I’m so excited to welcome Ellen Lupton to the PolicyViz Podcast! In this week’s episode, we discuss various aspects of typography and design, emphasizing the importance of typography in enhancing content and ensuring inclusivity in design. We also talk about Ellen’s amazing book Extra Bold, which examines women’s underrepresentation in graphic design, incorporating diverse perspectives and examining how personal experiences with wealth affect design choices.
Resources
Follow Ellen on Instagram and her website, and find her latest book, thinking with type on Amazon
Guest Bio
Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. The all-new edition of her bestselling book Thinking with Type launched in March 2024. Other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.
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Transcript
00:11 – 00:15
Welcome back to the PolicyViz Podcast. I’m your host, John Schwabisch.
00:15 – 00:23
On this week’s episode of the show, I am super excited to have with me Ellen Lupton, author of the 3rd edition of the book
00:23 – 00:28
Thinking with Type as well as many other books, and we’re gonna talk about some of them in our conversation.
00:28 – 00:33
Ellen’s also professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Micah in Baltimore.
00:33 – 00:35
We talk about a whole host of things.
00:35 – 00:39
We talk a lot about typefaces and fonts as you might expect.
00:39 – 00:45
We talk about her favorite and least favorite typefaces, whether she likes the word typeface or font.
00:45 – 00:52
And we also talk about trying to be an inclusive designer, particularly when it comes to typefaces and how to think more broadly
00:52 – 00:55
and have a, in many cases, an international approach to your design work. And so if you are a
00:58 – 01:06
data visualization practitioner or specialist and you are creating visualizations, infographics, charts, graphs, and diagrams,
01:06 – 01:15
this is gonna be the episode for you to learn more about how to be a more discerning consumer and producer and user of fonts and typefaces.
01:15 – 01:19
And I think you’re really gonna love this episode. Ella was great to talk with.
01:19 – 01:21
We had such a good time as you’re going to see.
01:22 – 01:24
And so I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s episode of the show.
01:24 – 01:30
Make sure you rate or review the show wherever you get your podcast, be it if you’re watching this on YouTube or if you’re
01:30 – 01:34
listening to it on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get it, I hope you will rate or review the show.
01:34 – 01:40
So with all that out of the way, let’s get to this week’s episode of the show, my interview with Alan Lupton.
01:43 – 01:46
Hi, Alan. So great to meet you. Thanks for coming on the show.
01:46 – 01:48
I’m thrilled, John. Thank you.
01:48 – 01:55
This is very exciting. I’ve been a big fan for a long time, and now we have a 3rd 3rd edition of your, thinking with type
01:55 – 02:00
book, which is as were the other 2 editions here somewhere buried behind me. Great.
02:00 – 02:09
This one seems, kinda like, I don’t wanna say started from scratch, but seems like you really kinda started at the bottom and worked your way back up.
02:09 – 02:18
Yeah. I really rethought the whole thing and rethought some of the premises of the book, the voice of the book, and expanded
02:18 – 02:21
the content in a in a big way.
02:21 – 02:28
When you look at people’s particularly for folks who listen to this podcast, looking at data visualizations, dashboards, infographics,
02:28 – 02:33
that sort of thing, Do you get the sense that data folks look at fonts last?
02:35 – 02:48
Maybe they should. You know? Most typography isn’t supposed to be in your face, like waving and jumping around. I’m a font. I’m a font.
02:48 – 02:55
You know, it’s supposed to support the content. So that’s okay.
02:55 – 03:04
And I think for a Data folks to find some fonts that they really like and that work on the platforms that they use, that’s
03:04 – 03:12
a really great way to use typography and really focus on using those fonts well and clearly.
03:13 – 03:19
So what what is and this this question kind of bleeds a little bit into your teaching work, and I’m just curious how you how
03:19 – 03:26
you recommend folks think about using fonts in their work, how you teach, fonts in class?
03:26 – 03:33
How do people how do you tell your students to go ahead and and either design their own or for probably most people, like,
03:33 – 03:36
go choose a font that they that they think will work?
