Type Form & Function

Type Design

Designers can spend countless hours looking for the perfect typeface to match their semantic and syntactic objectives. Because that can be a daunting and even futile quest, some designers choose to create a custom typeface. Custom fonts fall into a number of categories, such as original designs, tributes, remixes, and hybridizations. In the essay “Call It What It Is,” published in Emigre’s Tribute type specimen booklet, John Downer divided typeface tributes into two categories: those that follow the original closely, and those that follow the original loosely. Whether it becomes a tribute or something entirely new, the final typeface can be a complete font, equipped with all of the necessary cases, punctuation, and numerals; but at ...