Watch and reflect on the Abstract series on Netflix Season 2, Episode 6 Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design” and write a 200-300 word review on your process blog.

It’s so easy to look at letters on a page, a screen, or a sign and not think much about them. On the surface, they are put together to form names and words to tell us something. But there is more under the surface than the words we’re reading. Jonathan Hoefler, in his episode about Typeface Design on Netflix’s “Abstract” series, helps us become conscious of another layer of communication we are experiencing. Typeface gives us a look into the identity of these letters.

Letters are ubiquitous. We consume a large portion of our information through text and we take for granted the deliberateness put behind even just what font was chosen to purvey that information. We don’t realize that even the ease of how we consume these letters is due to the fact that they are carefully designed to be easily consumable. Our eyes crave symmetry; they can be deceived and so designers are tasked with creating an illusion to feign what we desire. From the use of concepts like Overshoot, Balance and Contrast and optical illusions like Poggendorff Illusion, Jastrow’s Illusion and Optical Size, designers are able to answer the cravings of symmetry that our eyes need even if that symmetry, or asymmetry, is feigned.

In addition to these illusions, a designer must be able to create a system that gives us the feeling that all of the letters and numbers in that typeface’s alphabet belong together, as if part of a family. This is what gives a font its identity, as these letters, numbers and symbols must feel like they are deliberate, that they all have something in common and belong next to each other. Increases in size, italicizing, bolding, must be implemented in a way that changes a letter’s form but maintains the overall familiarity of the font. Fonts can even be automated with kerning and ligatures so that they may remain pleasing to the eye.

There is a deliberateness that is put behind the creation and molding of a typeface, and it is that deliberateness that creates its identity. To be used effectively, the deliberateness of the font design must match the deliberateness of the meaning of the words these letters are forming, the identity of the brand whose logo the letters populate, and the readability and accessibility of the canvas that the letters are being displayed on. Typeface design is a design of how an idea is being presented and sometimes, the way we recognize a great design, is that the untrained eye doesn’t even recognize the typeface at all.