Terraka Garner
Staff Writer
Have you ever noticed the difference between sans-serif and serif typefaces within fonts? Students in the typography and layout classes at Idaho State University have become intimately familiar with these and the differences between them. In fact, they have created two brand new fonts: one for the College of Arts and Letters and one for the James E. Rogers Department of Communication, Media and Persuasion (CMP).
“Serif is the one that has the little tail on the end of the letters and then sans-serif is the one that doesn’t have it, so it’s just like a block pretty much,” said Ryan Durrant, a student in the typography and layout class. “We all threw our own style into it. We pretty much took everyone’s letters and then rearranged it so everyone’s DNA is in one letter. Everyone contributed in their own way.”
Paula Jull instructs the students in the layout and typography classes. Jull said she requires her typography and layout students to create their own font every semester but that this semester in particular, she wanted to give students an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real-world scenario.
“It’s a big project, I’m very proud of them. This is the first time we’ve done a font for an outside client,” said Jull. “It will be a real font. It will be copyrighted. We have to come up with a copyright symbol and it will be out there in the world.”
Students were split into two separate groups: one for the College of Arts and Letters font and one for the CMP font.
The serif font team included Durrant, Sydney Axtell, Brianna Bowcut, Alison Duffin, Devon Marcel, Marina Rossi, Amy Sorensen, and Andreas Wiesneth.
The sans serif font team included Trista Anderson, Taylor Beckstead, Chance Bennett, Emily Crighton, Hailey Dugan, Christopher Jones, Shelby Sharron, Elizabeth Walker and Kendall Rahill.
The students started the font-making process by conducting a series of interviews.
One group interviewed Dr. Kandi Turley-Aimes, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and the other group interviewed Dr. Jim DiSanza, chair of the CMP department.
“Every team had an art director, a client relations manager and several artists on it and so I basically met with the team and at the first meeting they treated me exactly as if I was a client looking for some graphic design work to be done,” said DiSanza. “I tried to behave as best I could exactly like a client.”
DiSanza said the students asked him questions such as what his vision for the department was, what he sees the department accomplishing in the coming years and what words come to mind when he thinks about the CMP department.
“The future is huge, incredible, very bright for the department. We’re growing, we’ve got just about the most exciting group of new young faculty members we could get,” said DiSanza. “We’ve got folks who are completely reforming some of the ways we think about things in the department and I wanted the font to reflect that so I thought of words like fun, energetic, exciting and young as the things I want people to think about when they see the font and when they think about the department.”
Following the interview process, students put their minds together, drew out their ideas for the font and uploaded them onto a software program called Font Lab. This program was purchased this year specifically for the typography and layout classes. Jull said the students went through a “Frankenstein stage” at the beginning, but that they worked on the fonts to improve them after receiving recommendations from Jull.
“The real test is when you make a word and it looks awful and you go ‘what’s wrong with that S?’ It’s about proportion and something that we don’t think about too much is that we’re used to reading all the time. If something doesn’t look right, you know it,” said Jull. “In the real world, font design might take three years, so these fonts could keep improving.”
The font for the College of Arts and Letters is called “Arts and Letters” and the font for the CMP department has yet to be named.
These fonts will be able to be used in any form of correspondence including emails.
Jull hopes to create a wooden type of the arts and letters font.
“It was an interesting experience. I enjoyed it. I don’t think it has really sunken in yet and it won’t until I actually start seeing [the font] around and being like ‘hey, I made that.’ The experience was fun and the team was great. It was just a great experience,” said Durrant.
Jull believes this font-making process gives students a look at what their futures will look like. She thinks that it will not only improve their resumes but that it will also improve their knowledge of how to work with others.
“We joked about this. You can say ‘I designed a font; I know how to do font design.’ Well, that’s pretty huge. You’re not super experienced in it. You’ve done one project, but you understand what it is. You know the software, so that is great,” said Jull. “The team experience was really good for them even if it wasn’t perfect and I think working with the client and going to these people caused a lot of pressure which is what happens in the real world, right? If you don’t do your job, you don’t get paid. I think what we teach here is tied to some real outcomes.”
