Typographer Jonathan Hoefler, James Bond, & A Fistful Of Diamonds¶
Published on Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:00:03 +0000
You'll never look at a watch dial the same way again.
Synopsis¶
This episode of Hodinkee Radio features a conversation with renowned typographer Jonathan Hoefler, designer of the Gotham and Archer typefaces, discussing his new typeface 'Decimal' inspired by vintage watch lettering. Host Stephen Pulvirent and Ben Clymer open the show by recounting their recent travels—Ben's whirlwind 48-hour trip to Matera, Italy to visit the set of the latest James Bond film with Omega, and Stephen's journey to Shanghai with Bulgari for a product launch. Ben provides fascinating behind-the-scenes details about witnessing Daniel Craig filming action sequences, the intricate use of replica Aston Martin DB5s built specifically for the film, and Omega's significant commercial success with Bond-edition watches.
The main interview explores Hoefler's journey from watch enthusiast to creating a complete typeface family based on watch dial lettering. He discusses the distinctive characteristics of horological typography, particularly the unique flat-topped numeral '4' common across vintage watch brands, and explains how watch lettering evolved independently from traditional printing typography due to manufacturing constraints like pad printing. Hoefler candidly addresses the challenges of extrapolating an entire alphabet from the limited character set found on watch dials, the evolution of the Decimal project from authentic replica to interpretive design, and his philosophy on making typography that serves both historical reverence and contemporary utility. He also offers pointed criticism of poor typeface choices in modern luxury watchmaking, particularly the use of default fonts like Arial, while praising brands that approach typography with intentionality. The conversation was prompted by the release of Abstract: The Art of Design Season 2 on Netflix, which features an entire episode about Hoefler and the development of Decimal.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | When I turned 40, I decided I'm, you know, I'm a grown up now. I can have a nice proper watch that I might want to hang on to for a few years. And uh I really couldn't decide between something contemporary and something vintage. And then I had this incredible thought that never occurred to me before, which is that I could have more than one. I didn't I didn't need to decide. And that never occurred to me before dangerous revelation. I thought it was like having a pair of eyeglasses. You know, you buy one, they sit in your face for years and years. But I thought I could have two of these things |
| Unknown | . Hey, everybody, I'm your host Steven Polverin and this is Hodinky Radio. The centerpiece of this week's episode is a conversation that I've been looking forward to having for a long time. Jonathan Heffler is arguably the most important designer of typography on the planet right now. Whether or not you know it, you see Jonathan's work every day, everywhere, from magazine covers to billboards to your smartphone. The occasion for our conversation was last week's release of Abstract The Art of Design Season 2 on Netflix, which includes an entire episode about Jonathan and his work, including a brand new typeface inspired by vintage watches. But first, I sat down with Ben to talk about our recent travels, him to Italy with Omega, and me to China with Bulgary. Both were fun, but in very different ways. Enjoy. This week's episode is presented by Grand Seiko. Stay tuned later in the show for a look at one of the four watches from the new seasons collection, which is exclusive to the US. For more, visit GrandSaco.com. Good to see you, good to be back in the office. And you, sir. Welcome home. Thanks. Uh, you know, 12 hour time difference, 14 hour flight home. Doing okay though. Yeah, you where where were you? You were in Chinatown? Just across the street here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's across. Yeah, in Chinatown. Yeah, of course. A little Nama action. Yeah. Uh for what, five days? Yeah. I wandered into Namwa and got lost. Um so we'll talk about my China trip, but uh before that you took a big trip a week ago, right? Yeah, it was it was it was a it was a large sh but |
| Unknown | brief trip. Extremely brief trip. Where'd you go? I went to Matera, Italy. For how long? Uh a day. A day. A day. Okay. Uh so the in the entire trip door to door, including travel from New York and and back, was less than forty eight hours. Jeez. Uh it was it was intense, but well worth it. It really was. What were you doing over there? So it was w you know, th this is one of those things where like people either gonna love this or hate this. Majority's probably gonna hate this, but I was in France uh for a friend's wedding uh two Sundays ago. Okay. And uh my my friend JP, who's the the CMO of Omega, WhatsApp me and said, Hey, do you have a minute to chat? And I said, Yeah, sure. This was like a Saturday. And uh and he said, Hey, uh, you know, we just got this note from the the guys over at EM Productions. You know, would you be available to come to Italy on Thursday uh to basically hang out on the set of the forthcoming James Bond film? And I'm just just like like a regular Saturday text. Exactly. Saturday text. And I was like, sure, you know. But like I really, you know, I to be honest with you, like it's September, and I always I always tend to say, like, you know, it's back to school for us. Like, we're really pushing during September. And you were in China, I was in France. You know, Jack is Jack's actually in Albany, New York today. Do I go to Geneva for three or four days and kill time? So eventually I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna come home, you know, return to New York, have a few days in the office, which was the right call, and then fly back. And uh so I did that. So I flew into uh where Frankfurt and then connected on a little kind of commuter plane into Bari, Italy. Okay. Uh along with two friends well known in the watch world named Robert Jan Bruhr and uh Waco. And uh and there in uh in Matera, which is this amazing kind of like coastal, like really like pre Roman town of like it's basically built into the side of a cliff. Uh we met up with uh JP and and Reynold, the the CEO of Omega, and uh hung out with James Bond all day. All right. What what does that even mean? Like I don't even know like hanging out with James Bond means I don't really know what that means either. So James Bond, as as you all likely know, is not a real person, right? Wait, what? Yeah, that's okay. News to me. You know? Okay. Um, so we go over there and they're filming the the next film over there, and it'll be Daniel Craig's last. And as you all certainly know and have many you know feelings about, Omega is the time piece supplier for James Mond and has been since the Pierce Brosnan era. And that was a deal negotiated by our friend Jean-Claude Beaver. And it's one of those things that kind of gets scoffed at a lot in the watch world, but in fact is one of like the greatest coups of marketing or you know, watch positioning of all time. If not the I would say it probably is the greatest coup. Yeah. Um and so, you know, James Bond is the archetypal male. I mean he's he's the guy that we all want to be as little kids or even right now, you know? And uh what this means for Omega is just it's it's it's like it it really can't be described in less than like a a long story that we should write someday. But I mean this is a really, really meaningful thing for Omega. And it really does result in massive sales. Massive sales. Yeah. Not necessarily with our community, but I think a little bit with our community. Uh more so with just the average guy on the street that that loves James Bond |
