Hello everyone o/. To continue on our journey of creating our new home, we’re taking a small detour dive to some perceptual patterns that I think would be helpful to kick off our design phase in the right direction. Over the years, I've been finding that defining your typefaces, fonts, and colors beforehand can help really define the overall design and quickly make some decisions that you might struggle on later. Many times, we often leave it up to “aesthetics” to dictate our choices.

"Oh that looks cool, or those colors seem interesting together."

Guilty of that?  Don’t worry, we all were at one point.  And heck, I sometimes arbitrarily decide things based on popularity or previous knowledge that a certain combination of fonts and colors work.  I think it’s okay to do this at times if you want to quickly design something to put it on paper, however, lately I'm starting to lean towards a more methodical approach and I learned the more effort you put into correlating all these pieces into your brand, the stronger it becomes. It's like filling those missing plot holes in a story. You don't have to necessarily reveal them, but it's a guidance for you.

Sidenote: Typefaces is the actual term to refer to a collection of fonts.  Arial is a typeface.  Times New Roman is a typeface.  A font is a specific entity of that typeface.  A typeface will have multiple fonts i.e. Italic, Bold, Regular, etc...

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My Typeface Journey

So I began my journey into researching typefaces back in February of this year. I did the typical process of listing all the fonts that “looked good” to me. But something was lacking in that process. I felt like I was cheating, and since I had a background in UI Design, it kind made me a bit narrow-minded with the options I was choosing since most of us in the UI/UX field are more concerned about readability and usefulness of a typeface rather than the history and design of the font.

So after hitting that obstacle, I decided to do something different this time around. I needed to switch things around if my goal was to create something for myself. Since this site was going to be about me, my work, and essentially act as my playground, I figured maybe I can find a font that ‘speaks’ to me.  Something that can relate to me. Similar to how we invest in some brand’s mission and goals, maybe there’s a font that falls in line with what my purpose and goal is. In addition, because I’m going to be writing more and blogging, I wanted to look for a font that had a utilitarian approach to it.  Because, I can always look for a font that looks good to me, but what about you guys?  I need to take my readers into account.  You guys are just as important as myself to the design decision.

And other things that came into mind while doing this process was having a requirement to find a matching sans-serif / serif pairing.

Serifs are just better to read in the long run.  For those that may not know the difference, basically serifs are fonts like Times New Roman and Georgia that have those little feet (aka serifs) that act as anchors to help separate words into digestible chunks.  As some of you may know, unfortunately, a lot of us “scan-read” vs “actually read”.

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Warning: Some design nerdy shit below

I must have spent hours and hours reading about typefaces and looking at different foundries.  And I finally landed upon the KlimFoundry (https://klim.co.nz/).  I loved everything about this space, atmosphere and aesthetic. In addition, they had a mission statement that tuned my mind.

Typefaces reflect a culture’s priorities and aspirations. This is why we keep designing new typefaces - the job isn’t done

It reminded me a lot about my philosophy of design. Culture changes, people’s behavior changes, which ultimately means the way users thinks and interacts changes.  We learn new things, and we phase out older methods. Remember when we had to plug everything in to use it. And now we got people wearing wireless headphones that automatically connect to a sound source and we're talking to a small device to help us remember to wake up the next day. As a result, designs has to be reinvented, tweaked, and changed – it'll never be done.

These pockets of inspiration is what makes us (especially designers) happy. It's a very euphoric state when things start to click.

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Söhne

Söhne is the memory of Akzidenz-Grotesk framed through the reality of Helvetica

In laymen terms, this typeface was born from thinking it was one thing, when in reality it was something else. This is how hybrids come to be. Applying principles from memory while following a guideline combines these new mixtures of knowledge to form something new.

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Untitled Collection

The Untitled Collection was deliberately designed to not be designed.

I know, it’s quite the mind blowing statement.  One of those statements you’d probably say if you were high on weed or something.

