David Berlow is one of today’s most influential American typographers. His colleagues describe him as a funny, quirky, private guy who shares his experience and knowledge through teaching others. A man who aside from designing many typefaces enjoys “taking time off, collecting rubber bands and counting grains of sand.” He has “witnessed and influenced early developments of digital typography,” co-founded a digital type font company specializing in custom designs, and designed many font designs and font families. David Berlow has made a major impact on typography and has impressed a large audience with what he has brought to the industry.
David Berlow was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1954 but did not stay there long. He moved to Wisconsin when he was a year old and stayed there until the completion of his schooling. His interest in type began at a young age. Berlow remembers carving block prints at seven years old and became quite fascinated with the ability of repetition, “if I positioned the palm trees just so, and the monkey swung just so I could repeat the same block as many times as I wanted for a longer picture!” He attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1973-1976, majoring in fine arts. A letterpress in college sparked his old interests in type. After opening a drawer of type during his freshman year, he discovered the same technique of repeating blocks just like he had when he was seven, and experienced the same excitement he had when he was young. In college at a friend’s request, he designed a logo for a travel agency. His logo was very typographic, and it was the beginning of his fascination with type. After the logo project, Berlow discovered there were many opportunities in graphic design. David Berlow graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and moved to New York.
David Berlow’s first job was with an advertising agency, but he soon decided the New York agency scene was not his style. After two months, he decided the job was not for him. Not sure of what to do next, Berlow put together a plan, “I figured I’d spend a few years drawing letters, a few years learning photo editing and then work as the art director for a music magazine like Rolling Stone or SPIN.” Berlow took action on his plan in 1977 and began applying for several jobs including, Marvel Comics, a diploma factory, and Mergenthaler Linotype New York drawing office. Mergenthaler Linotype, “one of the oldest, still operating type foundries,” stepped up and offered Berlow a job. It wasn’t a very good paying job, but it gave Berlow the opportunity to do what he loved. At Linotype Berlow discovered he could make a living drawing letters all day. While working at Linotype, Berlow considered switching from type to photography but decided to stay with type after realizing his love for drawing alphabets. After four years, he went to work with some colleagues at Bitstream, Inc., a digital type supplier, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through his experience and colleagues at Linotype and Bitstream, Berlow learned “the qualities of design and the lines themselves” as well as the digital side of type. From 1982-1989, he worked at Bitstream, designing fonts and working on marketing strategies helping to establish a retail library for Bitstream. Seven years later, David Berlow left Bitstream to begin a new chapter in his career by founding his own company.
In 1989, David Berlow and Roger Black teamed up to form the Font Bureau, located in Berlow’s apartment in Boston. Their objective was simple, “to make fonts that were useful to customers.” Initially these designs were for corporations like Apple, Microsoft and The Chicago Tribune. The Font Bureau soon developed the reputation of, “producing high-quality classic types and outspoken but perfectly constructed display faces.” The Font Bureau was originally located in Berlow’s personal apartment but soon the company expanded. Berlow hired more designers and when meetings with clients began taking place inside his car, Berlow decided it was time to move to a bigger, more private location. Berlow continued to live in his apartment, and although the designers who work at the Font Bureau are from all over the country, they each work from their own home. Over the years the Font Bureau has “developed over 200 typefaces, new designs and revivals for custom clients, the retail market, and equipment manufacturers.” Some of the custom type designs were created for The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Hewlett Packard.
A year after the Font Bureau moved out of Berlow’s apartment, he began taking yearly visits to Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. He spent a month at the vineyard and returned a year later. After his third visit to the vineyard, Berlow decided to call it home. Berlow fell in love with the island’s “scenic beauty and rustic charm.” While his house was being built on Martha’s Vineyard, Berlow lived in a dilapidated trailer at the back of his property. Berlow gets his inspiration for his type designs from the trees and landscape at the Vineyard.
Berlow was respected by his colleagues for his outstanding work. In 2007 Berlow won the SOTA Award of the Society of Typographic Aficionados. The Society of Typographic Aficionados is a non-profit society whose goal is to get the word out to the public about the art and history of typography and its function of creating a successful way of communicating. Today, Berlow is the President of the Font Bureau, the Vice President of a new media company, Interactive Bureau, and the organizer for the Type Lab, “a traveling thing on type and typography.” He continues to work on designing new fonts, as well as redesigning old fonts from his home on Martha’s Vineyard. After growing up in small towns and rural areas until the age of 24, Berlow finds the isolation of being on an island a much easier place to concentrate and develop his best ideas than the busy environment of the city.
