Robert Valentine says that he began art directing at a very early age. “I would spend hours rearranging my parents’ furniture,” he reminisces. “When they grew tired of not having chairs and tables where they were supposed to be, they would send me to my room— where I created assorted tableaus with what was there.” Staying true to the talents he tapped into as a child, Valentine attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He received a BFA and started calling himself “Robert” instead of “Bob.”

College was followed by design gigs in Minneapolis, New York, London, and then back in New York. His career began in retail. In Minneapolis he worked in the advertising department of Donaldson’s and Dayton Hudson’s department stores and the ad agencies that serviced them. This was followed by Bloomingdale’s in New York and Conran’s/Habitat in London.

In 1991, Valentine established The Valentine Group, his sights set on offering a range of creative services with an emphasis on branding, retail, and corporate design. Currently his design office provides clients with services from strategic brand positioning to advertising design to photo-shoot art direction (a holdover from the days of rearranging his parent’s furniture) to publication design. Valentine’s clients are diverse, and include Target, Neiman Marcus, Sundance, Barnes & Noble, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Typography plays an important part in the work he does for each.

GOOD RULES
When asked about his typographic philosophy, Valentine does not have a quick response. It’s not that he does not have one—quite the contrary. It’s just that it’s not a facile toss-off. He thinks about his answer. “Typography has to have shelf life; it has to work hard,” he says. “Longevity and relevance are more important than decoration. The beauty will follow.” Valentine grew up professionally in the trendy retail environment, yet he aspires to classicism and lasting aesthetics.

“I’m not a typoholic but I am particular about type,” he continues. “I use type to create hierarchy and easy-to-comprehend levels of organization. Everything is geared to aiding the reader, helping the reader understand the message.”

Valentine’s design is an artistic melding of image and typography. He loves images and photography that tell a story. Images are the most important component of his design. His simple and elegant typography, however, creates a subtle and commanding counterpoint. Because his use of type is understated, it stands out from the surrounding imagery rather than competing with it.

One of Valentine’s self-imposed rules is that he rarely uses black type. “It’s always in a color or a tint,” he says. “This makes the typography a little softer. Clients often demand bigger type, but if it is set in a solid black, it tends to become overpowering. Even the small stuff looks better in a dark gray than in a solid black.” Valentine also works from a relatively small palette of fonts. He believes that limitations are a good thing. “Boundaries, whether in imagery or typeface choice, provide a structure to build on,” he says.

A CATALOG FOR FLOR
Valentine’s design and typographic principles were put to good use in the work he’s done for the FLOR group of Interface, Inc., a modular floor-covering manufacturer. “Since we were launching a new consumer brand for Interface, we created everything from the identity to the advertising,” he says. The first catalog was tabloid size. Later editions were eventually pared down to more sedate dimensions, but Valentine kept the folded tabloid proportions.

Valentine chose Eureka, by Peter Bil’ak, and Franklin Gothic as type for the FLOR catalogs. He also used a lot of all-cap copy. Normally, all-caps is not a good thing, but Valentine took great care in working the type so there is no loss in readability. Letter and word spacing were kept open. Line space was also given generous proportions. The result is an elegant, almost monumental statement that is easy to read. Product names and prices were set in red. Because the type is small, the color does not overpower the page. Instead it creates a subtle counterpoint that emphasizes the most important copy in the catalog. The images and the two copy blocks become a visual summary of the page.