Fragments of Beauty

The Great Magazine Depression

elementi — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 06:15:03 +0000

Lately I’ve been thinking about what has become of the great fashion magazines of our time. Sure they still exist, but rarely am I inclined to pop into one of Verona's Giornalai and buy one. There were times when it seemed impossible for me to do any kind of work without having at least a double-page spread of Vogue Italia next to my computer on my desk. Like the Bible for a priest on the altar, those double-page spreads with photos of Paolo Roversi and the beautiful young #Natalia Vodianova made me hold my breath and dive into a kind of dreamland where my creations allowed me to get closer to her or whatever my imagination was planting on her beautiful face.

The beautiful young Natalia Vodianova made me hold my breath and dive into a kind of dreamland…

There was also the aspect of the magazine layout that secretly played an important role in this game of fantasy. These pages were works of art, ‘Compositions!’ as an old friend of mine (a painter) used to exclaim. The text was carefully matched to the content of the images, and sometimes fonts were even created to reflect a particular aspect of a designer’s work or to enhance the way photos were composed next to each other. This is a flashback to one of my typefaces called Simmetria, based on an idea by Luca Stoppini and part of a page he masterfully composed in Vogue Italia. And it makes me think back to that time and wonder if the next time I happen to be standing in front of a Giornalaio, I’ll stick around and buy one. Credits: Luca Stoppini | Art Direction

Ein Blick auf den Bücherkosmos der Stamperia Valdonega

elementi — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:31:28 +0000

Between Naturalness, Terribleness and Sweetness

elementi — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 07:38:32 +0000

Today, next to my morning cup of espresso, is a small opusculum, first printed, it seems, in 1949. It is a small monograph on the Centaur typeface by Bruce Rogers. My friend Chris Wakeling, an excellent English printer, sent it to me. And again, it makes me philosophize about that love of printed letterforms that I still love so much and that has been with me through all my life’s circumstances. It’s such a pleasure to look at these shapes, once so carefully drawn or engraved by hand, or more recently created digitally on a screen. And I still wonder where they came from, what it is that makes them shine so mystically for me. It’s no longer a secret that I draw my Bézier lines inspired by the shapes, curves and lines of the female body. It is something like a game between many factors. In a book about Raffaello, the Italian Renaissance painter, I read about these influences in terms of “Naturalness”, “Terribleness” and “Sweetness” that the artists of those days struggled with, to tend to either one side or the other. And I think it’s always this that shapes our designs. On the one hand, admiration of nature: how it creates “outlines” of forms guided by an inner structure, like the curve of a leaf or, yes, the beautiful sinuous lines of a female body, conditioned in themselves by bone and muscle. On the other hand, there is also a certain will to achieve an ideal form in the sense of geometry. Our eye loves it when things become symmetrical or oval shapes become perfect circles. Because, as often said, it was this striving for perfection that pushed artists to their limits. Bones and muscles, extreme bends and perspective forms were called “Terribleness”; “Sweetness” was the opposite, that is, the willingness to refine the created forms so that they became almost artificial, self-sufficient and praising more the artists than their own origins. And finally, there was “Naturalness”, which can be described as a successful balance between these tendencies. Creating forms that show their original principles, movement, strength and organicity, but without exaggerating. A balance between brutal structure and sweetness.

We wrestle with the structure and pressure with which the pen put its forms on paper, and the will to find in their inner and outer forms something that tends to be geometric, ideal or perfect.

I have always thought that this also applies to the forms of printed letters. When we draw their outlines “artificially”, imitating a calligraphic form once written, we wrestle with the structure and pressure with which the pen put its forms on paper, and the will to find in their inner and outer forms something that tends to be geometric, ideal or perfect. Above you can see some pictures of the process of creating Bézier curves for my font Signer, which is meant for text sizes. For inspiration, I used the beautiful photograph of Marc Lagrange on my desktop background. When I drew the curves of ‘9’, or rather corrected what I found when it was systematically derived from the very thin original shape, I especially liked the connections of the bowls. It reminded me of such shapes as we find in the movement of a shoulder, which lets us see clearly what forces are at work here to bend muscles and incline bones before they form the curves of their surface on the skin. I liked the way the lower part of the hairline enlarges before dipping into the main oval on the right side. But at the same time, almost unconsciously, I became aware of what was happening to the inner shape, the oval enclosed in the eye of the character, the so-called counter. I tried to round it softer, to get it closer to a circle (read also the previous post why). In a word, I was getting dangerously close to the “Sweetness”. The softer and rounder our counterforms become, the more the letter as a whole loses its structure, its stability guided by inner forces. The female body itself is the perfect example of this precarious balance. So when we draw in reality, we are always struggling, once approaching one side and then perhaps returning to the original principle. Yet the human body, at least to me, is the crown of these principles. Because when we create something, we may want it to be similar to ourselves. Credits: Marc Lagrange | Photography