David Berlow is inspired from art and types from the past, even from centuries ago. He is fascinated with old types and believes that he can learn a great deal from them. The typefaces can give one insight to the people, publications, and places for whom or what the design was created. Over the years, possibly 50 years or hundreds of years, the designs may be redesigned and updated using different technologies. Berlow is intrigued not only with the type designs, but also with how the designs were made and the materials that were used. Many of his type designs are inspired by designs from past centuries. “What is fascinating to me about the type of the past is that they take me to a particular place in time where a type was required to solve some problems,” says David Berlow. David Berlow has learned much from type designers of today and continues learning everyday. He learns from those he is teaching and he learns from other designers at The Font Bureau. These are his “latest teachers” because he learns form the style of today’s type. Berlow learned from his colleagues at Linotype and Bitstream, and he learned much from John Quaranta, the Master Designer at Linotype, when he worked there. David Berlow is influenced and continues to learn from type designers from ages past. He believes, “Type design is pretty much infinite, and all it takes is a letter you’ve never seen before to incite learning.”
David Berlow has his own method when he begins designing a new typeface, “Mostly it’s listening to a need, from a client or the sales department or another designer. Then thinking though the major features, and then drawing until all the details are settled. This is followed by exposure and reaction from customers and potential customers, and then with positive feedback, a new family is drawn.” His greatest tool used to design a new font is the world around him. His first step is to explore the world and “do things that allow him to think better about the letter.” He resorts to the computer when he can “draw these letters!” Instead of starting at the beginning of the alphabet and working his way from A to Z, he starts with the letters H-O-D. He then continues with n-o-p and works his way through all the “lowercase letters with the lightest and blackest styles of roman and italic from a to z.” When analyzing a type, Berlow looks at how well the type works for its purpose. He considers both technical and stylistic aspects. For Berlow, the first step to designing a font is to establish what the client wants to convey, then drawing characters on the computer. When the client likes what he sees, then Berlow works on the 200-300 characters, and 30-40 styles in all the different weights and thicknesses. In 1996, Berlow was commissioned by Monotype Imaging to do research at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium and to design an exclusive typeface family based on his research. He designed the Throhand Typeface Family.
David Berlow designed a variety of fonts including, Agency FB, Agency FB Condensed, Agency FB Wide, Belizio, Belucian, Berlin Sans, FF Berlinsans, Bureau Grotesque Five Three, Bureau Grotesque One Three, Bureau Grotesque Three Seven, Bureau Grotesque Three Three, Californian FB, Californian FB Display, Californian FB Text, Charcoal, Cheltenham FB Bold Condensed, Eagle, Eldorado Display, Eldorado Micro, Eldorado Text, Empire (FB). One of the typefaces Berlow designed is Belizio, 1987. Belizio is based on Aldo Novarese's Egizio typeface, designed in 1955. Belizio is a slab serif font. It is a bold, machine like font with square ended serifs and a geometric impact. Berlow also designed two new variations of the ITC Franklin Gothic font, condensed and compressed. It is a sans serif font with a larger x-height. A couple distinguishing characteristics are the double-story g and the tail on the q. The tail forms from the bottom-center of the q. In the year 1991 when ITC Franklin Gothic was designed the Soviet Union officially ended and the U.S. accidentally bombed an Iraqi bomb shelter.
Belizio
ITC Franklin Gothic Compressed
Sources:
http://www.monotypeimaging.com/ProductsServices/TypeDesignerShowcase/DavidBerlow/Biography.aspx?type=bio1
http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/200709.html
http://www.identifont.com/find?Name=david+berlow&q=Go
http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/DesignerProfiles/DavidBerlow.htm
http://www.stepinsidedesign.com/STEPMagazine/Article/28634
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5326/is_200605/ai_n21390342/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
http://www.typesociety.org/abouthistory.html
http://www.fontbureau.com/pdf/FB_David_Berlow_Specimens.pdf
Macmillan, Neil. An A-Z of Type Designers. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment