Adelina Shaidullina: How do you manage to divide your time between being present in the type community, designing typefaces, running a company, and teaching?
James Edmondson: Everything goes in waves. There are times where I’m really focused on teaching, educational resources and putting those together and out into the world. There are times when I’m at a conference and very much in the middle of participating in the community. And then there are times where I’m just at home focused on working by myself.
The last couple of months have been a little bit different for me. I’ve just been experimenting with the total break from all social media trying to ask myself what is the role of this. What do I want the role of this to be in my life and in our business? There are things that are very productive about it and things that are very destructive about it. The only conclusion that I can come to about juggling multiple things is that you’re not really juggling multiple things at the same time. I’m jumping from one to another, always asking myself what is important, what is most efficient, what fits the best with my lifestyle.
I’m also a parent, I have two small kids, and they are my priorities 1 through 99 and everything with my job and my creative life begins at priority number 100. So the real story is I’m not balancing anything really at all.
Loretta Fenton Edmondson and OHNO Fatface in progress
OHNO Fatface
AS: You are experimenting a lot with social media. You mentioned that you’ve read a self-help book about avoiding social media for 30 days and then filling the time with something more valuable…
JE: The book is called Digital Minimalism and it’s basically questioning the popular opinion that social media is a worthwhile thing and that is adding to our lives. The author, Cal Newport, has written a bunch of self-help books that I really enjoy.
I love self-help books no matter what kind of self-help books they are. I enjoy reading them a lot more than fiction. I don’t know what it is about that that I enjoy, even if I disagree with most of the advice in the book, I still find it interesting to read.
I talked to the consultants, Casa Davka, who are a mother-daughter team and work with small businesses: graphic designers, graphic design agencies. From their point of view, social media is not the most important place to focus, but they are extremely interested in personal outreach: getting to know people, catching up with them, asking them how their latest things have been going on… They refer to it as building love.
So maybe it’s possible that if I had ignored social media completely and not put any work into that at all, that time would have been better spent doing these other sorts of things. I don’t know, of course, but it’s a thing that I’m curious about. I always want to ask myself whenever I feel like I know what I’m doing: what if I’m completely wrong about everything that I know? You can’t ask yourself that question every day or else you would never build anything and there would be no foundation upon which to stand.
But every once in a while I take a step back and say: okay, I’ve been really focusing a lot on social media and we built quite a following there. We’ve worked hard to get there, but maybe it is all bullshit and maybe it is all meaningless. I’m not really convinced that it is or isn’t, but to me it is a fun way to spend time. I like to make videos, I like to be on camera, I like to talk to people, I like that our customers can message us and have a personal relationship with us. So I will continue to experiment there in all sorts of ways.
So maybe it’s possible that if I had ignored social media completely and not put any work into that at all, that time would have been better spent doing these other sorts of things. I don’t know, of course, but it’s a thing that I’m curious about. I always want to ask myself whenever I feel like I know what I’m doing: what if I’m completely wrong about everything that I know? You can’t ask yourself that question every day or else you would never build anything and there would be no foundation upon which to stand.
AS: Is that your authentic way of Instagram As some members of our team are living in Russia we have to follow the Russian law. According to the law, every time we refer to Instagram or Facebook we have to mention the fact that these socials belong to Meta, which was recognized as extremist by the Ministry of Justice if the Russian Federation marketing approach that you’ve mentioned a lot in your interviews? Can you describe it in more detail?
JE: I don’t know if there’s too much to describe, but I like the idea that we can just use these platforms in the way that we want to use them. You could just use Instagram as a sketchbook if you want to. If you just drew a page in your sketchbook every day and just took a photograph of that and that was all that your Instagram was, to me that would be really interesting. But the people have spoken and they’ve decided that video is the most consumable format today. And I would totally agree with that.
But basically, I just want to be honest. It’s the easiest thing to do. It’s the most efficient thing to do. The minute you’re trying to be something other than what you really are, things get so much slower and harder and more laborious. And I just want to be really efficient in anything that we’re doing that is not type design. I want to be efficient in type design too, though. But if we’re doing anything that’s not type design, it’s not what we actually do. So we don’t want to spend any extra time there. So if I can just be on camera, be myself, speak the way that I normally speak, be silly… These are all things that come pretty naturally and are pretty fun for me in general.
