THE MAKING OF KANDAL — LetterCult : A short history of the development of a typeface. Most interesting are Simonson’s comments on traditional versus digital font production:
“I would never go back,” Simonson says. “You do get a certain sense of accomplishment mastering things like French curves and technical pens, but the process is just so unforgiving and inflexible and slow. Unless you are trying to give a typeface a handmade look, it’s just not worth it. Plus, with the efficiency of working digitally, you can do so much more than just draw the letters. You can work out the spacing at the same time, play ‘what if’ scenarios with different design ideas, see how a partially designed font looks set in a paragraph, things that would be impractical or impossible working with traditional tools.”
Reading this article gave me a newfound appreciation for the accomplishment of pre-digital type designers. It’s also an inspiration. We take so much for granted in today’s digital society that we often overlook (or forget) what drove us to use the computer in the first place. Our tools will never define us: only what we do with them will.