03:36 – 03:41
Well, we really talk about function and context and what you’re trying to do.
03:41 – 03:51
So often our students are creating really cool, hip, experimental projects, and they want fonts that are swoopy and pixelated,
03:51 – 03:55
and, you know, super weird, and in your face.
03:55 – 04:07
And, they often design their own fonts, or just, you know, letter forms, or use technology in interesting ways to make surprising shapes.
04:08 – 04:23
But we also need to know how to use typography so that it just works, and that it doesn’t surprise people when they’re driving a car or navigating a hospital. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
04:23 – 04:33
Reading a book where you want the fonts to be beautiful and and nice, but you don’t want them to get in the way of the function
04:34 – 04:37
and the tasks that people are trying to do.
04:38 – 04:45
Yeah. One of the things that I love about the new book is, in my recollection at least, is the revised or I would probably
04:45 – 04:50
say expanded section on typography in different languages, different parts of the world.
04:50 – 04:53
And so, like, where did that come from?
04:53 – 05:01
How do you think about taking a design in different languages, especially you move from kind of horizontal languages, left
05:01 – 05:03
to right, then right to left, and then vertical?
05:03 – 05:06
Like, how how do you think about these transitions?
05:07 – 05:16
Well, I mean, this is called, internationalization and, you know, web design and the idea of designing typographic systems
05:17 – 05:22
that will work locally wherever, wherever they exist.
05:23 – 05:35
And so it means choosing typefaces that support that and, understanding, you know, the fluid quality of content.
05:35 – 05:44
So, for example, Chinese takes up much less space than anything written in the Latin alphabet. It’s just very compact.
05:45 – 05:51
So you need, like, different amounts of space depending on the language.
05:53 – 06:03
Part of my goal in including diverse writing systems in the book was really to celebrate typography as a world phenomenon,
06:03 – 06:09
and that typography belongs to everyone and is practiced all around the world.
06:10 – 06:16
It’s not truly a practical guide to creating type in every writing system on the planet.
06:16 – 06:22
You know, the the primary language of the book is English, and the alphabet is Latin.
06:23 – 06:35
But the book acknowledges this diversity of cultures, and right through the history of type, to the way type is practiced today.
06:36 – 06:43
Yeah. Does it does it bother you, the difference in people using the word type versus font?
06:43 – 06:46
I know in the book, you’re like, ah, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay. But I’m just curious.
06:46 – 06:49
Like, how do you feel like it was to bother you inside?
06:50 – 06:52
No. So that’s a really interesting question.
06:52 – 07:01
It’s like, people on the street are much more likely to be familiar with the word font than the word typeface.
07:04 – 07:12
People working in the type industry is very important to them, the difference between that.
07:12 – 07:21
I even had an argument with a friend of mine who’s a big shot at Monotype, which is one of the biggest type producers and distributors on the planet.
07:21 – 07:33
And I’m like I’m like, Charlie, who who cares the difference between fonts? Fonts are software files, essentially. Yeah.
07:33 – 07:44
And typefaces, which is the design, sort of considered separately from how it is made available to you through software or
07:44 – 07:52
in olden times through metal or film files. And he, like, almost blew up. He’s like, I’m in this industry.
07:53 – 08:03
And the complexity of, like, distributing these software files, making sure they work well on everybody’s computer, that they
08:04 – 08:13
translate among languages, you know, that they conform to all kinds of standards for, you know, software protocols and licensing.
08:13 – 08:14
Mhmm.
08:14 – 08:23
Right? Says, I use my whole life as fonts and dealing with, you know, these files, right? This digital information.
08:24 – 08:30
But for people on the street, the word font is very familiar. It’s cute.
08:30 – 08:32
It’s a cute little four letter word.
08:33 – 08:37
So I’m just not in the business of correcting people when they say Jon.
08:38 – 08:41
When really they mean typeface or vice versa.
08:41 – 08:46
And in my book, I think I’m pretty good at using the words correctly.
