Natural – Fragments of Beauty

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

The Paths of Inspiration

elementi — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 16:54:54 +0000

As I am not drawing my typefaces first with a pencil on paper instead doing them directly on monitor I learned to follow my instincts or let’s call it the paths of Inspiration. This letter form Reflection Small Caps happens to end up with strange asymmetric serifs because something seemed to tell me to do so. When I saw the result it reminded me spontaneously of some of the Renaissance paintings by Leonardo which have as a particular detail a background horizon line that differs in height on the left and right side of the portrayed central figure. Even if we might not agree with some of the mystic theories that have been spun around that curious issue it still seems to be a fact that our brain tends to differently weigh two sides of a same composition. In typeface design subtle details like these can help our letters to get into a natural flow chaining them together for the eyes and following reading direction. But things like these shouldn’t be the result of a thinking process, I believe. They should crystallize out of working process and most of all in those very moments when we tend to forgot our rational intents but blindly follow her path. Read also [German language]

To Put Or Not Those Extra Points

elementi — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 12:25:39 +0000

Sometimes, or even always if I am asking myself more closely, I envy all the designers and creatives in the world for whom the computer might be not more than just a (powerful) tool to organize their work, to make it more simple to correct, modify, archive it etc. Like it may certainly influence and have a huge impact on the production of work in a great couture enterprise who, yet, in the end let those critical touches, of how the material is cut and put together in the hand of skilled craftsmen or the designer himself. This is so different and brings me even to the question wether it is an art any longer or not, to what we type designers have to face and how much and essentially the computer influences in a direct way on our design, how Béziers corrupt our feeling towards natural forms, how it undermines the organic flow of the swelling of a curve! Speaking for me, I am continuously involved in a deep struggle between what my imagination seems to want me to do and what Béziers try to allow me, or better limit me to do. Certainly, we can put points and points into the middle of our curves (even if I personally tend to shift them asymmetrically towards one side of it) but don’t we have the impression then it made our form more insecure, more shaky? That’s because of the digital grid that forces them to go to one side or another and never seem to let them stay where we wanted them. This is as well valid for the points themselves as well as for their tangents which like in a zooming glass seem to make our curve jump from one extreme to another. If I had the time to do so, not being forced to make my money as a graphic designer (which I certainly like) I could spend some weeks like a scientist to make dozens of diagrams minutely displaying every minimal step I make in a curve to demonstrate what I mean. But I do not. I am sorry for this lack. I limit pictures of this post to a daily working process scene on a character called Excess, just without comments. If you like to click through the slides feel free to leave yours anyhow! Or, otherwise, just be comforted to be not alone searching for the correct curve that never seems to happen.

Fashionable Fonts

elementi — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 12:32:21 +0000

Sometimes it is not that I am searching for something particular when I let fashion photo shoots accompany my typeface works. It’s just that something that I cannot quite explain that inspires me to refine my letters when I place them side by side. Maybe it is because fashion industry and therefor those extraordinary artists who contribute with their mastership, often achieved only by many years of hard work, always operates on the edge of a striking contrast or juxtaposition. Namely the will to achieve the highest degree of perfectionism almost on the brink to be unnatural, and at the same time the search for style supposed to be something purely personal and hence full of doubts* and imperfections. It is this that – on the far other side of these attempts – adds the human element which in the end leads to beauty. I guess it is something similar at the heart of my font design. Here is my website’s textface that still needs lots of optimization to be done. Nevertheless I also like its little “mistakes”, I am willing to keep its imperfections.

*Regardless of what fashionists might tell you about that: style is not the result of being 100% sure about yourself. Style is the result of work. And the reason for work is doubt.

A Mirror

elementi — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 16:44:12 +0000

When I was recently working on my personal website relaunch (www.stefanseifert.com) I stumbled casually upon a photo series by Peter Lindbergh for Christian Dior griffe. It shows beautiful Natalia Vodianova in sensual black and white pictures. Something urged me to put them beside my own Christian Dior typeface researches (purely artistic, no commercial benefits for me). And there it was again: the knowledge why, at all, I am designing typefaces. Letters are made for beautiful sensible woman. Their lines reflect those of their bodies. And not only.

It is something magic that connects them both in my eyes. Maybe it’s about sensitiveness or the way the inner nature of forms matches in them. At least, this would explain why in the history of arts they so often served as muses to us.

