The Typocondriac Newsletter S01E05 - The overwhelmed issue
What a busy month it was... Too busy maybe...
Hello friends,
May is already almost over. Times flies, this is incredible. Since the beginning of the pandemic situation, we have the kids at home and we split home schooling with my wife, so I can barely work more than 3 hours per day. But strangely I feel like I never have achieved so many things than since this all started. Crazy...
But I still feel like I could do more. I have so many projects around these days. I am still figuring out how to launch my fonts, I have that newsletter, I launched online workshops lately which I will talk about later, I also started a podcast in french with some friends, and I plan to launch one myself about type. If it was not enough I have clients projects and I try lo learn illustration. Crazy again...
Overwhelmed
At some point, at the beginning of the month, I had to stay back and think to organize myself and prioritize my projects. Also, dealing with the actual situation, I had to find a daily routine to optimize my 3 hours.
I decided to re-read a book that came out in 2013, "Manage your day-to-day" edited by the fantastic Jocelyn Glei, host of the also fantastic podcast "Hurry Slowly", and published by Behance. In that book, I learned that without that routine, you don't go anywhere, you are always overwhelmed and can't prioritize. Also, you have to get to work even if you don't feel so. "These are your 3 hours per day, make something out of them so you don't feel frustrated at the end of the day!" I have been doing it for 3 weeks now and I feel so much calm. Lockdown changed my organization drastically, I had to find my new way to work.
Online workshops are crazy!
So what important happened during that month? These crazy online workshops! I did the first one on the 16th this month. I was a bit stressed because I never did it before. The result was astonishing for me... Having people from around the world (from California to Philippines...) participating, here to learn from me. That was crazy. The Zoom experience was also good, no big connection problems. Just that it was really tiring for me. Staying 6 hours concentrated to help people in their exercises was not easy but at the end, that was one of my best teaching experience. Seriously rewarding!
Next online workshop is this Saturday, where you can learn to design your first font with Fontself.
You may think this is not for you, you are not interested in Type Design or Font making. But you are wrong. It can be of great help if you want to be serious about Lettering. Why?
Type design helps you understand letters, their size, weight, height, how they relate together in their construction,
Making a font helps you understand better spacing and kerning. Here your letters need to fit all together, in any situation. After doing your first font, spacing has no mystery for you. Or almost :P
When doing a font you have to know to vectorize, where to put anchors points, how to reuse parts of a letter to build another one. This can be really really useful for doing great lettering stuff...
Last but not least, creating letters and seeing these words forming via your keyboard is really something. believe me. I never have enough of trying my new font in Illustrator or InDesign to play with it!
So just to be clear :P Type Design is something you need to understand to really take off in the Lettering world. And in 6 hours we don't have time to see everything you need to see to build the new Helvetica. This is really for fun, and making a fun font!
So if you are interested, get one of the 3 last spots! :-)
A special lettering workshop for french speaking people in june!
I have another workshop planned in june, for french speaking people and about lettering, if some of you are interested, I still have 3 spots left too.
Give us some inspiration now!
So, ok, done with selling my stuff, now here is some nice inspiration and reads for you. This month was really interesting, whether in Type Design, Lettering or Sign Painting.
1. The Typearture Variable Color Initials
This experiment is really showing us the large possibilities of variable fonts and type in general. Here you can get an animated first letter, with colors and illustrative, everything on the web.
2. Octothorpe by PampaType
I really love that typeface. I has something retro but feels also really modern. And that ampersand!!
3. Good Movies as Old Books by Matt Stevens
This project is not totally about letters but they are always included in the best way. Matt Stevens had the project some time ago to redesign movie posters. Lately he decided to do a book about them, and it is now on KickStarter. Go check it out, this is a great project!
4. Trois Mille by Marc Rouault, sold by Sharp Type
Here is a super font family with style!! Of course, I will prefer the black styles but the overall is really nice!!
5. OhNo School!!
I am sure you have heard of the Ohno School but just in case, here is the great Instagram project from James Edmonston (OhnoType), taking each letter of his last font to explain details about font design. Really interesting and funny as you can see on that shot ^^
6. Copenhagen Signs Sketchbook
My good friend Jakob, from Copenhagen Signs, just launched a new book about his sketches. Check his webpage to find out his beautiful sketches, this guy is really talented!
7. Color Lab from Ramenbanks
If you are into Procreate and Vintage stuff, you might like the new kit from Retro Supply and made by Ramebanks.
8. Text for proofing fonts by Jonathan Hoeffler
Jonathan Hoeffler published a great ressource few days ago for type designers. With years of practice, he realized that the text all type designers use to proof their typefaces was not really optimized for their use depending on their language for example. So he created a brand new set of words to check your letters in any situation. The file is available on his website.
Let's finish with 2 shots I really liked this month in Lettering. The first from Scott Biersack and the second one from Jérémie Bonne. Click on the pictures to get to their Instagram profile.
That is all for this month!! Talk to you end of june for some more news and inspiration!
Take care and stay safe!
Francis