| Unknown | . Yeah. I mean that that's something that like the watch nerd community, I think, forgets sometimes is that like for most people, like they don't ever think about buying a nice watch. Like it's not even a thing a lot of people know you can do. Right. And James Bond changes that, right? Like you see Daniel Craig on screen wearing the Sea Master and all of a sudden, like, maybe that's a thing I want |
| Unknown | . Absolutely. And I think, you know, that comes back a lot to, you know, why we do these watch spotting stories, which, you know half our audience loves, the other half hates, but ultimately, this is how most people get exposed to time pieces, right? So when Odell Beckham wore the the the Richard Meal and then the Daniel Wellington, I was at a uh like basically a venture capital dinner last night and everybody knew about that they knew about Richard Meal because of Odell Beckham. Yeah. And in many ways, like James Bond is that times a thousand, right? People know what Omega is because of James Bond in many ways. I mean the moon watch is one thing, but you know, if you're not in that world, James Bond is is ever present in kind of like popular culture. And every time a new Bond film comes out, it is major news. I mean this is as as A-list as it gets in Hollywood in terms of production. And uh it was just a wild thing to to see kinda uh up close and personal. So what did you get to see? I know some of it you can't talk about, but what what that you can talk about did you get to do over in Matera? Yeah, I mean this was one of those rare things where like there was no expectation of coverage, there was no expectation, there was no real product launch. I mean, you know, the the the fiftieth anniversary of Honor Maj Her Majesty's Secret Service came out a few days later, but that was pure coincidence. Uh I saw the watch over there. Um, this was really just a bad experience. And I think, you know, there are there are so few senior executives and major brands that really appreciate the enthusiast community the way that Reynold and JP at Omega do. And like the thing that a lot of people forget, and I was actually speaking to somebody last night about this, is Omega is the second largest watch brand in the world, right? I mean, by revenue. So they're producing around nine hundred thousand watches a year, as far as I know. Uh their their revenue is behind only Rolex. And so that means they're bigger than AP, of course. They're bigger than PetEch. They're bigger than Cartier. You know, I mean, these are this is a massive, massive brand. And to have somebody that is at the helm of a company like that, but also paying attention to our little world, and it is a little world, yeah, uh, is really meaningful to us. And I think Omega is really firing on all cylinders, it's speaking to guys like us, and you know, the the Speedy Tuesday guys and Robert Young and and those knuckleheads, uh, as well as like normal consumers, like normal people. And I think, you know, our goal with Odinky has always been to bring this enthusiast mentality to as many people as possible. And Omega is is really doing that. And so again, this was not really there was no expectation of covers. This was not a press trip. This was Reynold being like, hey, I can bring three guys, I choose you. Uh and so myself, uh Wei, who's you know, just awesome always, and Robert Yan, who is Mr. Speedmaster and Mr. Omega, uh went over there and just kind of uh goofed around on set for for the day. And it was uh it was it was fucking cool. It really was. Sure. Yeah. And it just went like when I came back all my friends were like, Oh like how was it? And you know, like I I'm always trying to play cool and downplay stuff and all that. And I was like, this was just awesome. Like this was just a neat thing, you you know. And know, I, you know, every little boy dreams of James Bond and Daniel Craig is such a badass, dressed in these beautiful like Cuccinelli suits, you know, but with blood stains everywhere, driving, you know, an Aston Martin, and he's wearing Drake's Chcku uh Chuckas, I hear which is pretty cool. Shout out to Drake's around the corner. Uh and he just like he looks awesome. And like, you know, the the the setting was just magical. And we got to to to have lunch with Barbara Broccoli, who's a wonderful woman. Really, you know, it's you know, spoke a lot with her about you know her family's history. And what's amazing about Eon and and Bond is like this is a true family run business. I mean the the the entire rights of James Bond belongs belong to to Barbara and you know basically her immediate family. And when you think about how big of an empire that is, it's shocking. Yeah. But it's a little family business. It really is. And they are she's on the set every day. I mean she's in the megaphone yelling at people to like, you know, get out of the way like they're about to start filming. That's so cool. It was really cool. And you know, you know, I'm I'm a car guy, obviously. So to see the Aston Martins, uh, they had 10 Aston Martin DB5s specifically built for this film. It's pretty neat. I always wondered this, and now I have the answer. Like, what are these cars? Like, are they taking vintage Aston Martins? Like average value half a million dollars and like destroying them? Because that would be a shame, obviously. There's only a finite number of those. They're not. Uh Aston Martin builds these things on special chassis. All the chassis numbers begin with 007 dash, whatever, which is so cool. And then half the cars are 007 Ps, which stands for pod. And what a pod is, is basically like imagine a video game system, like one of those old driving style, like freewheeling. What is it? Freewheeling in the USA. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the arcade. Yeah, the arcade game so like imagine like a little pod with a steering wheel in stick and all that mounted to the top of an Aston Martin, like truly, like sitting on top. And so for all the scenes where Daniel Craig or Leia Sedu or whoever you know is is inside being filmed inside the car, somebody else is driving and that person is on top of the car. What? It's crazy. I mean, like literally like sit like m I I have a photo I can show you later. Mounted on top of the car. Uh that's it's wild. And so and you know, Daniel Craig is kind of he's he's a man, you know, in in our little world of like the menswear watch world, like he's known for having excellent taste and really caring about stuff and he is a vintage car guy. And Barbara Broccoli herself told me that Daniel Craig wants to do all the stunt driving himself. And so that means like, you know, a spinning the car around in a circle and like, you know, really doing some crazy stuff and the insurance company won't allow it. Uh so he does do all like the the basic stuff, all the basic driving, but once it gets a little little hairy, they they have a professional driver coming, and and it's actually I met the guy, he's actually a world rally champion driver. He's like a professional driver. Um, and it was just amazing. So there's basically this one scene where Daniel and Leused Du, the the the you know, the Bond girl in this film, are being chased this to the opening sequence. They end up in this town square in Matera, which is this beautiful, like sand colored everything. And uh he ends up using like the old smoke screen where like smoke comes out of the back of the car. So