That’s why we (perhaps) love circles

elementi — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 10:26:47 +0000

As promised, I will publish some posts about the ongoing work on Signer Text. However, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to present the work process in a truly didactic way. It is very difficult even for myself to keep track of what I am doing. The process is so very intuitive and must be based on something almost unconscious. Recently I saw a very interesting documentary about an American writer who once claimed that writing is the division into two parts: the work of a drunk, revised by a sober. I have a feeling that this is quite similar in the process of designing typefaces. The drawing process, which interestingly enough usually makes crucial turns and progress during the night, is revised and slightly corrected in the early morning. Consequently, it is difficult to force oneself to jot down, to photograph ideas in this intuitive, unconscious, “drunken” phase. Nevertheless, I will try to reflect some thoughts and influences that push my letter images in a certain direction rather than another. In creating the Signer Text, I’m not quite sure yet what its destination will be, what I want to express character-wise. Certainly there is the eternal inspiration of the Franklin Gothic to achieve something truly elegant, classic, dynamic, but also stable and solid.

There is the eternal inspiration of the Franklin Gothic to achieve something truly elegant, classic, dynamic, but also stable and solid.

While drawing, I noticed that I seem to be following some symmetry ideas that are particularly evident in Signer. In the capital letter ‘S’, for example, I recognized the symmetry, the balance between left and right on the upper inner form under the “ceiling” of the top turn of the lettering toward the top. This seems to give the letter some stability. So I temporarily added a new intermediate curve point that almost perfectly matched the hidden circle, which of course I only had in my imagination while I was drawing. I added the red circle later to make it easier to understand. Again, I strongly believe that these ideas should not be slavishly followed during the working process, because that would prevent us from getting into that intuitive state of mind. Since the Renaissance, the circle has had a strong meaning. It is also a metaphor for stability, harmonious movement, and even something that, on another level of perception, signifies life itself. The beautiful 19-year-old Natalia Vodianova, photographed by Paolo Roversi, might give us a clue. I put her on my desk while drawing, and as many, many years ago, she still inspires me. The rest is pure imagination… Read also [German and Italian language] Credits: Paolo Roversi | Photography Natalia Vodianova | Model

Metamorphosis

elementi — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 06:49:42 +0000

One of the most difficult tasks any type designer has to deal with, for one reason or another, is deriving different weights for a type family. In my particular world of type design, it's usually a matter of taking my original designs, which are often extremely thin and detailed, and creating a typeface for smaller reading sizes. I’ve always envied the type designers out there in the professional type design world who seem to just use some sophisticated technical systems and programs to do it. That may be, or rather, it is most likely a mistake to think so. For me personally, however, it’s tough stuff. I would go so far as to say that it’s like designing a completely new font – again.

I would go so far as to say that it’s like designing a completely new font – again.

