#67 • Corgigraphy

Things were simpler in the days when type was made out of metal. There were two main roles — type designer and typesetter — and their work was constrained by the rules of the physical universe.

It also helped that by late 1800s, the type industry had figured out most of the basics. A life of a typeface would start on paper, with a type designer spending weeks or months sketching all the necessary letterforms. After they were done, the drawings of the typeface were turned into a font: actual physical blocks of lead.

Then computers ruined it all. As we transitioned from paper and metal to screens and software, typography inherited everything that computers have to offer — including bugs, incompatibilities, and updates.

Not everything was horrible, of course. Computers gave both type designers and typesetters unprecedented amounts of freedom. Pixels were subject to few of the restrictions of the metal universe — things could overlap at will, or stick out of their once-rigid boxes. As a typesetter, you could add as much leading as you needed without requiring any actual lead

But getting used to the newfound freedoms took some time. Early graphic programs like Photoshop or QuarkXPress were still used to design for paper, where you had absolute control over fonts, and could measure and position everything with a lot of precision. As a result, they followed the same principles and the same vocabulary as print typography. A designer using Photoshop, for example, would still specify a 16-point type and then add 4 points of leading to it.

A huge takeaway from my time studying at Type Media was the idea that the type of pen used, the angle at which it is held, and the path it takes decides everything for you. At this time, I was obsessed with the Pentel Pocket Brush. Conveniently, when applying a majority of the nib flat against the paper, that pen produces a stroke not unlike that of a signpainter’s quill. I was struck by how suddenly the contrast felt closer to what the original was doing.

At this point, I fell temporarily out of love with this design. After I graduated, I moved on to Hobeaux, Viktor Script, and the subsequent other typefaces that have comprised the early Ohno catalog. I was probably convinced that the National Forest Script was too cute to be intellectually satisfying to my increasingly esoteric taste.

I am aware that Coniferous is a dumb name, but I am trying to branch out in terms of parts of speech. Obviously was my first adverb typeface, and Coniferous is my first adjective. Soon, I will release my first preposition typeface, as long as I can get the copyright.

Language is not an invention. As best we can tell it is an evolved feature of the human brain. There have been almost countless languages humans have spoken. But they all follow certain rules that grow out of the wiring of the human brain and human cognition. Critically, it is something that is hardwired into us. Writing is an altogether different and artificial thing.

You take a small number of hieroglyphic characters representing specific things, decide to use them not for their meaning but for their sound and then use this as a way to encode the sound of words in almost any language.

…most historians of writing believe that this invention – the alphabet, designed by and for sub-literate Semites living on the borderlands of Egypt about 4,000 years ago – is likely the origin point of all modern alphabets.

Imagine if Paul Renner moved to Japan and Kyota Sugimoto asked him to adapt Futura to a typewriter.

Originally conceived as Davenport’s undergraduate thesis project, Garnett started as a superfamily of 4 different typographic classifications—Grotesk, Antique, Modern, and Typewriter—with each style based on the type of its respective classifications’ time period. The accompanying book acted as a documentation of his process, a container for Davenport’s essay: The Banality of Typeface Design, as well as a type specimen for the 42 style family