cool. Which is really good. And the car is just spinning. I mean like literally like rotating around the front wheel, like around the front axis. And uh and then these guys come up on motorcycles and in a Range Rover and whatever and just start shooting at them. And so we basically saw that one scene be filmed, I don't know, 35 times, you know, from every different angle in different ways with with Daniel in the car and not Leah and then vice versa, and then both of them in the car, then none of them in the car. And they they basically they rig explosives and they rig the these basically like things that shoot pellets at the car to make it look like bullet holes obviously. They're really shooting something at the car. And so it's like it's like kind of terrifying. And uh, you know, and I I would imagine so we we mostly watch Leused Du basically being shot at for the day. Uh and it was like I was scared for her because like you know her reactions were real. You know, like imagine gonna like me pointing a gun at you like this, and there's like a thin piece of glass between us, and that's it. And it's not a real bullet, obviously, but it's basically like a BB, like a BB gun. Yeah. Um, and it was just so cool to see how they did it. And like this scene is probably, I mean you,'ll see it when the film comes out. Um, this is probably like 13 seconds worth of airtime, like maybe. And this was a full day. I mean, talking like 9 a.m. to six p.m. It started raining in the evening. Um, so went a little bit late, but just such a cool thing to see how like a real Hollywood movie is produced. And not only that, but like a James Bond film, you know? Uh and it was just so wonderful to to meet a bunch of the guys and meet, you know, a lot of Barbara Broccoli's like extended family, all of which are involved. Like the location scout is part of the Broccoli family. That's cool. It's pretty wild, you know? And we met the director, uh, I think his name is Carrie, uh, who's a pretty, pretty interesting guy. And it was just a wonderful thing. And like, you know, we're walking around and like some guy comes up to us and was like, Hey, like that's a great watch. I was wearing my Hodinky 10 Speedmaster. And he's like, Oh my god, you've been. And I was like, Yeah. And he's like, I've I watch you guys all the time on on YouTube and all that. And then I was like, Yeah, I've got like I've got Way here and I've got uh Robert Young here. And he's like oh my god like you know the watch guys are here uh and it was pretty neat to kind of have like with the reverse kind of like you know fanfare for for us by from the the you know Daniel Craig didn't of course but but uh the guys on set were like you know this is a pretty neat thing. Uh so you're getting a cameo in the next movie? 100%. I'm the bad guy. Speaking part. Yeah, speaking part. Speaking part, exactly. Uh uh it was just such an it was just it was cool. And you know, the the other thing that that I'll I'll talk about is how they they set up like the the firearm scenes. Yeah. So it's like they've got guys that are like ex-military dudes running all this stuff. And when they do close-ups of these guys firing weapons, they are using real guns, like actual like automatic weapons and firing blanks. You know, and so like these look like bullets and the shells hit the ground and then the whole thing. And then as uh if you take like a step back, these guns turn to rubber. And so but it's like hard rubber, you know, it's like a I don't I don't even know how to describe it, but like it's basically like a a rubber that like if you got hit with this thing you would still really hurt you know yeah and then finally when people are doing like real action sequences they use incredibly soft rubber guns I mean like squishy you know so that like if you roll off your motorcycle and you've got like a handgun and your back it, doesn't dig into you. Because apparently, like in the early days of these films in particular, like the bad guys would end up with these massive injuries because they're rolling around with real guns. And not because they went off, but because they're just like they're hard. You know? Right. Uh and so they have at least three or four different kinds of guns, uh ranging from like squishy soft like a nerf ball basically, to a real gun. Uh and it was pretty and we got to play with those and hang out with the the PPK and the the whole the whole Bond thing. That is so awesome. It was really cool. I gotta say, just so everybody listening knows, this is not usually the kind of trips we have to take. Like this is I have never heard of something like this. No, that this this was wild. This was a special thing. And that I mean, frankly, that that's why we all, you know, made time basically three days ahead of time to to fly to Italy, you know? Sure. And uh it's once-in-a-lifetime thing. I'm super appreciative for sure. And uh, you know, it's now that I've seen kind of behind the scenes, I have real appreciation for all that goes into it. I mean, our you know, our guys here, present company in the room, Gray and and Will and Dave and Shah had all of our videographers do such great work to you know produce the content that we put out there. It's a different thing. I mean it's just a really different thing. I mean like the the I mean the budget for the for this Bond film is over 200 million dollars. You know, I mean like think about that. Like think about how much money that is, you know? That's uh and you know and and like I I see it. Like I don't think they padded that. You know what I mean? Like it is wild. They basically took over the entire town of Matera for you know for probably three weeks, something like that. To get to film just the opening sequence, you know, and then it goes back to London and and elsewhere around the world. Just a really neat experience for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. It was fun. You going back anytime soon? To Matera? Yeah. Uh I'd be down. Yeah. So I mean so you know, it's it's Italy, southern Italy, like it's magical, of course. And I was like, you know, what's the thing here? Like what what what are you really known for here? And they were like, pasta and bread. I was like, I'm in. I'm in. This sounds great, you know? Yeah. And it's amazing because like, you know, they they were some of the locals were telling us about the the bread and they they bake the bread in the morning, et cetera. And like this bread is so fresh that by like lunchtime they have to break it, they have to bake new bread because it just gets like crusty and old and they just like throw it out. Uh and it is just like the freshest, most amazing, salty, deliciousness stuff. It was uh it was wild. I think we got to open a bureau there. I think we probably should. Hodinky Matera. We should, yeah. All right. Uh so and here's a here's a hot tip that I learned from Barbara Broccoli herself that if you're in Matera, you should go to a place called the Monkey Bar, which is not in any way associated associated with the Monkey Bar here in New York. It is like this hole-in-a-wall place, and apparently the entire set, like the entire crew of this Bond film, just take it over every night. And they're open, apparently, or at least they're open for the Bond guys until like six AM and the call times are seven AM. So apparently like half the crew goes to this place in like this tiny little hole in the wall place in Matera till six in the morning. And then they they're on set at 7 a.m. Uh it it honestly like the the vibe on set felt a little bit like summer camp you know it's like you're in this like really like weird remote place and like you've got these friends that are kind of like temporary friends but like really intense temporary friends you know uh it was a really neat neat thing to witness for sure. That's awesome. My most recent trip was pr |