The first difficulty I run into is the large amount of time that has passed, in most cases, between the time I created the first version and the time I decide to go with the text variant. It’s incredibly difficult to dive back into an original idea you may have had years ago. It takes quite a while to understand its specificity, its inner character. Although it may seem from the outside that my designs all have a kind of #handwriting, a similar touch, that’s not the case for me. Even if I start switching from one typeface to another only after I’ve been working on it for a while, when I take a quick look around, say after a week has passed, the older typeface has already become “strange” to me, a kind of foreign body. This is because really every single font has its own personal character, like a child that has grown up under your careful observation. It has its own way of being, reacting, getting into a flow between individual letters, and so on. Axes have a slightly different inclination. All these details, which we hardly notice consciously, adjust instinctively over time. I say unconsciously: at least that’s how I feel. Speaking of details. It’s mostly these that make it a whole new task. We can start with some font program automatism as deriving mechanically weights. First of all, if we want to make a typeface with more weight that is easy to read at smaller sizes, it needs to be larger in rhythm and bolder in stems, but not uniform. I usually give much more weight to the horizontal direction than the vertical. This is because most letters have their hairlines on the horizontal axis. FontLab does this with what are called Actions that you can apply to the whole character. In a second step (which is a bit annoying), you need to fix all the rotten connections between the lines that merge into stems, etc. If you are creating a text face from an existing font, you may also want it to retain some features of the original. You can’t do this 1:1. Some details have to be lost as the stems get bolder and they no longer make sense or would disappear at a smaller scale anyway, others have to be exaggerated for the same reason so they still stand out. It’s funny, but some of the idiosyncrasies of an original character you don't get to know until you try to create a new variation of them. It’s like leaving a person for a while and then returning to them to discover their peculiarities in behavior, their hidden weird little edges that you may not have noticed the first time around, or only noticed at first glance and then forgot to see them after you dived deeper into their personality.

In a word, what we are trying to do when we create a new weight is a kind of metamorphosis in progress.

In a word, what we are trying to do when we create a new weight is a kind of metamorphosis in progress. Partly controlled with the help of the techniques of type programs, partly unconscious, instinctive, as we begin anew to draw lines, curves and details. I’m usually fully aware that this task will take me a very very long time, although admittedly I cheat myself every time by telling myself, come on, it already exists, it can’t be that hard to make a version for smaller sizes! Yeah, if I didn’t do that, I probably wouldn’t even start. Because there’s still a long way to go, a kind of journey that will take us to places we might not expect at the beginning. In the end, it is also we who will be transformed. Both the designer and the creation go through this magical metamorphosis. Above, some of the “new” Signer textface letters in their infancy. I promise to try to go deeper into the details of the working process in the next posts. Credits: Cecil Beaton | Photography

Magazine Double-Pages from My University Archives

elementi — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:15:09 +0000

I remember cutting out these beautiful cursive text blocks in Garamond (No. 3) from photographic enlargements made with a reproduction photo camera. It took me a while to arrive at these seemingly simple layout solutions. Purely composing like a painter, with text instead of color and form. The image overlaying text blocks were enlarged and developed on transparent film material, which I carefully mounted over the color photocopies of those wonderful F. C. Gundlach photographs I had found in an antiquarian bookstore (and with whose long-gone beauties I had literally fallen in love).

In those days, there was a lot of work with scissors and montage, which in a way forced us to think about typography differently than we do today.

In those days, there was a lot of work with scissors and montage, which in a way forced us to think about typography differently than we do today. This had a lasting impact on my way of perceiving sets of text, which in turn seemed to be woven from excellent (phototypesetting) typefaces as if into a tapestry. Flipping through my old Daniel Berkeley Updike copy of Printing Types, Their History of Forms and Use recently, I suddenly realized that what I was doing resembled what the old printers of the 15th century produced with text as form, compact and as the purest element of composition. Only later did I begin to discover what Brodovitch and Liberman were doing for the famous fashion magazines. I'm still very interested in magazine layout. Although, well, I would do it differently than what I see in most magazines today. I would go back to composing with text.... Credits: F. C. Gundlach | Photography Guido Löhrer | Photography (reproduction)

From a time when…

elementi — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 11:26:31 +0000

… we were fashion editor, casting director, photographer, art director, typographer and type designer all rolled into one. The story behind the “blue” photography was quite unusual and perhaps worth telling. I intended to photograph scenes of extreme elegance, and of course in Paris. But as a student I had no money, so I decided to develop a concept to photograph fashion on real women in the street. A kind of street photography, but with the ambition to make something very elegant. So I spent 2 weeks in Paris (I settled on a campsite near the Bois de Bologne) looking for beautiful, well-dressed women. An endeavor that was not as easy as I had imagined. In order to take these kinds of paparazzi shots without a model, I had to remain unidentified. I used a 500mm telephoto lens with mirrors that allowed me to shoot handheld without attracting too much attention. For this, I used high-sensitivity 3200 ASA film material. In this way, I could shoot by hand and achieve exposure times of 1/250s or less to maintain focus. With a motor shutter, I took more than 600 shots (which was quite a lot at the time, since I was using analog film). Much of this footage was trash, but occasionally something really beautiful happened.

