Hello, Type for Illustration

If you’re one of the 220,000+ Type Worship followers on Tumblr, or a regular visitor over the last 12 years, you might be wondering where your occasional post typographic treats have gone.

I’ve decided to start a new blog: Type for Illustration. You can find it on my website: Jamie Clarke Type

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I love beautifully combined type and illustration and here’s where I’ll share the fantastic examples I come across, along with my tips to help you make great matches of your own.

If you’re a graphic designer, this blog is for you. You’ll likely be working with illustrations all the time; choosing fonts to compliment, contrast or accentuate the imagery. Having some helpful guides and references can be invaluable.

If you’re an illustrator, this blog is for you. You may already be adding lettering to your own work or matching type to it; if so, there will be plenty of examples to inspire you further. But if the thought of drawing letters or choosing type feels daunting, this blog will help build your confidence.

If you’re an enthusiast, this blog is for you. Can’t decide whether you love type, lettering or illustration more? There will be lots to explore.

Join me at Type for Illustration

Goodbye Type Worship

Thank you to all my 220,000+ followers and visitors over the last 12 years. I’ve decided to start a new blog, still typography focused but a slightly different perspective.

Please join me at my new blog: Type for Illustration

Where it all began…

I started the Type Worship blog back in 2011 while still working at my digital agency. At the time I had no idea it would grow so fast, or that it would propel me into a completely new career.

Type Worship blog, February 2013ALT

Type Worship blog, February 2013

The blog began as a personal research aid, a place to collect examples of the type and lettering that inspired me, along with my own notes and commentary. Tumblr was on the rise and its short-form blog platform felt like the perfect place to host it all.

Type Worship grew rapidly. It gained support from Tumblr, which added it to a ‘Spotlight’ list of blogs to follow. I kept blogging in my spare time and grew familiar with the key figures working in the type and lettering industry and the underlying design trends. Eventually, I began to approach type designers and lettering artists, hoping to learn more about their work.

I even wrote blog posts, about the blogging, for other blogs, like Creative Bloq.

Type Worship on tumblr's spotlightALT

Type Worship on tumblr’s spotlight

At this time, Seb Lester was becoming well-known for his gorgeous lettering work (this was before he became a calligraphy superstar). I contacted him out of the blue in 2012 to ask for an interview and he agreed. Even though my blog was growing fast I was worried this opportunity might be too big for the blog. I needed back-up!

8 Faces Magazine

I’d met Elliot Jay Stocks at an event during my agency days. He’d set-up the popular typography magazine called 8 Faces, which was on a whole other level compared to my humble blog. I called him to ask if he’d be interested in publishing my interview with Seb in 8 Faces.

Not only did Elliot agree, he also wondered if my blog and 8 Faces might join forces? This set off a chain of events that led to Type Worship becoming the official blog of the 8 Faces magazine. I also wrote articles and interviewed type designers for the magazine and subsequent book.

8 Faces Magazine - Issues 1-8ALT

8 Faces Magazine - Issues 1-8

Our partnership culminated in me flying to New York to interview Michael Beirut of Pentagram, while Erik Spiekermann wrote, “Need to go back to 8Faces more: blog.8faces.com great blog about type & typography.”

More importantly, it led to a life-long friendship between myself and Elliot. We now even live in the same village, just outside Bristol (that was a bizarre coincidence, I assure you!). We can regularly be found in our local pub, talking about fonts and life.

Growth and Sponsorship

After the release of the final issue of 8 Faces and the publication of an omnibus book, Type Worship continued to grow. For several years, it was sponsored by the global type foundry Monotype. At its height, Type Worship became one of the web’s largest type and lettering blogs. By late 2018, it enjoyed a following of almost 225,000 type enthusiasts.

Type Worship statistics in 2018ALT

Type Worship statistics in 2018

However, by that point Tumblr had been in decline for a while. New follower numbers grew but interactions were slowing. My blog posts became less frequent and my audience drifted to other platforms.

I recently decided to stop posting to tumblr and focus my efforts on my own platform. For now, I’m going to leave the Type Worship blog where it is. I’ll be migrating over some of the most popular content to this blog (there are over 1000 posts so it can’t all come!).