| Unknown | etty cool. It was not it was not that cool. I was feeling like it was way cooler until like James Monder? No. No, no bucket. Yeah. No. Forget it. Uh it seemed pretty cool until like 10 minutes ago. But uh yeah, I just got back from Shanghai, uh where I was with Bulgari uh for the launch of a whole bunch of new products with them, which was pretty interesting. I gotta say I'd never been to China before and uh it's a different world, man. It's it's a and hell. It is a different thing. Um What was what did you notice first about the differences between China and uh and Halloween? The scale. Man, the scale is crazy. Um even, you know, having lived in New York for a long time and traveled to a bunch of different cities all over the world, uh, the scale's insane. I mean, it's just skyscrapers as far as the eye can see in every direction. Um, the density of people, uh, and everything's just moving a million miles an hour all the time. Uh it's pretty obvious once you get there, you're like, oh, like things are happening here. Like things things are moving. I'll say. Um But yeah, but uh we were there, Bulgari released a whole bunch of new watches. It was kind of the opposite of your trip. It was like really product focused. Um, and it was some stuff that I I gotta be honest, when I first saw it, I was like, huh, like this is not what I expected for like a big global launch event. Yeah. Um it was a lot of unique pieces, a lot of like small limited editions, gem set stuff, stuff set with hard stones. So talk to me about this this octo that doesn't have a dial. It's all diamonds. Yeah. So this is the piece that I saw it on a press release and I was like, uh, like, meh, this will be okay. It's a bunch of diamonds. Yeah. I saw it in person, it blew me away. Um, it's it's not the octofenissimo. It's not the super thin one, it's the regular Otoc. Okay. Um, and it is full baguette set. Uh the bracelet is full baguette set, including on the sides of the links. Each link has three baguette diamonds on each side. Uh, and then the dial is this sort of like radial pattern, sort of like a sunburst pattern. And there's no there's no dial over the diamond. So you've got the logos printed on the bottom of the crystal and then the numerals are set directly into the like movement plate below the diamonds. Yeah. And so the diamonds are cut in such a way that they kind of like go around the posts that the numerals are set with. So there's actually no dial. It's just tons of diamonds, dozens of diamonds. And you bought it. I bought it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I uh I put it on my Amex. I hope that's over. Yeah, I put it on the corporate Amex. It would be shut down immediately. Yeah. Ooh. It'd be out of business. But uh yeah, it's pretty wild. It's just like it's so superlative and so like they pulled zero punches. Yeah. Uh and the fact that it's also like it's baguette diamonds. It's like this is not like they took small and expensive stuff here. Yeah, they didn't like take a whole bunch of tiny diamonds and like snow set this thing. These are like any one of these diamonds could be an engagement ring. So like snow set. Yeah. Tell me about this. I've never heard that term before. Snow set? Yeah. Oh, so you can take a whole bunch of small diamonds and you set them in a sort of like random pattern. Yeah. Snow setting. Interesting. Yeah. When did you learn about snow setting? In the |
| Unknown | past week? Not in the past week, but not that long ago. Yeah. Not in the past week, but not that long ago. Trying to think, yeah. I mean, that's the benefit, right, of buying a bejeweled watch from a jeweler, as opposed to so I mean Rolex does the prelator work, of course. Totally. But you know, you look at some of the other guys that are watchmakers that then do, you know, stone set watches, and it's just it's just not that good, you know You. know, and then you look at Bulgari, Piaget, Cartier, Van Cleef, and it's like, oh boy, like there's a real difference here for |
| Unknown | sure. Yeah, this was top, top quality. And you could see not just the quality of the stones, but the setting. And then I think the and I was talking to their their designer Fabrizio who uh who's amazing. Yeah. Double breasted suit. Uh single breasted, but really nice. Really good suit. Yeah. Um and you know, he's he was talking about how the Octo is kind of a perfect watch to set because it's so angular. So it's it's complicated because you have all these angles and you have to find the right stones that that can be cut to fit, but that because it's not a rounded watch in in basically anyway. There's basically no rounded parts of it. You don't lose anything w about the original design when you set it. Whereas you take some of the watches like um, you know, the Nautilus is a watch that gets gem set a lot. So much of what makes the Nautilus special are those those weird sort of like rounded bubbly shapes. And when you gem set them, they lose that character, whereas like the octo still looks like an octo when it's covered in diamonds. I was pretty pretty |
| Unknown | into it. There's a version on a strap, but that's yeah. I mean the the the octo in many ways like the Royal Loco on the Nautilus. Like it needs to be on the bracelet. Yeah I agree. It just does. I think uh you know I'm looking at your explorer right now like that that can live on a strap and it looks pretty good. Yeah. But an Nautilus, even though they they make them on straps and Royal look, I've just never really gotten gotten into them. Ye |
| Unknown | ah, I agree. I think the bracelet's a big part of it. Yeah. Um yeah, being around not just the the gem set stuff, but they did some things with hard stones with some jade, malachite, that kind of thing. Um can tell by the way, this is gonna be a really popular segment in this podcast talking about malachite and jade. Yeah, this is right up the core of this. Yeah, hodingi audience. Um I mean that stuff is is of course very bulgary, but even the sort of core octofenissimo stuff, it just feels so them, and it's you know, along with the serpente and and really the kind of like core bulgory designs, they're so different. And I really appreciate that. And it's nice after having spent you know the last three or four days with them. It's a nice reminder that while so many watch brands are all trying to do the same thing, they're all trying to compete for the same, you know, 10 customers who want these 10 different things. Bogery's doing them. They're making their designs with their character and their personality. And if you don't like it, fine. You can go shop somewhere else. Go bu |
| Unknown | y something else. Yeah, I mean, I we've we've talked about this a lot, but I mean I think the the octopenismo is uh has the highest likelihood of becoming an icon someday of any watch that's come out in the last 10 years, in in my opinion. I agree. 100%. It's just it it it's for some reason like it's always left out of the conversation of all like these derivative, like oh so and so, you know, Bell and Ross made a wash that looks like the Nautilus, how silly. You know, it's like it's never included and nobody ever knocks it for being a rip-off of anutilist or royal look because it's not. I mean it it is very much an integrated bracelet, kind of, you know, it's technically not. But I mean very much like a bracelet-bound watch. But for some reason, it gets a pass because it is that much better than so many of these other new bracelet-y watches. Yeah, I totally agree. And and they they tre |
