![]() Which is precisely what, for me, is the essence of drawing.’ It is a game that deals with space and rhythm. A type designer designs words and words are structures that contain patterns of black and white shapes, form and counterform. Because a type designer does not draw letters. I discovered drawing type is drawing in a very pure form. ‘Drawing is what I always loved the most. Like his drawings, they are the products of a thinking hand. The pleasure he takes in performing these simple manual activities, and his obvious talent for it, is reflected in the confident originality of his letterforms. In lectures, he explains his views by means of cartoons, and he has an archive of thousands of pages of sketches, doodles, collages. And from Matthew, I learned about craftsmanship and drawing.’ His years at Font Bureau – where he has been working since 1997 – have also become a self-study of typographic history, prompted by Frere-Jones’s passion for old type specimens as well as informal ‘lessons’ from Mike Parker, the company’s unofficial type historian. From David, I learned about spacing and approaching type design using systematic thinking. But the main thing he taught me was how to see type and how to explain this to other people. From Tobias, I learnt a lot of the production tricks and methods that go into making fonts. Looking back, each one’s lessons ended up being distilled into different aspects of type design. Over the course of the projects I was handed, I ended up having three teachers – Tobias Frere-Jones, David Berlow and Matthew Carter. ‘Then at Font Bureau, I received my practical training designing type. So at the same time I was surrounded by that kind of Modernist tradition. All this happened in the context of a programme that was strongly influenced by the Basel school of typography. This allowed me to try out a lot of weird stuff, and focus on my own approach without worrying whether I was doing it right or how it fit into the tradition. Fortunately, I was given the freedom and support to do a lot of experimental work and independent research. As I studied typography, I kept getting into the details of type more and more. ‘I went to risd for their strong typography programme. He acknowledges that he has been ‘very lucky’ in the way he received his education, first as a graphic design student at the Rhode Island School of Design (risd), where he now teaches part-time, then as an apprentice at Font Bureau. Highsmith trained with some of the best in the business – Matthew Carter, David Berlow and Tobias Frere-Jones. Highsmith, 32, is also one of the few young type designers who learnt the craft in the way it used to be taught for centuries: through apprenticeship. With families such as Stainless / Dispatch, Prensa and Amira, Cyrus Highsmith has established himself as one of the truly original new voices in American type design. ![]() Yet his greatest strength lies in his newly designed text faces. ![]() Highsmith has done his share of revivals and historical studies – he digitised some of the twentieth century’s most fragile display faces, worked on a redesign of News Gothic and drew a contemporary version of Scotch Roman for The Wall Street Journal. In this context, the work of Cyrus Highsmith, staff designer at Boston’s Font Bureau, is a welcome exception. Most recent American text faces are based on (and justified by) letterforms from the past – the results ranging from faithful revivals and smart re-interpretations to postmodern pastiches, parodies and lame nostalgia. ![]() Those who create ambitious text type families often seem to be taking clues from past masters in a very direct way – quite different from their European peers, who have a more independent relationship to tradition. Quite a few independent North American type designers have built a career out of whipping up one charming but ultimately meaningless style exercise after another. In Holland or Germany, designing a new text typeface conceived from scratch is on every young type designer’s list. The best of European type design shows a critical awareness of traditional principles, while being radically functionalist at the same time. In recent years, a dichotomy between type designing strategies in (northern) Europe and North America has become apparent. ![]()
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