08:46 – 08:58
But if a paragraph worked better saying font, I, you know, no one just keep repeating this big, long, you know, 8 letter word when you can just say font. Yeah. And people understand.
08:58 – 09:00
They get it. Yeah. They get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
09:01 – 09:04
I’m curious, about the the building of the book.
09:04 – 09:08
I mean, all of your books are amazing in their construction.
09:08 – 09:16
I mean, I you know, I was saying to you before we started, like, I have all these books behind me, and so I have to start moving to to Kindle books.
09:16 – 09:20
But, like or some sort of e reader, which I don’t love.
09:21 – 09:26
Especially your books, so, like, they’re just amazing to hold and, like and we’re gonna talk about your your other book, Extra
09:26 – 09:31
Bold, in just a little bit, which is, like, another one that is just has this great feeling about it.
09:32 – 09:34
What is your process for doing that?
09:34 – 09:39
Like, do you is that a priority for you when you start to when you work on a book project?
09:40 – 09:51
Yeah. Most of my books are written in InDesign, our, you know, page layout software, because I need to be able to see the
09:51 – 09:59
flow and what’s on a spread and what people are gonna when they’re gonna encounter something.
09:59 – 10:03
And it it’s not about, like, artistic expression.
10:03 – 10:15
It’s really about about really shaping the content, delivering the content with a reader in mind. And also the writer, me.
10:16 – 10:16
Yeah. Right.
10:16 – 10:19
I love seeing, like, what shape is the paragraph?
10:19 – 10:24
Is this paragraph twice as long as Yeah. The one before it? Maybe it should be 2 paragraphs.
10:25 – 10:25
Right.
10:25 – 10:29
And writing is very visual. Yeah. So that’s important to me.
10:29 – 10:33
And then the but the and then what about the physical construction of the book?
10:33 – 10:38
I’m I’m guessing you have a pretty close relationship with your publishers where you Yeah. Really like getting
10:38 – 10:52
They treat me well. Yeah. Hey. They let me design my books, which, most publishers do not wanna get into that because it causes problems. It’s labor intensive for the editor.
10:52 – 10:58
Editors wanna, you know, look at Microsoft Word documents and do track changes.
10:59 – 11:10
And so it’s it’s laborious, but, they allow me to, to do that and to create books that are beautiful and feel good and have
11:10 – 11:15
this intense relationship between the form and the content.
11:15 – 11:19
Yeah. Absolutely. You mentioned, earlier about this sort of internationalism.
11:19 – 11:21
So I wanna talk about extra bold.
11:21 – 11:25
I’m gonna I’m gonna crack it open for folks so they can they can hear the book open.
11:25 – 11:35
So, so this, well, why don’t I ask you to to talk about extra bold, because it is a collection of multiple folks, and there’s
11:35 – 11:37
a few chapters I wanna talk to you, about in detail.
11:37 – 11:42
But maybe tell tell us a little bit about the the history of where this one came from.
11:43 – 11:51
Sure. So the idea for the book came from an event I attended at the Pratt Institute in New York, where these 2 young women
11:51 – 11:59
were graduating from Pratt, and they organized an event about the missing women in graphic design.
11:59 – 12:10
And they felt that as students at Pratt, they were never shown a canon beyond white male designers.
12:10 – 12:12
And these were 2 young women of color.
12:13 – 12:18
And they put together this event, and they asked me to speak at the event, which was I was very honored.
12:18 – 12:25
But what was really interesting, it was like a huge crowd of young people that attended from all over New York.
12:25 – 12:28
People had driven from Baltimore to see it.
12:28 – 12:29
Oh, yeah.
12:29 – 12:32
It was amazing, this a student organized event.
12:33 – 12:41
And I thought, wow, there’s really a hunger for this content, and it would be fun to collaborate with these 2 women Yeah.
12:41 – 12:46
And have their point of view and their, their references.
12:46 – 12:55
And they did a lot of interviews with designers that they admire and really shared their life story in the book.