| Unknown | at it with real thoughtfulness, which I like. You know, it it doesn't not only doesn't it look like a sort of like us two, like oh, we're gonna make one of these watches also kind of watch. It uh also the the attention to detail on each of the variations is so high, you know, they have the ones where uh some of the variations, the numerals are cut out so that you can see the the movement through the dial uh with the complicated pieces. But even the the sandblasted rose gold model. Killer. It's killer. And also, I'd never noticed this before. The undersides of the links are hollowed out so that the watch is lighter and it actually makes it much more comfortable to wear because it balances out and you don't end up with this problem where because it's so thin and there's not as much gold in the case, if the bracelet were solid, the bracelet would be much heavier than the watch. And it would be really strange. So they they essentially the bottom of the links are like routed out so that the whole thing balances and wears almost like a bracelet. Um which again, yeah, I mean you mentioned like when a jeweler does things like this, you you get that that you wouldn't get from a normal watchmaker. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So James Bond. China. China. Yeah. Diamonds. Sea Master |
| Unknown | s. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's been it's been a good it's been a good little little go over here. And we have so Jack Forrester's in uh he thought he was going to Albania. But but uh in when we like go to Penn Station, he's like, You don't know how do you get to Albania via Penn Station? Uh he's going to Albany, the the the capital of New York State for uh actually a pretty neat event. Yeah. Um and where else? So car is in Singapore. Cars the s inins. Uh some limited editions just announced today. Pretty, you know, expected neat stuff. I mean the fact that they got an Aquanaut is is pretty big deal. Very cool. Uh that's a that's a hot watch on its own. So a limited edition aquanaut's gonna be pretty, pretty cray cray. Yeah. Uh John's off to Vancouver next week, I think. Magazine. We' |
| Unknown | re uh printing the magazine. So magazine's looking sweet. Magazine's looking really good. We'll have a lot more on that soon. All right. So before we go, favorite bomb movie? I |
| Unknown | think it's probably Casino Royale. The the the first Daniel Craig. Because it was like, you know, I I mean if you asked me my favorite watch, I would probably say like one of the like my grandfather's watch or like a watch that like came out during my lifetime. And I think there are probably like better watches, you know, twenty four ninety nine, six two three nine, whatever. But like I I want I I really favor things that that were produced in my lifetime. And in my lifetime, like the Bond films with Piers Brosnan, which I I liked 'cause I didn't know any better at the time. Um you know, and so I was like, okay, he's kind of like goofy and and quirky. And then Daniel Craig comes in, first blonde James Bond, which was like a big deal at the time. Uh, and he was just such a badass, you know. And I mean th that that sequence where you know he's losing in poker and the bartender s was like, Do you want a shaken or stirred? And he's like, Does it look like I give a damn? And I was like, Yes. Like that that's the bond that we want, you know? So good. Uh so I think it's Casino Royale. Cause that was like that really ignited my love for for James Bond |
| Unknown | . Yeah. It's kind of boring, but I'm gonna say the same thing. Yeah. It's it's also that Bond movie is so rewatchable in ways that a lot of the earlier ones are not. Like they're good and you can really enjoy them, but like once you've seen them, some of the jokes are kind of like they're not as funny the second time or they don't hold up. Casino Royale I've seen probably at least a dozen times, maybe more. U |
| Unknown | h movie is so good. They they just hit all the right notes in that. I mean what even with the product placement, which not that it really matters, but like Aston Martin came back instead of BMW, like why would James Bond drive a BMW? Like that just that just makes no sense. Yeah, like Aston sorry, my my oh my Apple Watch is ringing. Sorry guys. Um yeah, I mean Aston Martin is where he belongs, you know. And you know, the Omega partnership is an amazing one and you know, something that I should probably not repeat, but probably doesn't really matter is that like, you know, we I talked to Reynold a lot about the the bond things over my relationship with him. And he told me in Matera that the last Bond watch has 30,000 requests for the watch after it's all sold out. So I mean like I think they made 7,700 or something like you know, double oh seven. Yeah. Um and they have 30,000 requests for that watch. You know, so like think about how how big of a deal that one skew is to them. Yeah. And on top of that, all the the the the marketing that comes along with you know being uh the the bond watch and all that. It's it's it's pretty wild. So for those whole companies, like whole important watchmakers that don't make thirty thousand watches a year. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean AP probably makes sixty. You know what I mean? So like half of AP is uh could be done in with the bond watch, you know? And so tha that's when you start to realize how big of a world there is outside of our little world, you know? Our guys tend to rail against the bond watches and all that and and then you see like well wait a minute, like they sold all of them like basically instantly and they have thirty thousand people that want more. Uh and on that note, I saw the next James Bond watch. The one that will that Daniel Craig will be wearing in this film. Is it cool? It's great. Honestly, it is I think it's the best the best Bond watch Omega has done since, you know, since the the Goldeneye days. Okay. Um, you know, I was never a fan of that like circular bullet y type of dial that they tend to do. Yeah. Uh this doesn't have that. This is really much more military focused. Uh, I don't know how much I can say. Uh I could probably get away with something here. It's titanium uh on a titanium bracelet. Sweet. Which is sweet. That sounds super and very understated 007 branding. I mean there is some because it is a Bond watch, but it's uh it's for sure the nicest, most kind of enthusiast focused uh version of a Bond watch I've ever seen. That's killer. Yeah. Well, welcome back from Italy and uh thanks for this. It's a nice peek uh behind the curtain. My pleasure. Shout out to Greg Corhonan over there. Best hair in the game. Always. Yeah. Thanks, fellas |
| Unknown | . Up next, we've got my conversation with world-renowned typographer Jonathan Heffler. Thanks for watching for coming. Good to have you here. Thanks for having me, Stephen. It's been a pretty big week on your end |
| Unknown | , no? It has been a big week. Um I guess the big news of the week for me is uh Netflix's uh show Abstract the Art Design season two just premiered yesterday. There are uh six episodes about different kinds of designers and I am there representing typeface design, my own little strange specialty |
| Unknown | . Nice. And just a day before that, you launched the typeface that the episode kind of tracks the development of, right? I |
