Type can be fickle. After hundreds of projects where the type behaves, helping to create elegantly simple graphic communication, it can suddenly turn on you—making your project look like something hacked out of a tree stump by liquored-up beavers. Even the best practitioners of the typographic arts can run into trouble.

TOO MANY COOKS IN THE KITCHEN
Sometimes, even when the seemingly perfect typeface is chosen for a project and the fonts are behaving, things can still go very wrong. Often, these are the times when the client wants to “help.” David Schimmel, principal of New York design firm And Partners, recalls such a time. “Not so long ago, we encountered an uncomfortable situation with an annual report for a Fortune 500 company. The project went fine until we showed them the final PDFs. The client liked the design, but had issues with the punctuation. They thought hanging punctuation looked ‘strange’ and somehow ‘incorrect.’ Ironically, after examining other public companies’ annual reports to see whether or not they hung quotes, the client found that many of their peers also did not follow this rule of fine typography. We did similar research and found the same results. This led the client to doubt us and feel uncomfortable that they were doing something typographically incorrect—even though we knew we were right.” Schimmel and his team took this as an “educational” challenge and proceeded to provide the client with a crash course in fine typography. “We showed them the type both ways and explained why hung punctuation was the better choice. Thankfully they came around and allowed the quotes to hang. In the end, for fun, we bought them a copy of Geoffrey Dowding’s Finer Points in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type.”

Clif Stoltze of Stoltze Design in Boston—a firm known for its cutting-edge typography—remembers a similar situation where the client wanted to help with the typography. “We did a CD package recently for a prominent musical artist who shall remain nameless. He came to us with a rough comp that incorporated several photos of himself, his band, and even his dog. Working with his concept, we created a strong design that used typography as a unifying element, tying all the client’s personal bits and pieces together. At the eleventh hour, however, he insisted we change the song list on the back cover to the same font he had used on the original rough comp he provided to us. The typeface? Comic Sans!”

SHORT ON TIME, TIGHT ON BUDGET
Then there are the times when everything seems to be going fine— until the job is finally printed. This kind of font nightmare doesn’t happen often but, when it does, the results tend to be disastrous. Such was the case of Gilmar Wendt, one of the best typographic practitioners at SAS Design in London. He recalls, “A while back I designed a book that probably could not have turned out worse. It contained the poetry of Lavinia Greenlaw. I love her work and wanted to create something special. I thought my concept was as subtle and delicate as her poems.” Greenlaw’s poetry was in German and English, and Wendt used one typeface in two weights to set the book. Proforma Light was used for the English text and German titles, while the Book weight was used for the German titles and English text. Each font was also tracked differently depending upon where it was used. The design was finished just before the Frankfurt Book Fair but, because time was short and the budget tight, Wendt could not travel to the press run. “I didn’t even get to sign oÙ on the final typesetting,” he laments. “That was fatal. What was a carefully considered, subtle play with proportions and white space had become an inconsistent mess of arbitrarily tracked lines, wrong weights, and bad typographic color. I thought I had created an award winner. I got a book for the trash bin.”

THE FLIP SIDE
For every font nightmare there is, thankfully, a story of typographic bliss. When asked to recall a particularly rewarding typographic experience, Stoltze had several. “The ‘Bo5ton’ postcard for the 2005 AIGA conference, the Live from Las Vegas CD series for EMI ... but I’d have to say the biggest thrill was getting to update a well-known and much revered logo for the band Poison on the occasion of their 20th anniversary tour. Nothin’ but a good time!”

Schimmel also remembers a number of projects where working with type was especially rewarding. “These would be projects where the type isn’t the hero per se, but where the type is meaningful in a quiet way. Two examples come to mind: posters for the Sunshine Gala and a recent presentation I delivered. In both cases the type helped to make sense of the image, the two elements relying on each other equally. As with any successful poster, the image is compelling and pulls you in. The type design plays a secondary role by helping the reader to better understand the visual.”

GOOD TURNAROUNDS
Schimmel recalls one project that could have easily gone awry but turned out to be particularly successful. “We presented an editorial layout for what was the cover feature for the journal sent to members of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). The article centered around the impact of the religious right and questioned the direction America was going—and what is at stake. The article had teeth,” he notes. “Our cover illustration, designed by Mirko Ilic´, showed the Statue of Liberty holding a cross instead of a torch. There was a natural opportunity to be expressive inside the magazine as well, so we created a layout for the lead article that revealed a cross in the negative space of the photo and type design. This pairing of provocative design and content pushed the project and the client to a higher level than ever before—creating a progressive look that mirrored the organization’s progressive position. We were asked by the client to tone down the design slightly the day the magazine was being sent to the printer and had to present a more benign type layout as it was on its way out the door. In the end, this issue garnered a significant amount of positive reaction from stakeholders within and beyond NCJW. The response underwrote that the risk was worth the reward.”

Stoltze shares a similar potentially bad-turned-good story. “I love the aesthetic of 19th-century type posters, early 20th-century modernist designs, and fonts that have come out of every decade since the ’40s. I also enjoy mixing fonts in unpredictable ways. Old with new, classical with modern, dirty with clean, grungy with elegant. I’m con. dent working in this way. When the organizers of TypeCon approached me to design the logo for the 2006 conference in Boston, however, my confidence was shaken a little.” Stoltze’s concerns came from both fear of not measuring up to the standards of the type designers involved with the organization and coming up with something unique to go with the conference’s name, “The Boston T Party,” without appearing clichéd. “We tried hard to avoid any reference to tea,” he recalls, “but nothing was working. As soon as we gave in to the obvious, however, the project began to go much better. The fun part was getting to work with some fonts—like Antenna from Cyrus Highsmith at Font Bureau—that are not yet available to the public.” Although the logo does incorporate a tea bag, Stoltze’s solution is fresh, edgy, and a typographic tour de force.

FAVORITE FONTS
Sometimes using a favorite typeface helps to ensure typographic bliss. While Schimmel says that he lets the project dictate the appropriate font and that he is not married to any one typeface, Johnston’s typeface for London’s Underground is a personal favorite —though Schimmel says he has never used it in a project. “I am not averse to using any typeface if it works with the subject matter —even if it is the name of a city or a type of barbecue.”

Wendt says that he falls in and out of love with typefaces. “Sometimes I just buy a font because I think ‘I’ll want to use this one day.’ Often it takes years until I find the right project. I’m still waiting for my first use of Custodia. I love that typeface.” Some of his other current favorites are Foundry Wilson, Documenta, Trade Gothic, and Futura. But he also says, “This could change tomorrow. I always try to find a unique typeface that’s just right for the job. Trawling through samples is half the fun.”

Stoltze also has a current favorite font that works well for him, although using it is not as simple as one might assume. “I really like using an italic typewriter font I call ‘Remington Ten-Forty.’ It’s named after the typewriter I bought on eBay that creates it. To get the text, however, I have to type the copy using the typewriter, then scan the results.” Stoltze says that he plans to have the design made into a digital font someday. But for now, its use is definitely a labor of love.

PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE
While “stuff" does happen and it’s hard to know when a client may want to “help,” a way to ensure that projects will have a better chance of being typographically blissful is to ask the three questions that Wendt uses to challenge himself:
• Is the message clear?
• Is the tone of voice appropriate to the brand and the audience?
• Will the piece be noticed and remembered?
If the type fulfills these criteria, bliss will follow.