New blog: Type for Illustration

With my new blog, I intend to continue exploring the world of type and lettering, The focus will tighten to examine the relationship between, you guessed it, type and illustration. I’ll write more about that in my next post.

Type Worship gave me the confidence to try my hand at type and lettering myself and it propelled me towards the type design course at Reading University. I had no idea it would be a catalyst for a career change that currently has no end in sight. Let’s hope this new blog will write another momentous chapter.

Join me at my new blog: Type for Illustration

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New Font Launch:

Hello! I’m SideNote.

I specialize in annotations, headings and friendly dialogue. 

I’m perfect for descriptions and explanatory text. Use me to deliver tricky information in a helpful, reassuring manner.

I look friendly and relaxed but professional enough to make you look awesome. 

Think of me as your friendly assistant.

There’s a very flattering article about me on I Love Typography

And you can purchase me here: ILT Shop

I recently became aware of Janine Heinrichs’ creative work and was impressed with her design philosophy. Here is an article she has prepared specifically for Type Worship…

In the midst of the pandemic, I felt I had hit rock bottom.

A few months prior, I graduated from my dream school studying graphic design at Shillington in the Big Apple. Portfolio in hand, I hit the ground running to land my first design job. I faced rejection after rejection and then, boom, quarantine.

Feeling discouraged, I knew that something had to change if I wanted to make my dreams of becoming a designer a reality. That’s when I decided to challenge myself to design one poster every day for one year and share it online. I hopped on my old 2013 MacBook Pro and got to work.

During the challenge, I drew inspiration from designers who use type like Roy Cranston, as well as others like David Carson. Their effective use of typography, layout, and breaking design rules was highly influential in the work that I produced.

365 days later, I completed my challenge, cultivated a community of designers and creatives on Tik Tok and Instagram, and got an inbox full of interesting projects that aligned with what I was already making.

Showing my work daily and enjoying the process without any attachments to the outcome made me realize something that changed how I looked at art-making forever: It’s not about the product; it’s about the process.

If you focus on enjoying the process and releasing attachments to the results, you won’t be so hesitant to share your work with the world. As you continue to share your work, your confidence will grow as you learn new skills. With that, more people will be drawn to you and ideal projects and opportunities will come your way. Like me, you’ll go from constantly doubting yourself and clamoring for people’s attention, to effortlessly drawing people in.

It’s no secret that as designers, we all struggle with imposter syndrome and perfectionism to some degree. Showing your work regularly is, in my opinion, the most effective way to overcome this while simultaneously improving your skills, and attracting opportunities perfectly suited for you along the way.

So stop taking your work so seriously! Allow your inner child to be curious and have fun. People will feel that off of you.

Today, I want to encourage other designers to overcome imposter syndrome and share their work as well. I’m doing this through my blog where I share what I’ve learned, and provide useful information for graphic designers who want to attract their ideal clients. You can find my blog at:

www.janinedesignsdaily.com

The World’s Writing Systems

This blew me away. A website collecting together every one of the current, 293 written scripts of the world.

The site is the brainchild of Johannes Bergerhausen of Germany. The information is beautifully presented, from oldest to newest, showing one reference glyph to represent each language. 

What I found really surprising is that new scripts are still being developed. The newest being Toto, a script created in 2015 for the critically endangered language spoken by the tribal Toto people living on the border of India and Bhutan. 

This web site presents one reference glyph and basic information for each of the world’s writing systems. It is the first step of the Missing Scripts Project, a long-term initiative that aims to identify writing systems which are not yet encoded in the Unicode standard. As of today, there are still 131 scripts not yet encoded in Unicode. So they can’t be used on the computer — yet.

There is a four colour silkscreen poster available which presents one typographic reference glyph for all 293 known writing systems in the world, living or historical. Available here.

Ghost Signs: A London Story - The Book

It’s taken almost 15 years, but the most comprehensive account of ghost signs ever published is within touching distance. Focusing on London’s hand-painted relics of its advertising past, Sam Roberts and Roy Reed have collected together a visual feast of London’s typographic shadows. From births and deaths to bombs and whiskey, each sign has its own story to tell. 