Read also [German and Italian language] Credits: Peter Lindbergh | Photography Natalia Vodianova | Model

The Ugly Little ‘g’

elementi — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 14:38:05 +0000

A quite curious little character in my Advanced Text webfont (working title Threeadvanced) is the ‘g’. It has those strange angles and at first glance weird looking curve segments, it is like the Italians would say a little «bruttino» and I admit I like it that way. Despite the fact that I never had so much respect for a correctly layouted Bézier curve, its form grew naturally over the time and I tend to work on it when I am in creative abandon trying to put down all this too much rationalizm (which perhaps would have led to a rounder and smoother form). And I hope I am doing well so. After all, how could those letter curves – if we imagine this ‘g’ to be not bigger than some pixels height – be turned by an immaginative pen in a perfect round and smooth way? I guess this is what those naturally, instinctively growing forms are trying to tell me.

Interim Points

elementi — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 06:50:08 +0000

Here some intermediate results of my work on the Vision typeface numbers. Vision has aligned numbers which have wide and rounded bowls. Sometimes it’s hard to manage those forms especially when it comes to turning points or conjunctions of curves with (almost) straight line elements. During the work process I often come to add extra points that build mini intermediate curve sections. They can help when curve turning areas feel to be to abrupt or the complete change of curve tangents would damage the whole letter design harmony. Those tiny interim forms tend to vanish after a while or even sometimes are efficiently wiped out by the automatic optimization tools in font program leaving better results than before having them inserted. For myself I have special names for particular effects that quite often occur in design process such as shark nose which describes part of a bowl where the outer curve form seem to be to narrow so that it creates an unnatural rounding tip almost something like an “edge”. It can cost hours to better those zones without influencing on the entire letter’s curves’ balance.

Ballerine

elementi — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 15:21:11 +0000

Appena usciva dalla porta riuscivo a riconoscerla, vedendo le sue scarpe cosiddette «ballerine» che erano di un tipo piuttosto insolito, scamosciato, di un colore molto chiaro tono sabbia, che quasi non si distinguevano da un piede giovanile ed elastico se non fosse per il delicato fiocco appena sopra le dita. E per quanto non poteva sembrare un fatto inusuale adesso, lo era invece quando le avevo viste la prima volta, più che una settimana fa, quando si era ancora quasi d’inverno.

Di quelle scarpe, come un fanciullo che cova in sé per tutto l’anno la vigilia di natale, ne aspettavo il ritorno coll’arrivare del caldo (come fosse il loro apparire non già obbediente a qualche moda particolare ma alle eterne necessità stagionali della natura), affinché affollassero di nuovo le strade, ornate di sottili nastri o di fiori; e come tutto mi sembrava triste, quando per una giornata di pioggia e di vento, ritornata sorprendentemente, esse venivano ricambiate coi stivali!1 In quei giorni le strade bagnate che di solito pullulano di fanciulle strepitose mancano, smorte, d’ogni bellezza, e pare che di pari misura, solo inversamente, come gli specchi d’acqua interrotte sull’asfalto vi disegnano i scuri profili degli alberi, ne perdano del tutto il riverbero unificante delle loro bellezze.

Pensavo tra me che sbagliavano i Cinesi ad allacciare i piedi di una donna nel più in alto possibile. (Poiché venissero separate dal suolo, avevo letto una volta.)

Perché che cosa mai potrebbe renderle più divine quelle creature, di queste scarpe basse: nelle quali il piede si propone nudo, ci mostra sul dorso come sporchi arabeschi le sue linee di rosa, bianco e bluastro nei diversi strati dell’epidermide, come quelli sbiaditi sulle mura di marmo ad un palazzo rinascimentale, lasciatevi dalla pressione del passato.

Sicché queste forze di gravitazione da esse non vengono smentite, anzi ne mettono ancora di più in risalto, in quest’età (giacché lo fanno torcere il piede e fanno premere quelle venette quando pure ancora il seno vibra tondo e senza macchie), un’agilità insieme alla fermezza2; fin lì dove si piega, ed esse ce ne lascino, aprendosi sui lati, scorgere appena l’inizio delizioso delle dita? Le quali, come piccoli frutti in una vite stanno racimolati, nella parte appena nascosta, una pressa l’altra. E se di tali piedi non potevo possederne uno, a coprirlo di tenerezze, mi consolavo almeno a vederne di tutti i loro consimili, senza dover rinunciarvi a nessuno. (E se si aveva un po’ di fortuna si poteva pure, nella loro più piccola deviazione al essere completamente scoperto, scorgere un poco del arco adombrato del suolo del piede.)