I think that’s the authenticity thing to which you refer, but I don’t think I figured it out either. I don’t think everything that we do is perfectly authentic. I can watch certain things after some time and think: oh, this feels a little corny, or this feels a little contrived.
AS: A Russian type designer, Maxim Ilynov, once compared your work to rap music in a private chat. Which kind of music would you compare your work to? And what’s your relationship with rap music?
JE: I am not the biggest rap and hip hop person. But I’m a very big soul music person. I think that’s the thing that we try to incorporate into OH no projects as much as possible as a sort of soulful or a human element.
I love to go to WhoSampled to find out what samples hip hop songs are using. The website says that the most sampled artist is James Brown. And he’s one of the most famous soul music artists and performers.
So, I can’t argue if someone says they notice a hip hop connection in my work. I like words and storytelling and all the imagery that comes along with rap and hip hop, but it is definitely not my most listened to genre on Spotify.
I have a friend, Julien Priez, he’s a calligrapher, and he’s a very big hip hop person. I see a little bit more of a hip hop connection in his work. But you have to ask him about that.
Calligraphy by Julien Priez
AS: You once posted your mom’s essay on your blog where she wrote that to be called a perfectionist is not a compliment. Do you agree with her?
JE: I do. I think type designers often have at least some sort of a relationship with perfectionism because there’s infinite things to control and you can control them as precisely as you want to, you know. You can always refine something more and more and more to the point where you have to ask yourself: okay, is this really making it any better or am I just refining something for refinement’s sake?
I think that, on the one hand, perfectionism is great. It might help you make something really good. But on the other hand, if you were too consumed by one thing, something else is suffering. So whether you are ignoring your family so you can focus on your work or you’re ignoring one part of your work so you can focus on another part of your work. There’s just always something that’s getting less attention if something is getting more attention.
I just want to be really strategic about the things that get the most of our attention. For us, it’s the basic concept of what a typeface is trying to do. We are trying to define specifically what a typeface is good at doing, how it relates to its concept and the name and the presentation and the specimens and all the storytelling around our marketing efforts on the typeface. That’s the stuff that I really want to nail. And then it’s the drawing and spacing, you want that to be as perfect as possible.
OHNO Forevs in progress
AS: How do you decide when a typeface is ready to release then?
JE: At a certain point you’re tired of working on it. It doesn’t seem like more work is going to add to it in a measurable way. You can always work more on a typeface, you can always add more language support, or more styles, or more open type features, or whatever. So if you start getting away from a concept or you start thinking: how do I make this typeface
AS: Do students often want a typeface to do everything?
JE: Students have it very hard because they’re trying to learn software and how to draw and space things at the same time. And they’re trying to gain an understanding of the craft while they’re trying to express themselves as a designer, and sometimes as an artist too. So they want to learn the thing, do the thing, and have the thing they’re making be the most amazing expression of who they are and of what they learned. And it’s just too much to ask.
I think students have a harder time distilling the concept than other people that have more experience in understanding how much is enough, and how much is too much to put into one project.
Those students’ projects also have such a tight timeframe. So the students have to be, on one hand, ambitious about it and set themselves up with a tricky problem to solve, but on the other hand, they have to be realistic about what they can accomplish in a short amount of time.
OHNO Type School. Educational series by OH no
AS: According to your blog, you’ve been receiving a lot of emails from students. What was the best, the most interesting student email you’ve received?
JE: I really like when there’s something about our work that resonates with students. There’s nothing really in particular that comes to mind, but every once in a while we get an email saying: «Thank you for being you, thank you for doing what you do because it’s given me some enthusiasm around typography. I came into typography class and we had to research a type designer and I chose you because there’s something about your work that makes me excited.» And I like such emails.
Obviously, it’s a nice ego thing for me to get every once in a while, but I think the bigger issue is it’s done something for this person to help them in their studies and given them a reason to be excited about the thing that I’m so excited about, you know?