The story of this typeface is super relatable to me and how I view the world and life in general. There’s a concept of design and living called ‘super normal’.  I eventually baited myself to buy a book about it, just to understand what it was all about. From what I perceived from the book, Super Normal is the concept of creating something that’s not noticeable. Creating something so normal, that it’s undistinguishable from other ‘normal’ items. Here's another quote that can help say my thoughts better:

There are better ways to design than putting a lot of effort into making something look special. Special is generally less useful than normal, and less rewarding in the long term. Special things demand attention for the wrong reasons, interrupting potentially good atmosphere with their awkward presence. - Jasper Morrison

Sometimes I feel like in today's world we often care about what's that shiny object, what's new, and what's upcoming. And we get too caught up in the "material" phase, that we take ‘normal’ things for granted. A table with just 4 legs, a garbage can, or even a paper clip. These designs are so well designed that people forgot about who made them.  In my eyes, this is like the epitome of ‘timeless’ design. I want to do a fun challenge and you can join in as well. Go through your room, house or apartment, and just list out what it is, and how long you've had it for.  This can be a laptop, PC, camera, speakers, coasters, a mug, etc...

There was story in the book about how a Japanese designer went to the gallery and admired some of the bowls. Turns out that the bowls looked so normal that he didn’t realize he made them. That feeling of admiring something you made without recognizing that you did it seems like a goal that I’d like to reach.  And not only in design, but with the people around me as well.  I think in the future, there might be a few people looking back and say, “Thanks for all the help”, and I can imagine myself saying, “What did I even do?”.

Overall, I enjoy designing and creating things that work and function. It doesn’t have to be special and it doesn’t have to have a unique name. What better experience can us designers give then to design an experience that molds into a person’s life.  When we drink from a tea cup, we don’t admire the design of the tea cup, we remember the fun times of enjoying dim sum and drinking tea.

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The Final Decision

You might have already guessed what I chose based on the length of my writing / rants.  But I ultimately chose Untitled.  It fit both of my perceptual requirements and it further enhances my brand / website goals.  It’s a “normal” enough font that makes the atmosphere more inviting, warm, and welcoming.  You don’t have to stress trying to read it, nor do you have to be an expert to appreciate it because it’s simply not meant to be.

Colors

Colors have a similar process, so I don’t want to dive again and repeat the “process” again of how I ultimately chose my colors. In fact, it was kind of simple from the start.  Since my brand and philosophy encourages the concept of dualism and ideas like Yin and Yang, it seemed reasonable to mainly use white and black as my main colors.  I'm not going to use pure black for obvious contrasting reasons, but at the same time, if you think about it, the black color can represent that dark tunnel that everyone's in. And my goal with my blog, writing, and talks is to give that light so that your tunnel isn't that dark. My mission is to give a sense of comfort, a sense of relief, and some guidance to help everyone walk that extra mile. So in a sense, the light text is radiating enough lightness to make that black turn into a dark charcoal.

I do recommend you guys to search up what colors mean, what kind of emotional response they give out, because it actually does matter. Relate it to your goals and mission for your brand or yourself. I feel like there's a hidden reason why we like certain colors compared to others. It often gives off that vibe or feeling, and you can utilize the meaning of that color to enhance your story or brand.

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Tips on how to decide

In the end, it’s up to you.  Just like there's a balance to life, there's a balance to design. You're still more than welcome to keep designing iterations until you find something that "looks great". But remember the beauty of design comes from the decisions made during design. Build a story for yourself that not only you can invest in, but others will too. These little arcs and backgrounds to your design is what makes it more beautiful in my books. Put some light research into it. Sometimes researching the history of typefaces, colors, and names of things will help inspire you and further flesh out those missing plot holes you need.

I didn’t know about being “Super Normal” until I did my research, and now I feel like I learned a bit more about myself and who I am even though my intentions was just to create a website. Moments of self-discovery are great to have, and I hope some bells ring for you guys as you think about these things in your next project.