Quella specie di bellezza altera che le donavano si diminuiva quando in un lembo di conversazione ch’afferravo accolsi l’informazione che ella viveva, in mancanza d’un appartamento proprio, ancora dai suoi. E come lo afferma Proust quel «penetrare» nella vita di una sconosciuta sia delizio e insieme eterno straccio, dava prova ad avere il potere di cambiarne quei segni esterni, tanto dominanti per la nostra visione prematura. Perché svegliava la mia fantasia, incline a delle fantasticherie insensate; perché in fondo, quale forma, quale piede potrebbe reggere contro il piacere di vederle quelle scarpe tolte e messe accanto ad un letto reale! Questa scena puramente immaginaria, infatti, faceva tornare in me un ricordo creduto svanito (ma come non era vero!) – vivevo ancora in Italia e per di più in rapporto con un’ottima compagna – quando mi capitò di desiderare atrocemente una ragazza semplicemente per il fatto di aver visto durante una nostra visita le sue scarpe messe nel corridoio.

Altre volte il mio pensiero tornava ancora più indietro: la timidezza di un gesto sessuale, lo vedo come davanti a me e mi viene da pensare che l’intero, la grandezza della bellezza la vediamo solo nel momento in cui prendiamone i primi contatti, senza che la corrompessimo con quel che siamo, ma solo molto più tardi.

1 – Benché con il ritorno dell’autunno ci si poteva ben consolarsi coll’iniziare di un altro periodo, diverso: quello delle calzature di lana dai toni bruni o neri, toni più di accordo col colorito della natura, delle foglie cadenti. Sotto i loro pallidi riflessi fanno rifiorire la carne della gamba sotto un aspetto del tutto diverso: cioè dell’eleganza (dominio benché non più delle giovanissime che ci esaltano nell’estate).

2 – Il che sa riferire alla fanciulla, specie quando sono un po’ sciupate, quasi un’aria contadinesca: offrendosi come tutti gli indumenti di coloro in una tranquilla modestia e naturalezza, cosa che, credo, fece il Raffaello scegliere tra loro i suoi modelli per delle sante divinità. Altre volte invece queste scarpe sono di una colpente eleganza, di camoscio dai toni grigi verdi, e sulla fronte portano fiori stilizzati di nastri raccolti.

Counter Forms and Inspiration

elementi — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 06:55:40 +0000

In some occasions it can be useful to check your letter forms partially. It can be helpful to delete the outer line of a letter temporarily and observe its so called counter for a while maybe in comparison to others. Although I personally tend to not overestimate this aspect of a letter design it is generally not less important then the outer part of a letter form like a painting or photography that is, at least in part, defined by its dark shadow parts. As I am fan of curves that are not “too” round and show some kind of edginess I am checking here if this is also true for my counter parts. Look at the counter of the Urbino ‘R’ in this case (in the middle) and note the slight flat part of the curve beyond the maximum point on its right. It should be where the outer line “waits” a little while turning and moving backwards on the inside of the letter. I liked this part whereas the other form of an upside down turned ‘a’ (the one to its right) is less good in my eyes. For inspiration purposes I kept an eye on beautifully photographed Natalia by Paolo Roversi. You may look at form parts like her lower #leg to learn about natural rounding and how the muscles tend to flatten their form a little. This is what I am searching for in my characters’ design as well. Credits: Paolo Roversi | Photography

Vision

elementi — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 15:13:51 +0000

Vision is an experimental character for whom I was inspired partly by fashion photography of German post war photographer Regina Relang. As many of my typefaces it researches similarities between the beauty of female body and letter forms. A particular role in this creation played the observation of classic gestures as reflected perfectly here by the ‘9’ and the models arm holding. Although a linear and graphic typeface I introduced many features to give it a natural «warmth» in lines and almost leaf like outer forms. Credits: Regina Relang | Photography