4: Your Type Design Brief

Designing a typeface can be a long journey so it's prudent to have a clear vision of its purpose. You might begin with something purely self-expressive. However, the usual practice is to create a typeface in response to a brief.

Type up your responses to the following questions about your custom typeface.

How will it be used?

Is it for a specific project or personal use only?

Is there a problem you might solve?

How might your typeface fit into a landscape alongside similar designs?

What makes it unique?

What will the typeface be used for?

What personality type is the font?

What is your inspiration?

Do you have a name for your typeface yet?

Will it be a upper & lower case typeface?

Serif, sans serif or decorative?

The options are vast. Typefaces have been created, for example, specifically for academic texts, to provide better number systems for engineering documents or as a one-off for public lettering. Only when you know what your typeface will actually be used for can you really get started on the design.

Fundamental choices

There are a number of early choices you need to consider. Will it be a serif or sans serif typeface? Will it be based on a writing implement or be more geometric? Will your design be a text face, comfortable at small sizes and suitable for long documents, or will it be a display face with an imaginative style, that works better a larger size?

Tip: Designing a serif or decorative typeface can be more challenging for beginners. 

Early pitfalls

A couple of early pitfalls to avoid:

• You might decide to start by digitizing your own handwriting, which can be a useful practice exercise. However, because handwriting is so individual, without much refinement your typeface could be restricted to personal use.
• Don't base your design on an existing typeface's outlines. 'Helvetica with wings' is not going to produce a better typeface or help you develop your skills as a type designer. This should go without saying, but I'm told that typefaces like these are regularly submitted to foundries (unsuccessfully).