MY BIGGEST HEROES

A big white cardboard box on the table.

A student, desperate face, mouth unsure, twisting in his chair.

“After the last lesson, I went home to keep working on my letters, but I feel so lost.” His hands shake as he opens the box.

Stacks of paper. Lowercase e’s everywhere. Sheets overflowing with loops and counters, some sliced apart, some drowning in red ink.

“What do you think about this curve? And the contrast? If I adjust this part, everything else looks off. But if I leave it, I hate it even more. These letters won’t let me eat, won’t let me sleep. It’s f*cking unbearable.”

He looks up at me, eyes pleading for a fix, a rule, a shortcut. I show him a warm smile and say:

[
Welcome to the world
of type design.
]

Not everyone gets caught in this trap. Most people move on, satisfied with ‘good enough.’ But then there are the rare ones__the ones who see not just letters, but problems to be solved, tensions to be balanced, voices waiting to be shaped. For them, it’s an obsession. The kind that breaks you a little. The kind that makes you a type designer.

Type designers work in the shadows, shaping the building blocks of written language. Letters that form words, words that create meaning. And yet, most people don’t question where letters come from, who makes them, or what it takes to design them.

The process could take a day. Or it could take 23 years. The difference depends on the level of WORKMANSHIP.

A graphic designer might make a typeface for fun, for their own studio, as an experiment. Nothing wrong with that. Some are great at it. But for a type designer, it’s not a day’s job. It’s a lifetime of sharpening the eye, refining skills, questioning everything.

What do type designers do? Design typefaces. Sure. But have you ever thought about what that actually involves? Let me throw some numbers at you__you might raise an eyebrow.

A basic font is a font that’s barely started. The kind that includes the bare-bones ASCII character set__95 printable characters, the usual suspects: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, and symbols.

The next level. A more complete Latin font__about 200 to 400 characters. You get your A–Z, a–z, 0–9, the punctuation, the symbols (!, ?, %, @, etc.), accented characters (é, ñ, ö), and, of course, the basic currency symbols like $, €, and £.

Now the real deal. A full-fledged typeface. One with extended language support, small caps, ligatures, OpenType features__this beast can easily top 600, 1000, or even thousands of characters if it’s supporting multiple writing systems.

A type designer once showed me a project he was working on__a math typeface for academic writing. (Yes, those also need to be designed.)

“Let’s see…” He scrolled through his file. “Yep, 7,092 characters.”

[
If I had three eyebrows,
they’d all be up.
]

So how on earth do you start something daunting like this? Ask ten type designers, get ten different answers. It’s not a linear process. But it always starts with a reason.

A government might need a typeface for uniformity.

An existing font could be missing diacritics for a language.

Accessibility standards demand better legibility for people with visual impairments.

A historical typeface needs digital restoration to prevent it from being lost.

Or a client ‘just’ wants a typeface that’s theirs__something unique.

Then the practical questions.

Where does it belong?
A novel, a brand, a road sign, an app?

__Context matters.

Which languages must it speak?
Just Latin, or Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic?

__Each script matters.

How does it hold up?
Bold in headlines, sturdy in body text.

__Scale matters.

What’s it up against?
Crisp print, pixelated screens, glowing billboards?

__Engineering matters.

How broad is its range?
A single weight, or a full spectrum from light to black, condensed to extended?

__Size matters.

How does it breathe?
Spacing goes beyond the space between letters; it defines the entire typeface.

__Rythm matters.

Does it need OpenType features?
Ligatures, small caps, stylistic alternates?

__Flexibility matters.

How does it go out into the world?
Retail, custom, open source?

__Business matters.

Who puts it to the test?
A typeface isn’t done when the last letter is drawn. It needs real-world testing, kerning adjustments, screen hinting.

__Greatness matters.

Ah, the technical issues!

Fonts are like chameleons. They change based on where they live__your computer, the web, print, or an app. They’re packed in file formats: TTF, OTF, WOFF, WOFF2, or variable fonts. Each one has its own quirks, like hinting or anti-aliasing, depending on the platform. Mac’s smooth, Windows sharpens.

Web fonts get their own rules because, well, browsers can’t handle everything the same way. Some can even adapt in apps, letting users tweak weights, sizes, or widths.

__Type design is a tangled web of technology and design, but without it, your words wouldn’t stand a chance.

Hello? Still here?

[
Honestly,
I’m not.
]

I almost didn’t do the Type & Media master’s. After my bachelor’s in graphic design, I wanted out. Out of the academy, out into the real world. Another year in that same building felt suffocating. But some people persuaded me to stay, for which I’m still thankful. It turned out to be the ultimate year.

During my bachelor’s, I was called ‘the nerd.’ I wore it like a badge of honor, but it also made me an outsider. Then Type & Media happened, and suddenly, I wasn’t the odd one out__I was home. A room full of fellow type nerds.

Letters. My 26 best friends. I remember breaking up with my boyfriend. It felt like the world had collapsed. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Everything was a blur except for those letters. I’d find myself staring at one. The bigger, the better.

It filled my heart more than a kiss from my (ex)boyfriend.

As a young kid, I was always observing, watching the world around me with curiosity and dreaminess. How often I heard my mother say, “Earth calling Britt!” I loved my dreamy reality. I noticed things others didn’t. Could hear things left unsaid, feel the weight of a moment before it passed. But the world is different. It wants things to be fixed.

Maybe that’s where the conflict lies between me and the process of designing typefaces: they need structure, but that’s not always what I want from them.

Luckily, there are people with the persistence to give them what they need, whether it takes a day or 23 years.

Type designers operate like the backstage crew. Essential but invisible. But why stay in the shadows? Give them the mic, the spotlight, the standing ovation.

[
Or at the very least, a damn good seat in the front row.
]