12:56 – 13:02
And as the book grew, it became clear that there needed to be more people in it. You know?
13:04 – 13:15
I worked with Kalina Sales, who’s a black graphic designer, Joshua Halstead, who’s a disabled graphic designer, Len Leslie
13:15 – 13:18
Shaw, who’s a non binary graphic designer.
13:19 – 13:31
So it was so important when you’re writing about this kind of material to be inclusive, and not, you know, be speaking for others and so forth. Yeah.
13:32 – 13:39
And then many other contributors who contributed essays, interviews, illustrations, dozens of people.
13:39 – 13:51
It was very collaborative and super very intense, you know, like having a big dinner party and doing all the dishes, you know, like all the Yeah.
13:51 – 13:54
Right. Right. All the cleaning up the technical stuff. Yeah.
13:54 – 13:56
You know, it fell to me.
13:56 – 14:00
I mean, there are several essays in here that have that that have struck with me.
14:00 – 14:13
But but one in particular that I wanna, bring up and and get your get your perspective on is, this chapter by Colina Sales that she mentioned on, typeface.
14:13 – 14:16
She uses the word typeface, so we’ll so we’ll stick with typeface.
14:16 – 14:19
Typeface and and sort of people’s, experiences.
14:20 – 14:23
So I just just quickly wanna sort of paraphrase one of the chapters.
14:25 – 14:29
Kaleena writes, consider how experiences with wealth and poverty seep into our design aesthetic.
14:29 – 14:36
If someone grows up poor in a family that struggles to make ends meet, that person might view wealth as a fantastical idealistic way.
14:36 – 14:42
If asked to design a logo for a financial institution, they might opt for a representation of money that matches those idealistic
14:42 – 14:45
feelings such as gold, extravagant, glitzy, and big.
14:45 – 14:48
And so I’m curious about, like, how you yeah.
14:48 – 14:53
What your what your take is or what your thoughts are, what your perspectives on on font and and a little bit curie.
14:54 – 14:57
It blew me away when Kalina wrote that. Yeah.
14:58 – 15:05
And it just it casts such a light on the way the graphic design industry functions.
15:05 – 15:13
So, like, designing for Fintech or banks is a huge part of the graphic design industry.
15:14 – 15:27
Just last week, Pentagram introduced a new identity for PayPal that’s, like, super clean, sans serif typography, really crisp little animations.
15:28 – 15:41
And it looks the way, mainstream, privileged people think finance should look like that it’s a a service for people.
15:43 – 15:53
And Kalina, you know, shone light on the fact that if you grow up in a neighborhood where there aren’t banks, there’s, like,
15:53 – 15:57
pawn shops and Western Union and cash economies.
15:59 – 16:08
And, you know, you’re not going to immediately think of a big sans serif typeface to represent a bank.
16:10 – 16:15
And so to think that way is really mind opening.
16:16 – 16:27
Yeah. And so do you and and and your students as an extension, I guess, how do you think about integrating the lessons from
16:27 – 16:32
Colina’s essay, but also from others into your into your teaching and then into your work?
16:33 – 16:43
I have many international students, including students from India, China, Korea. Those are the main places.
16:44 – 16:49
And these are these are these are countries that are very different from the US.
16:50 – 17:01
So last week, in my design theory class, we read a a piece about sort of revolutionary ways to think about design education,
17:01 – 17:09
to de center it, to make it less Western focused, to challenge the status quo.
17:10 – 17:23
And we had a discussion in class where my students from India were like, this is so far from the way we have ever viewed education,
17:23 – 17:34
which in their country is very authoritarian, very top down, often punitive, like corporal punishment in elementary school.
17:34 – 17:38
Like, stuff is illegal in the US. It’s still practice there.
17:39 – 17:48
And that was an eye opener for me that, like, we walk into a classroom in the US and presume a kind of liberal consensus.
17:49 – 17:58
And that people are coming from a kind of similar view of how the world works, and what democracy is, what freedom is, what
17:58 – 18:04
religious tolerance is, what social hierarchy or equality is.