After I took a series of shots, the beautiful lady began to notice my uninvited presence. But perhaps she also saw in what state of arousal I was. […] She let me finish my work with indulgence.

However, the most amazing and exciting scene was this beautiful young lady sitting in a sidewalk cafe (I don't remember where) behind the window, probably talking to a friend. I was so mesmerized by her beauty that I forgot everything that was happening around me. I stopped almost in the middle of a chaotic street with parked cars, passengers around me complaining.... After I took a series of shots, the beautiful lady (although I was at some distance) began to notice my uninvited presence. But perhaps she also saw in what state of arousal I was. For she gave me a beautiful but barely noticeable smile and continued talking as if nothing had happened. She let me finish my work with indulgence. Later, in the dark room, I developed the coarse-grained film on hard photographic paper (AGFA barrit no 5 graduation) to make the grain stand out even more and achieve an almost abstract pointillism effect. Further, using a special chemical treatment, I changed the silver tones to a dark blue and experimented with it for almost 2 weeks. (At that time, you could hardly enter the lab at the university without running into me there.) In the process, I noticed that the grain was no longer as even. So I bought retouching paints in all shades of blue to gray, and with a fine hair brush I filled in the holes, at the same time scraping free the paper white in the condensations with a medical scalpel. This took me another 2 weeks. Extremely concentrated, almost meditative work. But I was completely in love with this beautiful face. I decided to redraw a classic fashion typeface, Caslon No. 540 from Linotype, by hand to accompany my photographs. I enlarged the letters and drew them on tracing paper, which I placed over them. In this way I achieved a more beautiful and graceful typeface, especially by making the hairlines thinner. Then the letter images were zoomed out again with a reproduction camera and mounted on a transparent film, which was then deducted as contact under vacuum. The resulting text blocks or words were also exposed on AGFA No. 5 to achieve the absolute black on a brilliant white. According to my previous conceptual studies, I wanted the individual words (seVouer) to appear “cut out” of a text block surrounding. So I intentionally added partially truncated letters of the following or preceding words of an imaginary sentence. One could say that the whole process was a very personal result of “se Vouer”: to dedicate oneself to something close to the border of self-sacrifice in order to represent beauty. Credits: Stefan Seifert | Photography Guido Löhrer | Photography (reproduction) Unknown | Model Beatrix Herre | Model (legs)

What happens if you get influenced by Spanish type?

elementi — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:25:00 +0000

During my recent researches for the Girl character involved in a Balenciaga lettering it happened that I woke up in the morning for my early espresso coffee studying historical Spanish typefaces. Which we all know have a very special and distinct style. They stand out in the history of the evolution of printed typefaces right from the beginning in the early 15th century. At the same time I was using this beautiful Marc Lagrange photography to inspire myself and compare the forms that I was trying to refine for my Advanced Sans Serif typeface. This girl has this beautiful flower at her ear and I thought: Well, this could be it. It is kind of a “flourish” element that those early (and later) Spanish type-cutters added to their letters. Where others used flat serifs or rectangular stroke endings the Spanish typefaces used to do add little curvy lines, sometimes a little curlycue here and there.

It is about something deeply rooted in their cultural story.

But, it’s not that their typefaces simply are decorative. Because they aren’t and it would be a great injustice to say so. Because this would diminish their effect, the class of their own they have. It is more about something deeply rooted in their cultural story. Recently I also watched old photographs in a book about the early Bazaar years (to see Balenciaga’s style) and there was this photo of a beautiful young bullfighter woman with a hat that almost seemed part of a costume typical for her profession. There were strange looking ribbons folded like leaves on its top, kind of curvy and playful. Because, if we are honest, not one flower would have a straight line in its shapes. All was in tension, yet wounded around its axis. But, just like in this Balenciaga hat which had a strict circle, almost stiffy base form what happens to make those Spanish forms more than merely ornamental is their juxtaposition to at the same time rigorous geometric principles.

