What Its Like To

Design A Font
From Scratch
By Rebecca Greenfield
Steve Matteson has designed some of the most

ubiquitous typefaces in the world, and engineered the

original core fonts for Microsoft, adapting Times New

Roman, Arial, and Courier, which youve probably used

for term papers or resumes or anything else you wrote in

Word. He has also created some less-classic designs that
hes not too proud of, such as Curlz, which falls in the

Comic Sans camp of typefaces reserved for high school

yearbooks, princess-themed birthday party invitations,
and mockery.

But that is the plight of a professional font designer: One

day you get to make lasting letter sets, the next you have
to pay the bills. Sometimes you have to do work that

youre not really proud of, Matteson, the creative type

director at Monotype, toldFast Company. Thats why we

call it work instead of play.

The Beginning

Mattesons interest in words began as a

teenager, and he set up a printing press in

his basement

In college, at the Rochester Institute of

He fell out of love with mass printing, and

Technology, he discovered rare books

was drawn to calligraphy and lettering as

an art form

Letterer and illustrator Risa Rodil makes her own lettering

then uses them as typefaces

You could hold these books and page

through them and really appreciate the

craft from centuries ago. That really turned

me on to the art of the book

On Typefaces

Despite drawing much of his inspiration from

what he calls old-school Goudy-style fonts

and the book arts, Matteson would go on to

create some of the most lasting typefaces of

the computing age. And, as we enter a new

mobile-first, digital-exclusive era of reading and

writing, Matteston is also at the forefront of that
typeface revolution, designing for major tablet
and e-reader makers.

While recreating the alphabet from scratch

sounds like an increasingly difficult task
by now, youd think that every possible

permutation of legible letter shapes has already

been createdMatteson sees more opportunity

than ever to design new, better fonts. I worried

about that when I first started because back

then, 25 years ago, resolutions of screens were

so limited, the pixels were so coarse, he said.

But now that were reading on devices, I have

a whole new generation of eyeballs to design

for.Fast Companytalked with Matteson about

how he plans on continuing to make lasting,
beautiful, and sometimes wacky fonts.

What Its Like To Design A Font From Scratch // Rebecca Greenfield

The Process of
Digitizing Analog Type
Matteson Breaks down an example
of how he makes a font
Step 1: Sketch or draw
the lettering

Step 2: Roughly outline

the digitized scan of the
lettering

Step 3: Fill in your

closed vector shape

Designing Typefaces Is More

About Restraint Than Freedom
When designing typefaces, most designers probably

find the biggest challenge is exercising restraint in their

kind of free thinking as a designer, wanting to just go wild.

Typeface design requires so much restraint you have to

reign in that impulse to go crazy to make them legible and

functional.

If Design Is Like Writing Music; Font Design Is

Like Writing Jingles

I often equate type design to writing music. A lot of work

I do is custom work, working with a client, mobile user

interface, or a print magazine. Its similar to going up to a

musician and saying: Write me a jingle. And it has to be

written in this key, and its going to be sung by a male so it

has to be low in the register, and we want it up tempo, and

all these other sort of things they might specify for a piece
of music. It is similar for specifying what they want in the
typeface. That builds the structure.

A Font Generally Starts With An Adjective

They give me adjectives: approachable, friendly, feminine,

masculine. All of these adjectives play into the detailing
that we would do to the letter forms to help emphasize

those attributes. An example might be if someone said they

wanted a friendly design. Somebody might think if all the

edges of the typeface are rounded that would be friendly.

If they are really round, it can go too far in the friendly

direction. If they want subtle, too-rounded would go too far

down the carnival direction, rather than a dress-down Friday

level of fun.
What Its Like To Design A Font From Scratch // Rebecca Greenfield

But The Alphabet Actually Starts With

The Letter H
What type designers do is start with the cap
H, cap O, and cap V, and lowercase n, o,

d. Those give you a lot of information about

what the other letters are going look like.

The thickness of the stems and how big the

lowercase is compared to the uppercase, that

relationship is very critical to legibility and it
has a big effect on how elegant the design

looks. Then you start filling out the alphabet

and adding characteristics to curves. Its a very

methodical process.
Like Matteson, Rodil says she gets inspiration
from tradition typography and old books

Outside Inspiration Is,

However, Welcome

Ive spent a lot of time hiking and backpacking

in the Sierra Nevada; many times Ive been
to Yosemite. The shape of Half Dome has

beautiful soft curvature at the top and abruptly

falls straight down. The contrast of that smooth

polished granite and sheer cut off always

looked like something very graphic to me. I

sketched it several times while hiking and I
used that in one of my typefaces.

If You Want To Create A Lasting Font,

Look To Tradition
Letter forms can only change so much

because the tradition is (based on) the past.

As you start adding funky quirks to things,

there is less chance that those funky features

are going to live as long as traditional timeless

things. I will give an example: The Roman

capitals, for instance, the Romans inscribed into

monuments back in the 3rd and 4th century are

considered the most perfect form of the Roman

capital alphabet. A lot of typefaces have been
influenced by these shapes and proportions.
If you look at a contemporary design like

Helvetica, youll notice that most of the capitals

are designed to look like they are all the same
width. You have a very narrow m and a wide
e. Its the opposite approach to proportions
What Its Like To Design A Font From Scratch // Rebecca Greenfield

than the classical proportions of Roman

times. Helvetica is its own genre, it defines

this reaction against the classical proportions.

Helvetica has been around since the 60s and

its been pervasive and its used everywhere. But

thats a much shorter time frame than when you
look back to 3rd- and 4th-century letters that

look equally at home and legible today as they

did then.

Then Again, Not All Contemporary

Fonts Deserve So Much Hate (Ahem,
Comic Sans)

When all the Comic Sans vitriol was popular,

everybody saying I hate Comic Sans became

such a popular meme, I think a lot of people

dislike it because its popular to dislike it. If you

were to see it used in a comic I bet nobody
would notice or comment. I think the fact

is that its used for so many things that are

inappropriate. The graphic language doesnt

match how it is being used. That is probably

what drives people to hate thingsoveruse, and

then misuse.

Were About To Enter A

New Age Of Font Design
Looking forward so many people are using a

typeface specifically on a device where digital is

the final product. There are very few typefaces
designed with that in mind. Almost every

Risa uses Adobe Illustrator to create her own typefaces by using

the pen tool and most of her work is seen electronically

typeface out there, save for maybe 30 or 40,

out of 100,00very few have been designed

for reading on the screen. Were designing for

the next generation of typography. Lets think

about what makes type comfortable to read on

a device like a Nook or a Kindle and use that as

our target. u

Sources

What Its Like to Design A Font From Scratch by Rebecca

Greenfield in Fast Company
Artwork by Risa Rodil
What Its Like To Design A Font From Scratch // Rebecca Greenfield