18:05 – 18:15
And so it’s just it’s really important for educators to understand that not the whole not everybody comes from that background, even in the US. Yeah.
18:15 – 18:17
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
18:17 – 18:20
Let alone in a country like India.
18:21 – 18:28
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I’ve been focusing on a lot in the last few years, in my work at Urban is and I come
18:28 – 18:32
from a quantitative economics background, but doing more qualitative work. Right?
18:32 – 18:39
Getting you know, talking to people, which is very, I mean, many economists are are are will disagree with this, but most
18:39 – 18:46
economists are very comfortable behind a computer with digital data, never talk to a human being, and just and just move on.
18:46 – 19:00
And, I don’t that is clearly not the same, I would think, in in design where there’s more discussion and and, con, conversation with the end user.
19:01 – 19:10
And I’m curious how you go about teaching students about that process, and especially in this perspective of how do you sort
19:10 – 19:17
of gather a wide array of of perspectives of possible clients, possible customers, possible possible users?
19:17 – 19:22
Well, we have we have UX and user experience courses at MICA.
19:23 – 19:31
My classes, you know, I teach a design theory class where we read and discuss a lot of these principles of human centered
19:31 – 19:34
design and critiques of human centered design.
19:34 – 19:41
And, you know, it’s more of a academic, you know, a thinky talky class, I call it.
19:41 – 19:52
And then in the makey doy classes, we are more focused on, like, their voice and them developing their content and visual
19:52 – 19:56
language and skills as designers, because they’re they’re graduate students.
19:57 – 20:00
But many of our students do bilingual projects.
20:01 – 20:13
They look at, the need for typefaces in Indic languages, for example, or, projects that kind of merge Chinese and English.
20:14 – 20:18
So there’s a lot of interest in cross cultural graphic design.
20:19 – 20:21
We don’t do a lot of user research.
20:21 – 20:28
It’s like we’re not, doing business oriented projects.
20:28 – 20:36
So it’s not really feasible, you know, to sort of do research on human subjects. It has all kinds of limitations.
20:36 – 20:41
So if you’re not really doing it, it’s a it’s a tough thing.
20:41 – 20:42
Yeah. It’s a tall task for sure.
20:42 – 20:43
Mhmm. Sure.
20:44 – 20:49
I’m curious about your work outside of the classroom and outside of of writing books.
20:49 – 20:55
Like, what are the sorts of things these days that, like, get you get you excited about, you know, designing, creating?
20:56 – 21:04
Well, I’ve been really I’ve gotten really active on Instagram, and I have a sort of persona on Instagram that does these little
21:04 – 21:09
design lessons, working on one just a few minutes ago. And I really enjoy that.
21:09 – 21:17
It’s like a kind of merging of my teaching in a classroom with writing, with public speaking.
21:18 – 21:25
And it’s fun, because it’s like this really big audience that people you don’t know and that it’s I so I really enjoy that.
21:26 – 21:31
And, I’m not working Jon a book right now. I’m a little bit between books.
21:31 – 21:36
That’s that’s I’ll just say based on how many books you have out. Like, that’s that’s probably rare.
21:36 – 21:41
I hope to do another one, but I’m just I’m kinda waiting for the muse Yeah.
21:41 – 21:44
To strike me, and I’m enjoying alternatives to books.
21:44 – 21:46
Yeah. So
21:46 – 21:48
so More hands on stuff.
21:48 – 21:51
Right. Yeah. And what about the Instagram?
21:51 – 22:00
Like, what is the I’m guessing and I’ve I’ve seen, I mean, I’ve seen a lot of the videos, but I’m curious about your interaction with people.
22:00 – 22:04
I mean, that’s the one thing that makes it social. Right? So, like, what do you
22:05 – 22:09
comments, and then I end up following people.
22:10 – 22:18
And I’m especially interested in the baking community on Instagram. So, like, I aspire to that.
22:18 – 22:19
Yeah. Yeah.
