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- Use your graphic design skills to design typefaces for a living
- Detailed, specialist work for those who pay attention to the tiniest details
- You could combine this work with other graphic design work, or focus in just on this
As a font or typeface designer you'll develop specialist graphic design skills to focus your work on designing typefaces. You'll create the exact shape and design of individual letters that form a font, using a range of techniques to create fonts that work for particular uses or that convey a particular mood or style.
DAY-TO-DAY DUTIES
- Meet with a client to understand their brief
- Keep up to date with the latest design trends
- Research historic or new fonts and shapes
- Develop your designs using hand drawing or digital drawing techniques
- Test and discuss any changes to your designs with clients
- Create and package up the final font for use in a range of digital and physical formats
DAY-TO-DAY ENVIRONMENT
Some font designers work for a specialist agency or design company and some work for themselves as freelancers.
You'll need
Most font designers specialise in this area after studying graphic design at university or college. Studying art and design subjects at school will help you gain a place on a course, and focusing in on typography in your project work during your degree will help you build up a portfolio of work that you can use to help you find work.
There are specialist master's degrees in typography that might help you develop your skills and knowledge further, or you could seek a junior position as a graphic designer and work your way up in industry after your degree.
Gaining industry experience is a good way to get started, even if you decide to go freelance later, as it will help you understand how work is briefed and costed, and help you build up a network of contacts.
This is highly detailed work, with many technical considerations to take into account, and so you'll build up a knowledge of typography - which deals with all aspects of lettering design including spacing, colour, size, and movement or animation.
CAREER PROSPECTS
As technology has opened up access to digital fonts, there have become new opportunities to make money from designing and selling licenses to use your fonts online, and some font designers pursue this as an income source to supplement their other work.