… doing non-client based projects where possible … is critical to the development of our work. sometimes you shouldn’t need a reason to try something, you should just explore without purpose like when you were a young kid. if you truly enjoy what you do, this should be the easiest thing in the world. Jonathan Quainton.

Designers live to solve problems. But most clients instinctively offer solutions without ever stating the problem they’re trying to solve. You’ll hear «move this over here» and «make this bigger» when what you want is to know why they want this moved or that bigger.

When you know the underlying problem a client sees, you get the opportunity to actually solve the problem, rather than blindly implementing a suggestion that might not work. That’s not to say that clients can’t offer good solutions, but knowing the problem helps you make more informed design decisions in future rounds. After all, the problem they’re seeing might be bigger than the single interaction they’re looking at right now.

The most basic yet effective question is one every 4-year-old knows well: why? When the client asks you to make the logo bigger, and you ask why, you might learn that they feel their brand is underrepresented on the page. And knowing that can help you suggest a ton of other ways to present the brand without scaling the logo up to 600 pixels tall. Best of all, after you’ve asked why a few times, the client will get it and start highlighting problems, rather than handing you solutions.

Tim Dikun.

… when you freely share your work with the world using Creative Commons, you have to see your content as an engine that powers some other way of making money. In some cases, it fuels sales of your physical books. In others, it encourages people to come to your live shows, or to hire you to provide customized services to them. Your content produces value for others right away, but the value to you is unpredictable in timing and effect.

It’s like planting a seed that you aren’t sure will grow. If it does blossom, it can be a beautiful thing, resulting in new and unexpected collaborations, opportunities, and transformations to your original work.

Like any big change, it comes with a risk. You close the door to immediate payment for your content, but you open a larger door to the world.

Sarah Hinchliff Pearson.

In type, it’s very easy to get caught in the technicalities of it. The designing the type, the programming, the process, but ultimately, … it’s for the purpose of it to be used, to tell a story, to help people with their own work. It’s just a tool on its own. That’s kind of, for me, is one of the larger lessons I have learned. The work we do — and something that even gets presented as very technology-focused — can still convey a lot of story and a lot of soul. But that’s still all up to the person who uses it, I can only hope that it’s used in a positive way. The end result is bigger than just the font file itself. Andy Clymer.

Designers put a lot of trust into the tools to do the right thing. Someone might just want to design type and then they realize they’re actually — This is something that Jonathan Hoefler told me a long time ago — realize that you’re not working in the design industry, you’re working in the software industry.

You’re actually building a little piece of software that someone has to install on their computer and it has to work in the right way, otherwise they’re going to be calling you and wanting their money back. I think learning to program can help you learn how this piece of font software that you’re building actually works.

Andy Clymer.

I think type designers think a lot about process, because things take so long. You’re working for years on something and you really have to plan ahead in a special way. You do have to feel like you’re in control of the process.

As a type designer, you’re going to be working on for years on a project, and you want to be sure you’re doing it the right way so that you’re not setting off now worrying if you’re going to lose three months of work when you realize you did something wrong. Things can be very tedious.

For example, kerning can be a very tedious process. You think about it as, «I have to look at everything. I have to look at every single combination of glyphs» and it can feel insurmountable. There isn’t just one way to kern a font or proof all of these combinations of glyphs, designers have run into this same problem made new tools to help when they thought of a better way. So you think a lot about process as a type designer and the tools that you use influence the process.

Andy Clymer.

You know, I think that when you start designing a typeface, it’s helpful to consider that you’re painting one corner of a big painting. That this typeface is just one instance in a theoretically limitless design space of variations. You can imagine the same typeface in wide or in narrow, in heavy or in light, in high contrast or low contrast. There are limitless alternates and you might end up drawing a lot of them or just drawing two or three more masters. But if you set out designing a typeface and consider the relatives of this typeface, you have a different vantage point.

It’s like the type setter that opens one drawer and goes «Oh! Helvetica semi-bold 12 point». That is a myopic view of a typeface. But thinking of an interpolation with several axis is the other extreme where you realize that every shape you draw is just the shape that this typeface takes under a certain constellation of design variables. So, I think for the intermediate designers, that is the big challenge — to get out of the project you work on and widen your view and see that you’re really just drawing one instance. If your client approaches you and says «I need a titling face of that font» or «I need a body text of that font» then you’re not drawing a new typeface. You’re just changing your typeface by changing the variables.

Hannes F. Famira.

If you practice typography without having at least had a taste of type design, the understanding of the hierarchy of white space ends at the choice of typeface. So, the tracking depends on the counter-space. The word space depends on the tracking, and the linespace depends on the word space.

So there is an inverse hierarchy where the smallest object on the page dictates the rest of the typographic parameters. If you’re a typographer and all you do is buy a font and then make typography with you, you’re lacking that first step; The space between characters is determined by the space inside the characters

As a typographer, you can add tracking or you can kern stuff, but you cannot shape what’s inside a character. As a type designer, you can look at the counter inside the lower case ‹b› and shape it and then you look at the counter in the lower case ‹n› and you shape it and you look at the ‹b› and the ‹n› and you make them work together. That’s like getting into the molecules of type.

Hannes F. Famira.

… the only way you have culture is actively and by design. I don’t think culture is a personality that emerges from your company. I think it is something you create, and you do it every single day. The way you do that is you define a set of values that you believe. You don’t just put them on some nice sign on the wall and everyone looks at them in the café and then they walk away. You practice them every single day. For us, when we would do product reviews, anybody from the company could go. … That’s the only way that it is going to happen. I think really bad things happen when you just let culture emerge. Jeff Veen.

Never forget, those who hate you the strongest, are often the ones who also push you or your work the most. Those who hate you with a passion will put in a lot of effort telling others about it.

Often your strongest critics are the ones who spread your work with more passion than anyone else. We should thank them! For me personally, every experience with someone who hates my work pushes me even harder to work more. Every piece of unfair critique makes me want to try harder, work more, run faster.

If someone hates your work, you know you are doing something right. If you’re not pissing someone off, you are probably not trying hard enough.

Tobias Van Schneider.