How Do You Design a New Typeface?

Tom Foley designs a new typeface by absorbing the brief until it sinks in, then sitting down to draw. The same habit carries from historical projects into commercial brand work.

A custom typeface for a brand starts with the brand. Foley takes in the strategy, the positioning, whether the brand is evolving or transforming, and how the strategy becomes a visual identity and a design system. He looks for the parameters the letters need. Once he feels comfortable with the subject or the question, he sketches by hand, including calligraphy, and moves to the screen when a form feels right. Foley says he has probably developed the instincts after years of experience. At the beginning, a lot of the work was looking at other typefaces: why one felt right, why it was popular, why the x-height was so big, and why the stroke contrast was so high. Comparing proportions was learning by looking, because a lot of the information is not explicit.

Foley had no formal type design background, so looking and comparing became how he formed an opinion and a method. He says another typeface designer might completely disagree and call the work rule-based and rational. Foley calls a personal side part of the beauty of type design: a designer's background, journey, and way of understanding the world.