Typefaces are one of the mainstays of a graphic designer’s “diet,” so to speak. They are not only used to communicate the written word, but to help set a mood, tone, and personality. Considering its importance to the process of design, have you ever stopped to think how a typeface comes to be? How does it evolve from a “twinkle in a type designer’s eye” to a full-blown typeface?

Although the actual process of designing a typeface varies from designer to designer, we spoke with type designer James Montalbano of Terminal Design about two of his typographic creations, Giacomo and Alfon, to get some insight into his world of typeface design.

GIACOMO
Giacomo is the forerunner of this dynamic pair. A robust, six-weight family with corresponding italics, Giacomo is an extremely readable sans serif design with a lot of warmth, liveliness, and personality. The weights range from a crisp, inviting light to a chunky, assertive black.

The seed for Giacomo evolved out of an earlier effort to draw a sans with humanist overtones, which Montalbano had never completed. When he returned to it years later, he had an idea where he wanted to go with it, but he allowed his vision to remain flexible and malleable. “You begin by drawing a shape on screen, then an outline, and then it becomes like plastic, like sculpture … you move points and curves around until you find what you’re looking for. It’s the kind of a process where you think you’re starting with one thing and it turns out to be something different. It takes on a life of its own,” he explains.

Montalbano works by starting with a medium or book weight to work out the basic structure of the design. He then goes on to create both heavier and lighter weights, playing around with all possibilities in between, often moving away entirely from the weight he started with.

“When I move from the medium to the light or heavy weight, issues usually come up relating to fit and shapes that can wind up changing the entire design,” he notes. “Experience teaches you to let the design speak to you and tell you what it needs to be. It needs to be able to breathe and grow on its own.”

Montalbano designed Giacomo without any square corners; they are all chamfered, which contributes to the warmth and liveliness of the design, especially as it gets larger. Although Giacomo is primarily a text face, Montalbano added nuances and details that emerge only at larger sizes, allowing the design to have a distinct personality when set for display. “I designed Giacomo to work across a broad range of sizes—as it gets bigger, details emerge that are invisible at text sizes. At large sizes, this design is all about funny quirks and shaved off corners, which make all the difference,” he says.

The entire Giacomo family was drawn over a period of two years, interwoven with Montalbano’s custom type work, which is the mainstay of his type design business and occupies roughly threequarters of his time. Work on his personal designs must take second place to his custom work, so he has learned over time to hone his skills to accommodate it all.

ALFON
After the completion of the entire Giacomo family, Montalbano was playing around and adding serifs to one of the weights, and he liked the way it looked. “I like the proportions and features of Giacomo, and I thought it would be fun to create a serif typeface that had those components.” Alfon was not designed to necessarily be used with Giacomo or be considered as part of a super family, thus the change of name. Alfon is a complementary design that shares its structure and proportions with Giacomo, and although it is harmonious with its predecessor, it is a different design.

It has four weights with corresponding italics. Why not six like Giacomo? According to the designer, not only is it more difficult to make extreme weights for a serif design, but they are not that beautiful or even useful. “You’re really making a tool for people, and you want to make the tool as functional as possible across as broad a range as is useful.”

TYPE DESTINY
If Montalbano has a design philosophy for his personal work, it is that one must design for oneself. “I have no idea if anyone will like what I design or what they will respond to. You can’t really design with that in mind because you never know what people will like,” he says.

James remembers getting in trouble in first grade “because I drew a hooded two-story ‘a’ or I put a little serif on a letter. I remember my teacher saying ‘What’s that? You weren’t taught to print that way.’ Then I’d point to the textbook, which was probably set in Century Schoolbook, and say ‘Well, it’s in the book!’” It seems to have been Montalbano’s destiny to be a type designer.