Beyond Words - The creation of typefaces.

In the past I've written about the impact and overall importance of typefaces/fonts. How the appropriate choice of both, imparts a tone upon our writing and enhances its impact.

A single word rendered in two differing typefaces can read as the harshest loudest cry, or as a softly spoken suggestion.

Yet there are times when nothing feels suitable for the expression you need, when the baggage of a font or the total lack of one appropriate, leads people to create the colour their palette is missing.

This act of creation, I feel, does not get celebrated nearly enough. It is vanishingly rare for us to find any untrod ground in this world, the notion of inventing a new colour is a newsworthy one. Yet the typographic equivalent is achieved with a startingly regularity by comparison.

What makes this so beautiful is that a typeface is not passive, nor is it static. It lives, it grows, is pushed pulled distorted elevated and reduced. It is both tool and material, at its best it is Klein blue and Vanta black, mixed with a 3D printer and a Hog-Bristle brush.

We should look at the creation of these expressive typefaces as something to celebrate, to explore. They do not just belong to the realm of graphic designers, they can teach artists the importance of negative space, how to imbue personality in simplified form, how to look at the macro and micro simultaneously.

But even more wonderfully, they can give a weight and impact of voice to those who have had their voices reduced. They can allow for greater self expression than many have the skill to create themselves. They can lend equal strength to the words of the pauper, as they do the politician.

They can capture the sound of a protest, the diversity of the crowd, and emotion of a moment, and allow you to speak with that voice.

(Voice of the wall - Heimat Berlin - Typeface drawn from photographed graffiti on the Berlin Wall )