| Unknown | did. We've been working on a typeface called Decimal for about three years, which is inspired by the lettering on vintage watches. And it's had a kind of tortured history of first trying to be a an authentic replica of lettering on watches, followed by the discovery that watches are a little bit more complex than I thought, which I think is a theme of anybody who is a watch enthusiast. And finally, with kind of new inputs and new ideas, finding its way into a typeface that is really designed to to kind of evoke the spirit of |
| Unknown | Nice. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna get into the specifics of decimal and kind of the the episode of abstract a little bit later, but I I think it's worth for some people who may not be familiar with what a typeface designer is or what that means. Can you kind of give a little bit of background on A, how you got into designing typefaces and be what that actually means, like what your job actually is day to day. Sure. |
| Unknown | Well, I have a company called Hefler and Co. and we design fonts. Uh what that means is we create things for graphic designers to use, sometimes things motivated by our own interests, sometimes things commissioned by clients, that are in some way stylistically or functionally different. We might be commissioned to design a typeface for a fashion magazine that hopes to evoke an idea about fashion that an editor has or art director has that is in some way new. We are will be commissioned to design a typeface for a mobile app or for newsprint or some sort of challenging medium where the typeface needs to do functionally different things. So our work is kind of a combination of drawing and research and testing. Most of what we do is not simply drawing alphabets, but looking at the result of what we've drawn to see how things perform. And it's an interesting business. It's I got involved in this through as a kid. I loved lettering. I loved typography. I was also a computer geek as a kid, and I love to program computers and I love video games. I love that the the sci-fi video game and the fantasy video game had different kinds of lettering on them and you could see this one is meant to look calligraphic, this one's meant to look digital. Um I think that kind of exposed me to what you could do with uh with uh the shape of the alphabet to convey a feeling to a reader. And uh I worked briefly in graphic design as a chance to really use typefaces, but discovered pretty quickly that I love making the typefaces themselves as much as I love using them. So I founded the company a little more than 30 years ago. Originally it was just me. Now we're a team of about 16 people. And uh we make fonts and publish them online at typography.com where we uh we offer the typefaces we make. We write about typography. And one of the most exciting things for me is we get to write about and share the research that goes into things. So' a lot of what were doing is showing examples of lettering on watches or uh typefaces in old books or architectural lettering or neon lettering or things like |
| Unknown | that. And and so decimal came about not as a commission from someone or as kind of outside pressure, but from your from your own interests, right? It did |
| Unknown | . uh romance with the watch, I I noticed one day that I'd been noticing for a long time. I I was at a conference in Denver uh with uh the director Gary Hustwit who did a film called Helvetica that I was in. And uh Gary was doing a screening of the film. He hits the play button, the movie begins playing, and he goes off to get some dinner because he's seen his own movie a million times. And um he had a really nice watch. I was admiring it. It was an IWC Portuguese and we were talking about this and uh watched as we liked and I'd seen you know the Longa and Zona ads in the New York Times and I had my eye on Universal Geneve Tri Compacts, and I suddenly realized I know the names of these watches. And I didn't of them. I don't think I was even wearing a watch at the time, but I'd been paying attention for a while. And I suddenly realized this is this is actually an interesting thing. And um when I turned 40, I decided I'm you know I'm a grown-up now, I can have a nice proper you know a watch that I might want to hang on to for a few years, and uh I really couldn't decide between something contemporary and something vintage and really had this feeling that somehow a vintage watch was going to be a a big responsibility the way like a vintage car you always hear car buffs talking about the maintenance and so on. Yeah. And then I had this incredible thought that never occurred to me before, which is that I could have more than one. I didn't I didn't need to decide. And that never occurred to me. I thought it was like having a pair of eyeglasses. You know, you buy one, they sit in your face for years and years. Right. But I thought I could have two of these things. So so I did. I I bought um the first two watches I got, the first two series watches were um an Omega Speedmaster, a contemporary one, and uh an old Universal Geneve uh Aero Compax. It's a pretty good place to start. Well I, didn't know that at the time. And I I think one of the things I'll realize as I've come to really get to know and to love watches is that part of the appeal of the Speedmaster for me is that it really is unchanged. Um I mean we can talk about things like the technology changing, the movement's changing, you know, it's got a presentation back, the metal has changed, whatever. But uh stylistically, I mean as a piece of design, today's Speedmaster and the ones from decades past are very closely related. And I think subconsciously that's what appealed to me. This in some ways has the the feeling of of heritage behind it. And for me, that's a theme that really resonates with all my interests in the applied arts. I mean I I live in an old building that we've renovated millions of times and um I like making typefaces that are steeped in things that are historical. The idea of finding things that have been around for a while and examining really what about them is so interesting, um, not to venerate them as relics, but to live with them and realize like what what about this is still relevant to to life today. I I find really satisfying and that's that was kind of the beginning of the end for me when it came to uh came to watches. So |
| Unknown | so you said that this that kind of spoke to the Sedpemaster. What was it about that Universal? Because Universal is is kind of a I would say like a cultish brand. Like real watch nerds love Universal, but it's not something that like most kind of like quote unquote normal people know |
| Unknown | I didn't know that at the time. I saw one on eBay. It was in terrible shape, um, but it had these four subdials and the notion that you could uh have not just the sort of the the the the minutes and hours and seconds of of a chronograph, but this fourth memory dial as a kind of you know you dial up 1020 in the morning as a reminder that that's when my eye appointment is or whatever it is. I just thought visually the balance of these four four subdials was so elegant. And uh the watch was in terrible shape and I didn't sell and the whole thing seemed very fishy. But as I began digging, I found there are actually dealers that specialize in these things and there are watches that are in better shape. And there are more of them. There's the memo the memo compacts, there's the tricompacts, there's the aero compacts, there's the Nina and the Clapton and the rest of it. And uh I really just had no idea that there was so much that had gone into these things and so much variation. Uh, even to settle upon a model that you love and find there might be uh a hundred different references of it with you know a thousand varieties of dials and small details. It it really was an eye-opening experience. I I think also to appreciate that the differences between these things are significant. Even looking at things superficially just in terms of the dial, which I think is the part that everybody experiences the most, and I certainly always look at as somebody who loves graphics, the design of the figure four changing from one uh reference to another on the same underlying watch, you've got to wonder what kind of intent was behind this and think about whether this is a stylistic choice or a functional choice. And I just found that fascinating and I still do |
