Introduced by the outspoken Erik Spiekermann as “One of the best living type designers”, I was lucky enough to see Tobias Frere-Jones take the stage at TYPO Berlin this year. I happen to agree with Erik, having followed Tobias’s type movements closely since the scandalous lawsuit between him and long-time business partner, Jonathan Hoefler back in 2014. Described by FastCo Design as “the legal equivalent of a knife fight in the street”, it’s needless to say it wasn’t exactly a pleasant split.
 
Like any relationship, breakups provide a chance for some serious self-reflection, while conferences provide a chance to be ‘sorry, Jonathan who?’. Instead of getting his type in a twist, Tobias has very clearly gotten on with it, and in less than two years he’s established a new foundry and debuted it’s first retail family, Mallory.
 
Tobias began his talk by saying it used to annoy him when people asked “Why make more typefaces, aren’t there enough already?”, and compared this to asking why he even exists. He received a few unintentional laughs with this statement, as his deadpan nature is so strongly contradicted by his unequivocal passion for typography. “Typefaces are solutions to problems” he explained, “We keep needing new typefaces because we keep having new problems”.
 
The problem in type design he chose to elaborate on was designing for screens, and how these new pixel environments affect the mechanics of reading. While the digital landscape is vastly different to print, Tobias argued that you can repurpose a centuries-old solution to improve on-screen legibility. Before OpenType and font files, type was set using individual letterforms cut from metal. If you required different sizes in a typeface, you would need to use an entirely separate set of metal letters. To accommodate legibility, each alphabet was uniquely designed and slightly altered to optimise for the size it would be read. For example, large sizes could have fine details and greater contrast, whereas smaller sizes generally had less details and wider spacing.
 
Tobias briefly showed how this was comparable to ‘hinting’ type for screens, a process assumed to become obsolete and yet despite all technological advancements, it’s as essential today as the process in the 19th Century. While we now have the ability to scale type to any size, it still doesn’t prevent text from becoming “a fruit salad mosaic”. In other words: screen text can be treated the same way as optical sizing for print.
 
While some people may find this extra work exhausting, Tobias admits he secretly enjoys it. He wasn’t kidding when he said he loves problems! Overall I found Tobias articulate and intellectual, his case studies technical and educational, and his work nothing short of remarkable.
 
So, if you’re still wondering why Tobias Frere-Jones even exists, the answer is you, the reader. Type design isn’t simply what he does, it’s who he is.
 
Written by Gabby Lord •