22:19 – 22:22
But the people that follow me are graphic designers. But Yeah.
22:22 – 22:31
The people that I follow are like these bakers that do incredible, tour de force.
22:31 – 22:32
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
22:32 – 22:33
You know, cookies and cakes
22:33 – 22:34
and stuff.
22:34 – 22:37
So I just there there’s like a whole instructive
22:39 – 22:46
layer of the Internet. You know, we talk about being and commercial, and it’s all sales.
22:47 – 22:58
There’s so many people from the beginning that have been on the Internet in order to teach. And podcasting is part of that. Yeah. People wanna share knowledge.
22:58 – 23:04
And this goes back to the earliest days of the Internet, and of course, precedes it.
23:05 – 23:08
And I’ve just always loved that part of what we do.
23:08 – 23:12
It’s this kind of teaching and sharing and learning. There’s so much to learn.
23:12 – 23:21
Yeah. Do you do you find in the in the in your sort of Instagram community, in the design Instagram community, that you’re
23:21 – 23:26
able to have sort of conversations about design techniques?
23:26 – 23:36
Because I so one thing I struggle with a little bit about Instagram that I thought old Twitter really was good at facilitating is the conversation and the debate.
23:36 – 23:40
And in the data of his world, at least, it was healthy debate, but but I don’t get the I don’t get
23:40 – 23:52
that Debate is hard. I feel that people, really love to say nice things, but they also like to say mean things.
23:53 – 24:04
And so having a a debate about a topic, it so quickly devolves into trolling and negativity.
24:05 – 24:11
I mean, this PayPal logo by Pentagram, you wouldn’t believe how negative the comments are. Mhmm.
24:11 – 24:16
And something might get 1,000 and 1,000 of likes. Right.
24:16 – 24:22
But then the people that bother to write something are, like, so pissed off. Yes. I mean I love the guy.
24:22 – 24:25
You know, what what are you so angry about?
24:25 – 24:33
Yeah. I mean, the distribution of people who rate things on online is not the true, distribution. Right? It’s very bimodal.
24:33 – 24:36
It’s the ones and the fives and nobody in between.
24:36 – 24:37
But most people don’t bother.
24:38 – 24:38
Yeah.
24:40 – 24:43
So Yeah. I I don’t really think it’s a conversation exactly.
24:44 – 24:44
Right.
24:44 – 24:51
But there’s a lot of people you can hear and listen to, and you can have your own voice too.
24:52 – 25:01
Yeah. I wanna ask about, this may be a little far field, but because it’s on everybody’s, lips these days, I’m curious about
25:01 – 25:08
technology and AI as it applies to design. How do you see things evolving?
25:08 – 25:11
Oh, dear. The AI question.
25:11 – 25:17
Yeah. I know. I I hate asking it, but it keeps it keeps coming up everywhere.
25:18 – 25:22
And in in the data vis world, I think it comes up a lot in okay.
25:22 – 25:29
I could use, you know, chat gpt type thing to help me solve a coding problem, because it is sort of like a Google search on
25:29 – 25:32
steroids, which which I think is really useful for.
25:32 – 25:39
But then on the creative side, you know, where does how does it come into play? Is it useful? Is it dangerous?
25:41 – 25:47
I think that one of the problems is that it makes so many mistakes. Yeah. Including encoding.
25:48 – 25:49
Mhmm.
25:49 – 25:53
So, like, you really have to know what you’re doing to find the mistakes. And Yeah.
25:53 – 26:00
I had a student, had a chat GPT image in a presentation last week.
26:00 – 26:06
And we allow them to do that as long as they credit what they’re doing. Anyway, you can tell.
26:06 – 26:12
But she wasn’t hiding what it was, but it was, an anatomy of a leaf.
26:13 – 26:23
And it was kinda cool looking and, you know, labeling the different parts of the leaf, but a lot of the words were made up. And she didn’t know that.