Typography gets such a snobby reputation sometimes. People think that type designers are also historians and they know so much and research so much, but I don’t really feel like I’m in that camp. I feel like I just have a good feeling when I’m working on this sort of thing. I like doing the work, but I’m not an academic in any way.
AS: You’re from TypeMedia, aren’t the academics from Reading?
JE: Yeah, it is a slightly more academic programme over there. There’s a research paper that you have to write. That always scared me. It’s just not who I am.
There are plenty of people that do love that and love sinking their teeth into research and writing and academia. And that’s great. There’s a million different ways to do this career. There are infinite ways to do anything.
AS: You just said that you got an email saying that your work influenced a student. And also, when I was talking to Rutherford Craze, he mentioned that your tweet influenced his perception of foundry’s finances. Do you feel your influence on younger designers?
JE: I had no idea! I love to hear that stuff. And I love Rutherford. I think he’s so talented and has so many different skills that he incorporates really well into running his foundry. I want to be inspiring to some degree, if I can be, then that’s fantastic, because so many people were there for me when I needed it. So many of them were accessible for me to reach out to and talk to when I was getting started and when I was a student. I’m really happy if I can continue that.
MD System by Rutherford Craze. One of James’ favourite workhorse grotesques
AS: Who were these people?
JE: As a student, I reached out to Ken Barber, Michael Dore and Jim Parkinson. I talked to Antonio Cavedoni and it was really encouraging. Also Eric Marinovich and Jessica Hische, who were in San Francisco when I was there. And all of them were nothing but kind to me. Eric is someone that I still talk to all the time, he introduced me to a bunch of amazing people.
Then there are all the teachers that I had in undergrad, Angie Wang, Christopher Simmons, Brett McFadden, Scott Thorpe, Bob Aufuldish, and a bunch of other terrific people that were great designers. But they’re all also people that I could have a conversation with, not necessarily about type, I could just have a beer with them. I found out that what meant the most to me is how someone treats people who they have nothing to gain from. If you’re kind
Jeremy Mickle is another person who was there for me. He reached out when I was like a senior in college, and we were both going to TypeCon. He said: I would like to meet up with you and go out for a drink. And I was like: how does this person even care about me or know who I am? But he’s just a really genuine, super kind person.
Viktor Script. A collaboration between OH no and Eric Marinovich
AS: You’ve said once that most of the typefaces that people buy are things that they are used to looking at. What are the people of today used to looking at?
JE: I would say the low-contrast geometric sans has been reigning supreme for quite a while at this point. It was Futura, then Helvetica, and then Gotham, and then Circular, and now maybe it’s something from Dinamo, I’m not sure. I think that the geometric sans will always hold a place in designers’ hearts as being the most distilled version of what an alphabet should be idealistically. But exactly what typeface that is changes with the trends.
If someone uses Futura now, it feels like they’re trying to be slightly old-fashioned. But people can still use Helvetica, and it doesn’t have an overly mid-century stink to it. Maybe it’ll get that later on.
Futura by Paul Renner
Helvetica by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann
Circular by Laurenz Brunner
Favorit by ABC Dinamo
AS: On the Typographics in 2019, I guess, you mentioned that Helvetica is like a black T-shirt which most of the designers wear.
JE: I also, though, had a talk where I compared it to sweatpants, because it’s such a comfortable choice, it’s such a default choice, and in some ways a very lazy choice. A black T-shirt can still look chic in the right context. To me, though, using Helvetica now feels more like sweatpants or pyjamas or something that is not really romantic or interesting. But different people have different opinions on it, and that is totally okay.
AS: As you have once posted a list of five workhorse sans serifs designed by other people on your blog, could you name five decent headline serifs created by other designers for ours?
JE: Eames Century Modern is one of my all-time favorite serifs. I would also say Messer, from Inga Plönnigs. I also enjoy Gertie by Mark Simonson, I love it, it’s very fun.
I would name Sutro by Jim Parkinson. And then the last thing I would go with, will be from Contrast Foundry, one of my favorite designers… Chimera! I guess it would be considered a serif.
