My May Inspiration

I recently stumbled across a student typography project. A group of French design students created a book with the purpose of educating laypeople on typographic rules and strategies.

They call it the “TypoReader” and they’ve made the full book digitally accessible here, but you can read up more about their project on their website.

I love this project for a few reasons:

• It makes the rules of typography a little more accessible. The more the general public is informed about the power of good typography, the more it will be appreciated and enacted in practice.

• It contains a lot of research on design. For practitioners, it’s easy to get swept up in the needs of the business or client and forget our roots in design. This document serves as a great reminder to deliver information well, with excellent typography.

• It reminds me of how fun school/personal projects can be. It’s easy to forget that you can choose to tackle design problems just because the topic interests you. In the world of client proposals, it’s nice to remember you can work from a place of passion.

In thinking about my time at school, I have been reflecting on what excites me about design now. Working at a design research firm, I find immense fulfillment in making research insights easy to understand. There’s so much knowledge to be gained from research but so often it’s hard to review a heavy, highly analytical report. I find it powerful when I can share research findings in a way that’s palatable and actionable.