The book has just launchd on Kickstarter and will showcases around 250 of London’s most impressive and historically significant ghost signs, geo-located and transcribed, with details of what use they served and how they came to exist.

Ghost Signs: A London Story will appeal to those interested in design, architecture and typography and urban historians.

Go back it now on Kickstarter


Image Credits:

Commit No Nuisance - Great Guildford Street - Roy Reed

Herbert & Sons in 1895 (Courtesy of Herbert Group) and today on Gray’s Inn Road

Courage - Redcross Way - Roy Reed

Cedars - Cedars Road - Roy Reed

Rising Together: The Black American Experience with Police Violence

I was recently introduced to the inspiring work of Isometric, a graphic design and architecture studio run by queer people of color, in New York City. The team focusses on projects that advance inclusion, equality, and justice via visual identities and exhibitions. 

“We created this series of posters for an exhibit about the African American experience with the police in America. The exhibit was commissioned by Google for their New York headquarters as an initiative to educate their team and to elevate the discourse and awareness around police violence. The goal was to situate personal narratives within the context of a history of injustice and a contemporary culture of discrimination.

These posters viscerally convey the emotions that interviewees experienced when they were stopped by the police; each of them feared for their lives—a feeling that was starkly different from their white friends who tended to view the police as a protective presence.”

https://isometricstudio.com/

Making Rig Sans, Part 8

Spacing

Much of the overall look of a typeface is determined by the amount of space in and around its characters. Spacing therefore becomes a critical part of the type design process and many agree that it is in fact as important as the shapes of the characters themselves.

As each character’s shape and space are so intertwined, the spacing of a typeface tends to happen, at least provisionally, in parallel with the design of each letter. Rig Sans is no exception. Initially, each character is assigned a set volume of space on its left and right side with the aim of giving each an average amount of room and to ensure a consistent rhythm when typed together. You don’t want gaps or clashes between the characters but rather for the shapes to flow evenly. The spacing is tested by applying the font to a variety of text settings and then refined.

Despite best efforts, some characters just won’t sit well together. This is where the dark art of kerning is required.

What is kerning and how does this differ from spacing?

While, spacing refers to the generic amount of space allocated to either side of each character, kerning adjusts this distance between a specific pair of characters. For example, the letter ‘A’ is given a fixed amount of space either side, which works well when set against characters with flat sides, such as ‘H’: HAHA. However, when placed next to another diagonal character like ‘V’, an unwanted gap can occur between the two letters, due to their diagonal shapes: A V. This gap is therefore closed with a kerning value: AV.  

Even the most carefully spaced typeface will inevitably require some kerning (unless it’s monospaced) but the goal is to limit the amount of kerning required by applying good, consistent spacing.

There is much mythology around kerning in graphic designer circles. Reputable foundries go to great lengths to ensure that every conceivable character combination is well spaced, and if necessary, kerned, to maintain a consistent rhythm (you want to avoid over-kerning the letters as much as you do having excessive gaps). It’s not just a-z that requires kerning. Punctuation, figures and symbols all require attention for them to fit harmoniously with other characters. Depending on the number of characters in your typeface, this in-built kerning can take weeks of rigorous manual adjustment.

As a data point, Rig Sans has 468 characters and contains between 1850-2500 manually kerned pairs per weight. For a larger font, like my Span type family, with almost a thousand characters, the number of kerned pairs is closer to 4,000.

With my Graphic Designer’s hat on, the only time I might adjust the kerning on a well-crafted typeface that I’d purchased would be when setting a logo or word that was pulled out of context from the rest of the typeface. This text might require a different rhythm of its own.

Some of the mystique surrounding kerning likely results from the use of free or amateur fonts that might not contain any kerning. These therefore rely on the graphic designer to be responsible for kerning during the type-setting process. Personally, I would avoid using these types of fonts and instead look to professional type foundries or take a look at the growing collection available at Adobe Fonts.