphic design as I would like to. In fact, most of the work I’ve seen has been yours! I think graphic design in the US is very Western-centric, and this begins with our education. In school, the only exposure to any kind of Asian design I got was a few lectures about gardens and paintings from Japan in an art history class. It would have been nice to be exposed to a wider variety of design from around the world. The mainstream design press hasn’t been much better: I’ve seen the occasional article about poster design in Japan and bus signage in northern India, but certainly nothing definitive or in-depth like the U.S. and European design annuals.
I’m fascinated by the Thai alphabet. The forms are beautiful. After learning the history of the Roman alphabet, it’s really interesting to look at writing systems that evolved from completely different roots.
As a type designer, does type change your lifestyle and the way you see graphic design? I try not to let being a type designer have too much impact on my life outside of work, but my friends are constantly making fun of me for getting distracted by great little bits of handlettering when we’re walking around the city, or for criticizing badly designed magazines at the bookstore, so I guess I’m not doing such a great job of this. Once you become sensitized to looking at typography a certain way, it’s impossible to turn it off!
Designing type has definitely affected my approach to graphic design. I like to work very systematically, coming up with a set of rules and seeing how they play out when I apply them. Type design is a natural extension of working this way, and vice versa. Second, I try to create my own "ingredients" as much as possible: in addition to using my own type, I like to use my own photography whenever I can. I think this is the only way to do truly original work as a graphic designer. Drawing type makes this much easier. Most importantly, I think understanding how type is made, as well as type history, also makes me a more sensitive type user.