| Unknown | . And and so from those two watches, where did your watch collecting kind of go from there? How how did it kind of ramp up and take off |
| Unknown | ? Well, I think I would say that my my collecting is kind of secondary to my enthusiasm. I mean most of the watches that I've admired are ones that I don't own, um, in part because they're uh rare or expensive or whatever. Um and I think we're all grateful to live in a time when things are documented and shared so beautifully. Um obviously hodinky where we are today is uh you know the the facto place for what enthusiasts to go. Um and certainly on social media, um, the chance to experience things in incredible resolution, the chance to see videos of things uh being handled uh is you can get a lot from it. So I mean my interest in watchmaking um between things that I've collected and things that I just admire,. Um I'm very fond of dive watches. Uh one of the first watches I really fell in love with typographically was the um Geger Polaris. Yeah. And uh I found one years ago in great shape and thought this could be something I might want to have for a long time. But I'm also very fond of the um the Volcane Cricket and uh the AMF, is it Cornavan or Cornavan? I've forgotten how it's pronounced. Uh I think Cornavan. Yeah, very peculiar watch with one hand and a little kind of uh window for the hours. Um one thing I'm discovering is that I'm I'm very interested in the way uh different watches present the time., um Um the notion of like well, certainly of of modern watches their essence, I think is just such a marvelous idea for kind of subverting the idea of just hands with hours and minutes on them. Um so yeah, I'm I've always been fascinated by the uh the different ways in which something as simple as hours, minutes, and seconds can be conveyed in using different kinds of mechanical constructions and different visual constructions for different purposes. So I think yacht timers are interesting. Um I'm a big fan of the um the uh Seafarer by Hoyer Robercrompi and Fitch. Yeah it's a great watch. It's just it's beautiful visually and I I think the idea of having a a a subdial to indicate the tide is such a marvelous idea and it's it's just it's integrated so beautifully sort of holistically in the uh the entire watch dial as well |
| Unknown | . Yeah I mean it's it's interesting because before we get into kind of the origins of of decimal, you know, everything you're talking about has to do with the sort of presentation of information. Yeah. Right. Which is deeply tied to what to what you do, which just in a sort of different context, right? |
| Unknown | Yeses., it do And and one of the things I'm realizing as I get to know uh watch collectors and watchmakers is that in many ways, this is the least relevant part, the least important part for many people who are enthusiasts. Um, I'm very bad with remembering reference numbers. I'm I'm hopeless remembering whether something has a value or an ETA movement. And these these kinds of things I realize are important to a connoisseur. But as somebody who is so heavily involved with typography and the two-dimensional plane, the dial has really always been a point of uh a point of focus for me |
| Unknown | . Yeah. I I mean I think you're right. There's there's definitely a sort of category of enthusiasts for whom, like, other than knowing whether it's in good condition or not, the dial is not the primary focus. But it is the primary way most people experience a wristwatch, right |
| Unknown | ? I I think so, but I really don't know. Um, I'm not really a car person, but I have plenty of friends who are car enthusiasts and you know I can see a beautiful three fifty-six on the street and think, God, that's just a gorgeous little car, what a great color it is. And I'm not thinking about whether it's got, you know, hydraulic steering or the engines. The mechanics are kind of in literally invisible from the outside. Um part of it may just be that in a coming of age of time when so many things are the mechanics of how they work are intentionally concealed from us. It's been a century since you know Raymond Lowy thought to make things like staplers and pencil sharpeners uh featureless chrome boxes with all the gears and things inside. Watches are funny they're they're uh they're simultaneously about concealing the mechanics and celebrating the movements as well and uh i i i do think that it's very rewarding to get involved in watchmaking and discover what actually goes into these things. Uh but it's a cliff that I've really yet to scale and it seems uh it seems daunting for as an outsider I'll say. That's that's fair. It it |
| Unknown | is definitely daunting. And now we'll look at this week's sponsor. Well, it's officially fall. I've broken out the sweaters and I'm starting to see pumpkin spice lattes on the subway. Watches tend to be flexible and perfect for year-round wear, but this year Grand Seiko has something special for welcoming the cooler months. The Grand Seiko SBGH 273 is part of the US exclusive seasons collection, and it's the model that represents autumn. Just like the summer-inspired SBGH 271 that we told you about on last week's episode, the SBGH 273 has a 40mm stainless steel case and bracelet and is powered by the high-beat caliber 9s85. What makes it special though is the deep blue dial that's inspired by the Japanese concept of Tsukyyo, the bright shining of the moon against the dark nighttime sky. The dial has a subtle texture to it and changes color from nearly black to a steely blue depending on how it catches the light. The days may be getting shorter, but with the SBGH 273 on your wrist, you might not mind so much. For more about the Seasons collection and Grand Seiko's other families of watches, visit Grandseiko.com. Alright, let's get back to the show. I want to make sure we we have time to really get into the kind of nuts and bolts of of decimal. So you already mentioned noticing the way that that fours change on watch dials. And I I know we first spoke about this, I guess, I don't know, maybe two years ago. Um and when did that kind of interest in like, huh, this this number is is something different and something unique? Yeah. When did that kind of escalate into like, okay, maybe there's there's a whole language here kind of lurking beneath the surface |