Another notable typeface is Canela by Miguel Reyes. That’s a very trendy thing, it’s something that gets used all the time, but I still really like it. I still think it’s a terrific typeface that I’m happy to see in use.
Gertie by Mark Simonson
Eames Century Modern by House Infustries
Chimera by Contrast Foundry
Sutro by Jim Parkinson
Messer by Inga Plönnigs
Canela by Miguel Reyes
AS: I see a lot of home decor shops using Canela in a rather boring way…
JE: But Canela is so popular, anything that is popular is going to get used well, and it’s going to get used badly. It stings a little bit every time you see your fonts used in a way that’s a little bit cheap, or not so thoughtful, but it’s just something that comes along with popularity, I think.
AS: Let’s talk a bit about Future Fonts. When they started, you called the first founders to join. Do you do anything now as a community ambassador?
JE: No, I am totally removed from all of my Future Fonts responsibilities. And the reason is, I decided if OH no was going to be successful, I needed to give it 100% of my energy, and so I stepped away from all the Future Fonts stuff.
AS: Do you consider experimental storefronts, like Type Today’s Tomorrow, or Commercial Type’s Vault, competitors of Future Fonts?
JE: They might be. I don’t really think of it that way, though, mostly because I don’t think it’s a productive or fun way of thinking. We could think about all foundries being in competition with each other. And we are, in a way. I prefer the thought that we’re all working together to shape the entire collective narrative of what our visual culture looks like in regards to typography. And we’re inspired by each other, and we are doing things that leverage other people’s work all the time. I think fearing the competition is something that would just lead to paralysis, or lead you away from being creative and taking action. And I’m much more interested in a mindset that leads you towards doing something.
OHNO Offcuts from OH no’s experimental storefront
OHNO Backslant from OH no’s experimental storefront
AS: You often quote the book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Does one realise that they have become so good?
JE: I don’t think there’s a moment where you just say, okay, I’m so good now. At least that never happened for me. But there’s a time where you realise that you’re fast, and that you’re confident in the decisions that you’re making. Type design is just hundreds of little decisions. Sometimes they’re bigger, and they have to do with the overall direction of typing, but most of the time, they’re just very tiny decisions that collectively add up to what something ends up looking like. The more I work, and the more experience I have, the quicker I can make those decisions.
So to me it just helps a ton to have enough mastery over the tools that I use, to draw quickly, to test ideas quickly, to space things confidently, and to make decisions. And I don’t really worry about how good I am. I know there will always be better, more talented type designers and I know there are people that are newer to it as well. It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. I’m not trying to compare myself to anyone, but I’m just trying to run the best version of OH no that I can.
OHNO Yumex. Designed by Zrinka Buljubašić and Gen Ramírez
AS: Could you recommend three design podcasts that are active right now?
JE: I don’t even know about design podcasts. But the ones that I listen to are Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, which I always find an interesting conversation, and How I Built This with Guy Raz, which just profiles people who’ve started companies. Whenever I’m listening to a podcast, I’m with my wife in the car, so we need something that we can both listen to. And she maybe doesn’t want to listen to 99% Invisible or, or something that’s, you know, more design-driven. It’s not that she doesn’t like design, but we just are usually looking for something light.
AS: What would you think if your daughters decide to become type designers?
JE: I think if my daughters wanted to be a type designer, it’d be terrific. I would love it. It would be amazing to have something in common. But I’m interested in a lot of different things. I know that no matter what they end up doing, if it’s creative, I could talk to them about that. If they end up being plumbers or electricians, I’m going to be okay with it. I just hope they don’t have a lot of pressure to do anything in particular. I hope they don’t have pressure to make a certain amount of money.
I don’t care about what their CV looks like or what college they go to, if they decide to go to college at all. I hope they can live with minimal stress in their lives. I hope they’re surrounded by people that they love and that love them and treat them well. And I hope they don’t overthink things, hope they don’t compare themselves to other people too much. I have two girls and it’s harder for girls in so many aspects. There’s more pressure on women and I just hope my daughters can exist in a way where there’s not too much pressure on them.
