Matteo Bologna, founding partner and principal of Mucca Design in New York, has one important life lesson to share with the TYPO attendees: Good typography is good business. But before expanding on this, he warns that swear words might occur! And indeed, there will be no shortage of the F-word in his talk “Do What I Say, Not What I Do”. After all, this is all about F…onts.

His personal capital of design: New York

Matteo Bologna takes the audience back into his past, and talks about his origins in Milan, Italy, the “capital of design”. Why would anyone leave such a place, asks the transplant New Yorker? Because of the graphic design landscape! He takes the audience on a ride through selected oddities of Italian ad campaigns for cheese, salami and solar panels, and points out the blatant sexism. And the typographic mistakes, of course. The frustration from that, combined with the belief he would be a better designer by working where all his idols work, make Matteo pack his belongings and move to New York City, his personal capital of design. Which leads to the next life lesson: Follow Your Dreams!

Bologna, who never went to design school (he names the Annual of the Type Directors Club as his source of education), shares some memories of his very first client projects in the US. The branding for Balthazar, a French brasserie, confronted him with the typographical hodgepodge that is brasserie menus. Encouraged to explore the reasons for such wild and seemingly random typeface combinations, he found that technology, or rather the availability of letters in a typesetter’s drawers, determined the design.

It works if it looks right

He decided to do better. Limit the sizes and variants of fonts he uses, only use typefaces from a certain era, and never compromise. Always make conscious aesthetic choices. The resulting life lesson: Do thorough research and be historically correct!

Alas… that’s not quite true. Being a rule-beaker, he admits, the actual life lesson is: Screw research—it works if it looks right.

Going back to how personal events and his biography influenced his career path, Bologna tells a tale from his past relationships. It ends where he lost his heart to type, and begins a lifelong love affair with font making. Examples of his first steps in creating type crack up the audience. Quirky letters, squiggly lines, deconstructed shapes … “Come on, it was the grunge type era! The more fucked up, the more illegible, the cooler!”, he explains of his early work.

Examples of client commissioned custom type exercises follow, and Bologna outs himself as a huge type nerd. Still he admits: “Kerning! Spacing! It’s hard!” And thus shares another life lesson: “Hire people who can do the job better than you”.

At Mucca, Bologna’s NYC design studio, they try to do this. Showing examples of the work the studio created, he passionately advocates the importance of unique and character-strong typefaces, “A typeface should be as unmistakable as the voice of an actor”. Of course, there’s no passionate conversation about typography without the obligatory Helvetica side blow. Why he hates Helvetica? “It’s like having the same voice of an actor for everything! Imagine Matthew McConaughey and Robert De Niro with the same voice! No!”

A love for seeing his fonts used and interpreted by others

Bologna shares more of Mucca’s design branding work, from the bold and restricted branding for Brooklyn Fare, to the Sephora type family or package design for Whole Foods products, which included specific challenges such as creating typefaces that work embossed in metal. His advice: “Adopt a type designer, it’ll make your life better”. Bologna points out how much he appreciates projects that include creating a typeface, and nothing but. “Once the font has been delivered, you’re out of the picture, which is great!” He takes a refreshing perspective and points out how much he loves seeing his fonts used in the wild and interpreted by others.

Honored, but scared

Next up Bologna shares his feelings upon being invited to design the Type Directors Club Annual. Being enormously honored, but also scared of the merciless criticism his work will face. He approaches the challenge by asking himself: What is good type? And decides to go with the exact opposite. He goes out on a quest for something that would be considered really bad taste in the design world. Bologna ends up working with a street artist who created two beautifully tacky illustrated alphabets—in 40 minutes!

The result, the TDC Annual #32, is a mix of colourful illustrated letters, two custom fonts (wacky calligraphy and wild handwriting), and stylistic tributes to the designers who inspired Bologna in the beginning of his career. And one more life lesson is due: It’s not called stealing if they work for you.

Talking business. Seriously.

Coming back to his desire of finally creating a typeface all by himself and releasing it to the public, Bologna compares his fonts to his children. He wants to see them thrive out there, and definitely has no intention to keep them locked up. Admittedly, he says, while he finds his children, er, fonts, beautiful, others might see little monsters instead … but still, he wants the world to see them. And so Bologna moves on to talk about the changes in Mucca’s business model that happened when they switched from offering service design to selling products:—his fonts.

And this prompts the second, hands-down business part of his talk. How to manage your time wisely. But … nah! Being Matteo Bologna, of course he is not to deliver plain business advice. Declaring this is as far as his marketing plan goes, he ends with a plea: Buy! My! Fonts! And leaves the stage, clearly having won the heart of the audience.

 

More information about Mucca can be found on mucca.com.

 

Written by Kristina Schneider •