26:23 – 26:30
You know, she was a chai Chinese student, and she didn’t know that some of these were, like, not spelled correctly, and they
26:30 – 26:34
were, like, mushed together, fake Latin words.
26:35 – 26:35
So like,
26:37 – 26:41
before it can take over the world, it has to get more accurate. You know?
26:41 – 26:48
And and it just feeds on what humans already created, which is often untrue.
26:48 – 27:01
Mhmm. Well, I also wonder as it applies back to our conversation about the extra bold work, how it feeds, how it reflects stereotypes and biases that already exist.
27:02 – 27:08
And as the tools get used more, it kinda is in this it’s a vicious it’s not a virtuous feedback loop.
27:08 – 27:15
It’s a vicious feedback loop where we sort of amplify these sorts of these negative components or perspectives.
27:15 – 27:23
Or PolicyViz. Like, a a friend of mine likes she’s a musician, and she likes doing, like, AI portraits of herself.
27:24 – 27:24
Okay. Yeah.
27:24 – 27:26
And it’s like, she’s my age.
27:26 – 27:27
Yeah.
27:27 – 27:34
And then AI makes her look like a maiden from a, you know, art nouveau
27:35 – 27:35
Right.
27:35 – 27:38
Cigarette ad. You know, we are not maidens.
27:39 – 27:44
So to me, it’s like it’s kinda it’s so icky. Mhmm. You know?
27:44 – 27:49
It’s like, can’t we just look the way we look? And Right. Right. Like, oh, it’s okay. Look.
27:49 – 27:51
It’s okay to age. Yeah. That’s okay.
27:51 – 27:54
Right. Kamala Harris is my age. She looks great.
27:54 – 27:55
Yeah. That’s right.
27:55 – 28:12
Yeah. Whatever. I so this kind of the sexualizing and the the little wasp waist anime, everybody becomes this, like, perfect little doll. Mhmm. I just I find that disturbing. Yeah.
28:13 – 28:22
Do you think, aside from the disturbing visual components of it, do you think, and maybe this is a question for your friend at Monotype.
28:22 – 28:27
Like, do you think it can be used well to create new typefaces?
28:27 – 28:37
I do. There’s a designer at MIT who I know, Vera Van de Saip, who is is experimenting with things you could do with AI.
28:37 – 28:44
So that if a graphic designer, type designer, font designer, but you’re only 6 letters.
28:46 – 28:46
Right.
28:46 – 28:49
And get all the details the way they want them.
28:49 – 28:51
Could AI do the rest of the letters?
28:51 – 28:52
Yeah. Right.
28:53 – 29:02
And that could be potentially valuable in creating more international typefaces, for example, for underserved language communities,
29:03 – 29:08
where the the labor and expertise required to create these fonts is huge.
29:09 – 29:19
And what if you could have AI do a lot of the work, and then the native speakers are critiquing and shaping it and making it better.
29:19 – 29:21
You know, so there there are potential uses for it.
29:21 – 29:29
The fact is, in the Latin world, you know, English, European languages, we already have too many fonts.
29:29 – 29:32
Why do we need AI to make more fonts?
29:32 – 29:38
I was gonna ask, like, does it get a does it exhaust does the does it exhaust itself at some point?
29:38 – 29:42
Well, there’s a there’s always so much of a market. You know?
29:42 – 29:43
Yeah.
29:43 – 29:49
And every day I get emails, more beautiful fonts. I look at them all. I want them all. Mhmm.
29:49 – 29:59
But I can’t even keep track of the fonts that I’ve already downloaded to my computer or activated on Adobe fonts. It’s a lot.
29:59 – 30:07
It’s a lot to have keep in your mind which fonts you like and have and what they do, what they look like.
30:10 – 30:17
Alright. So with that, I guess the the key question that that probably, maybe nobody wants to know, but I’ll ask it anyways,
30:17 – 30:21
which is, like, what are your what are your so 2 part question. What are your favorite fonts?
30:22 – 30:28
And since the world is Microsoft driven, what do you think about the move from Calibri to Aptose? Is
30:28 – 30:31
there is there a default? Very nice.