They aim for the perfect circle and in this they are more than most of all other typefaces near to early Italian Renaissance spirit.

This is what I also see in Spanish incunabula typography. The tendency to allow those decorative elements but melt them with severe classic constructive principles. To say this more simply: they aim for the perfect circle (within this lies the simple secret of #beauty) and in this they are more than most of all other typefaces near to early Italian Renaissance spirit. There is nothing of Baroque in their forms. Ideas that later on would have done so much harm to the best principles of printing types! So, I worked on with my Advanced typeface numbers. I am already in a phase were I am not willing anymore to do great changes (so tiresome achieved an overall balance) but I almost unconscioulsy (the fact that I am writing about, I guess, proves that not so unconscious) reviewed Bézier details on the stroke endings as here in the ‘3’, added an inclined ending on the upper ‘7’ horizontal and others.

It is quite interesting that the slightly more decorative stroke endings and conjunctions which tend to close the counter forms a little bit more, in this tend to support the mentioned circle ideals instead of doing harm.

Subtly, in that way I enhanced the calligraphic principles, slightly opening the endings (like a flower) and at the same time refined their inner forms a bit to achieve cleaner circles. And it is quite interesting that the slightly more decorative stroke endings and conjunctions which tend to close the counter forms a little bit more, in this tend to support the mentioned circle ideals instead of doing harm. I knew that this inconspicuous play with details would lead me to change many of my letters, seek again for their subtle tension between geometric inner form and calligraphic endings. Nevertheless, I decided to let it happen. Because, in the end, I always had a soft spot for those Spanish typefaces. ¡Olé! Credits: Marc Lagrange | Photography

Working on Girl Editor for a Balenciaga lettering

elementi — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 11:46:59 +0000

Recently I have been working on a lettering for Balenciaga. I had been inspired by those experimental looking magazine pages Diana Vreeland did in the late sixties for Vogue. Liberman used those extremely elongated semi-classicist headline typefaces even in italic variants. They look quite strange and somewhat unusual to modern eyes but if we look close they are not bare of fascination. Yes, as the word in itself seems to suppose: fashionable. Excentric. At about the same period the clothes of Spanish fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga were “en vogue” and many of the editorial pages speak about him and show his couture dresses that are surely not less daring experimental. A couple that matches. From a type design point of view, however, this is somehow hard of an excercise. The name is extremely long, set in an wide character with thin hairlines and harsh stroke contrast. This intrigued me.

Cristóbal Balenciaga · Tailoring Work

In a certain way the great Spanish couture master acted like a type designer himself. With the utmost scruples taking care of the perfect fit, specially there where tailored forms intersect with the female body.

I decided to re-work on my Girl typeface. Some letters were needed to be adapted in size as I left them in the early 2000 years incompleted. I had some beautiful ‘n’ and ‘m’s with subtle details as broken stems and slightly curved straight lines. The ‘a’ was needed to be re-done. I wanted to keep the experimental spirit using large ellipsis as counter forms, but at the same time I surely am type designer enough to give them what someone may call the forms of a “real letter”. Because it is often that you do quite easily a fascinating graphic form which however lacks the fluidness and organic quality which makes those forms fit together in a line. Which enables them to attach one to another, chains them together. A quality which is hardly explainable but comes from a long experience of looking on historic typefaces and semi-calligraphic forms. These are images from a first stage of Girl Editor (re-)design which show some adapted letter forms and the new lowercase ‘a’. There is still a long way to go… Read also
See on Letters (stefanseifert.com) Credits: Henri Cartier-Bresson | Photography (small)

Design Updates on Threeadvanced Sans Serif

elementi — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 11:26:37 +0000

Some screenshots from the design updates on Threeadvanced Sans Serif typeface. The focus lies on rounding even more the inner bowl forms of letters and numbers. Moreover, the stem-bowl conjunctions have been re-elaborated, as for example on the lowercase letters as ‘n’ and ‘h’.

During my work I was inspired by Belgian photographer Marc Lagrange. Credits: Marc Lagrange | Photography