Dalton Maag - Type Design: A Process

Dalton Maag's process to create a custom typeface: 

• Work with a steering group with the client. 
• Kick off workshop to get some basic design parameters from the client's needs.
• Talk about the clients existing brand identity links to their currently used typeface. 
• Ask the client to choose images which they believe best represent their brand, on the reverse is a type association; allowing a link from initial visuals to the type world. 
• Font grid is also used which contain 4 words that represent what the brand is about, typefaces are added to these quadrants to be analysed for what types are relevant to what the client needs for their brand. 
• Once the workshop is completed the brief is revisited, this is when the design stages can begin. 
• Sketches and digitalisation are used. 
• Considerations are taken into place, such as BBC wanted to make a differentiation between the capital 'i' and lowercase 'l'.
• Fonts are designed as a postscript outline. This is then developed into a true font outline for delivery to the client, this allows for the characters to be 'hinted'.
• aehinoptv are used when designing the fonts as they contain all of the different aspects of Roman character letterings. 
• Regular weight is all that is designed to begin, once a concept has been signed off the extremes of either font are created - the light and extra bold. 
• Details are explored within a concept, such as softening up connection and rounding off the tittle. 
• Excuset is then created in both extreme weights if this is signed off by the client the rest of the typeface design; the rest of the commissioned weights are produced.

Once a font has been created, they must be engineered. Coding is used to ensure that the type is available and consistent throughout all of the required platforms. 

Hinting is the shading around each character which controls the way the outer pixels work with the screen to make a type appear in a certain way.

The fonts are then provided to the client in desktop, web and app format. 

Optical Principles: 

Contrast within traditional fonts is fundamentally imitating the handwritten.

Weight needs taking out of any horizontal lettering characters or it gives the character a sense of visual in-balance. 

Any curved elements should have an overshoot on the baseline or it makes them seem insignificant to the other letters. 

Optical vs. Mathematical - a crossbar should not be directly in the centre of the letter or it appears to low.