30:31 – 30:43
Well, the book you mentioned, Extra Bold, is written in a beautiful typeface called New Rail Alphabet, which was originally
30:43 – 30:49
designed in the 19 sixties by Margaret Calvert, who’s a British graphic designer.
30:50 – 30:58
And she developed this alphabet for use in railway signage in the UK.
30:59 – 31:12
And a a typeface company, you know, 10 years ago, worked with her to create really a modern digital typeface that all of us can use for a price.
31:13 – 31:14
Yeah. Yeah.
31:14 – 31:18
And it’s really beautiful. It’s like very clean and simple.
31:18 – 31:23
It does not have a lot of weight, but it’s a good functional typeface.
31:23 – 31:29
And I used it for extra bold because I wanted to have a typeface designed by a woman.
31:29 – 31:48
And I wanted a typeface that had that kind of clarity, you know, that could be strong for headlines and light for text. So I love that font. Yeah. And I like Aptose.
31:50 – 31:57
It’s, Calibri I never was into, so I don’t know why people are shedding tears for Calibri.
31:59 – 32:02
I don’t think it’s sort of I don’t know.
32:02 – 32:06
It has, like, a goofy handmade quality to it
32:06 – 32:06
Yeah.
32:07 – 32:12
That I don’t like. Aptose feels more like modern and crisp and
32:12 – 32:14
neutral. Right.
32:14 – 32:17
Which is a default typeface should be neutral.
32:17 – 32:18
Right. Right.
32:19 – 32:20
So I like it.
32:20 – 32:30
Do you find that there are type other typefaces you see used a lot that you wish would be, eliminated from our from our,
32:32 – 32:39
Well, I’m not a big fan of Times New Roman, but one of my former students is actually writing a whole book.
32:40 – 32:41
On Times New Roman?
32:41 – 32:46
Yeah. About how it its history and how it came to be everywhere.
32:46 – 32:48
And I I will be fascinated to read it.
32:48 – 32:49
Yeah. Yeah.
32:49 – 32:55
Just the heritage. Like, I wouldn’t wanna get rid of it because it has such a long arm as
32:56 – 33:02
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, you coming on the show.
33:03 – 33:03
I loved it.
33:04 – 33:09
Yeah. This was this was really fun. So thanks again. So, okay.
33:09 – 33:21
So where should folks find you, for more Ellen Lupton content and to make sure they see the next book because there will be one.
33:21 – 33:29
I have a website, Ellen Lupton data com, and you can follow me on Instagram at Ellen Lupton.
33:29 – 33:32
Terrific. Okay. Well, we’ll make sure everybody does that. Yeah.
33:32 – 33:34
And, make sure everybody checks out these books.
33:34 – 33:36
So, again, thanks a lot for coming on. I appreciate it.
33:36 – 33:38
I loved it. Thank you.
33:40 – 33:43
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed that.
33:43 – 33:45
I hope you will check out Ellen’s work at ellenlupton.com.
33:46 – 33:48
You should definitely follow her on Instagram.
33:48 – 33:52
Her videos and her reels are really fun to watch.
33:52 – 33:54
Even if you’re not a designer, they are really fun to watch.
33:54 – 33:59
I hope you’ll check out her book, Thinking with Type, also extra bold that we talked about.
33:59 – 34:04
Extra bold, I I really loved, especially the first 2 thirds of that book, I really got into.
34:04 – 34:11
The last third is really on jobs and occupations in design, which is not me as I’m not a designer, but the first 2 thirds of that book are incredible.
34:12 – 34:14
So I hope you’ll check it out.
34:14 – 34:17
I hope you’ll subscribe to the YouTube channel if you’re watching it there.
34:17 – 34:20
I hope you’re ready to review the show if you’re listening to wherever you are.
34:20 – 34:26
And, of course, as always, check out policybiz.com to learn more about all your data communication needs.
34:26 – 34:30
So until next time, this has been the PolicyViz Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