| Unknown | . It probably started for me with that original Universal Geneve and seeing that the four on the main dial and the four on each of the three sub-dials were different in proportion in line weight and things like that, but they were functionally all the same. They had this very, very wide apex at the top. And anybody who's ever drawn a number four does it one of two ways. It's either got the fully concealed triangular area on top, which typographers called a counter, or it's open on top. It's kind of a a diagonal L shape with a vertical stripe through it. And I realize I'm making hand gestures that won't mean very much on a podcast. Um but on this on this universal the four had a flat top. It th its counter, instead of being a triangle, was this trapezoid that was very, very wide. And I thought that's kind of kind of an odd detail that this one watch has. Then I realized that I've seen this elsewhere, and I came across a garden variety omega, a 30 T2, that had the same four on it, and I began noticing that Rolexes have the same four, and m contemporary Omegas do as well, and I've seen this four on an Automar PG, and this is this is a thing. This is a watchmaker's thing. This is not just this one manufacturer. And this was a four that you hadn't really seen elsewhere, right? I'd never noticed it before and I've never seen any other medium. I've I've never seen uh one of the things about watchmaking lettering that's so interesting and really was the focus of decimal is that this is lettering that evolved outside of typography. You know, today we think of typography as being fonts, as being anything that is is letters that are used systematically. But typography is the history of typefaces made for printing. And so if you're thinking if you're looking at an old sign at a gas station painted in the 30s, that won't be typography, that'll be lettering. That'll be the product of a uh somebody using a brush to render something by hand. Um if you're looking at watch lettering, you're looking at lettering that was created for an engraved plate that was applied via uh something called a pad printer, which is this marvelous process called tampography, to apply that to a brass dial. And the traditions that shaped the kind of letters one sees on watch dials really have nothing to do with printing types. So you go back 50 years and you see in typography, we have typefaces like Helvetica or Universe or you know, things that are are known to us as part of the modern canon. Um, those don't appear in watch dials. Watch dials are still hand lettered using processes and made by artisans who've been working in the same way for decades. So one of the nice things about being a typeface designer today is you can look at other kinds of traditions, calligraphy, uh stone cutting, uh gold leaf window gilding, uh, whatever, that have their own traditions and their own practices and their own mannerisms and figure out what kinds of things there can I as a typeface designer learn from. And the figure four was really the kind of point of activation for the entire project. I thought, what is it about this four? Why does it look the way it does? Um and I really come to two obvious conclusions. One is that making the counter of the four, that enclosed area as large as possible, uh prevents it from filling in during printing. So when you have this uh pad printer that's got a reversed image in ink or in enamel, uh you do everything you possibly can to create these open apertures and characters so that the ink doesn't blob together. That also shapes why a number like three has uh two arms that are as far apart as possible. Uh why a number like seven might have not just an acute angle at the upper right, but a short vertical stroke before it curves down. These are all gestures that go toward making letters as legible as possible in the context of this this liquid ink printing. And the other possibility is that the four is a kind of an awkwardly shaped character in terms of its silhouette. Think about the shape of a two or a three or a five or a six. These things fit into nice square rectangles. The four naturally doesn't. It's sort of triangular in profile. If you can make the four more boxy, it's going to feel more of a piece with the other numbers on a dial. And suddenly you begin realizing things like, well, this is why the number, the figure one doesn't have serifs on it. It's just a stick because one zero in ten or one two in twelve can now be narrower. They can feel the same width as a six or a three that they're opposite uh or All of these decisions about the shapes of numbers on wand and watch dials and on clocks, I think, really has to do with the vicissitudes of manufacturing, but also the overall visual presentation, keeping this kind of balance. So that was a great way to start. Um, but the question is when your source material is just numbers one through nine, how do you design an alphabet? Uh and thankfully there are letters on watches as well. Um brand names, certainly things on bezels, uh you'll find words like you know, chronometer or or tacky or whatever. Um there's enough source material to get a sense that the things that shape the figure four in a watch also shape the alphabet, in the way that the four is flat rather than pointy, the capital A is often flat rather than pointy, and the bottom of the capital V might be flat rather than pointy. So the first thing a type designer does is try to rough out an alphabet that has all these themes in it. The next thing you do, sadly, is design a lowercase. And I've never seen a lowercase on any watch dial save the occasional lowercase M if there's a little KM indicator on a spiral or something. Typefaces also go on from there. As a typeface designer, you're doing about 1200 characters per font. You're doing accents and punctuation and things get very uh abstruse very quickly once we've done the things everyone thinks about, like ampersands and question marks and exclamation points, we're left to draw things like paragraph marks and section marks and daggers and double daggers and all kinds of nonsense that uh you know designers need and readers need, but uh watchmakers never did. Right. And then of course we're doing different uh weights of things and doing italics. So by the end of the project, um we discovered two things. One is that the source material is very small. You're really trying to plant a forest from a very small seed. The other thing is that watch lettering is much more varied than you might think. And uh on our site at typography.com I've got a photograph of a Brightling Top Time that has just the words Brightling Geneve and the G in Brightling and the G in Geneve are drawn differently. And you're sort of left to ask yourself why would a single artisan making a single dial render this one letter in two different ways? And the best I can gather is that the smaller letter is designed to really maximize the open space so that again ink wouldn't blob up, which kind of suggests that the scale of lettering on a watch affects its form in very big ways. So if I return back to my universal Genevieve Aero Compacts, I'll find that the small numbers on the subdials and the larger numbers indicating hours are different enough that there's much more variation than you might think. And so this was a point early in the project where I was beginning to think that I'm trying to make something very complex overly simple. It's like trying to do um you know make like something called Thai spices in a jar where it's like, you know, maybe it's curry, but there's more to it than this. It's this is an entire cuisine rendered into like one ingredient. Yeah. Um I think you can't do it. I I think watches really contain uh just multitudes of ideas. So what decimal became about for us was trying to reduce all of these things not down to a single set of forms that are uh inspired by individual watches, but to kind of collect the ideas to talk about, you know, well, watch lettering tends to try to be as open as possible. It it tends to have these kind of extroverted gestures and uh, you know, keep forms from getting too close to each other. Um, it tends to make curves that are squarer so an o instead of being circular is kind of stuffed at the corner is a shape we call a super ellipse um and letters are wide instead of being squares they tend to sprawl horizontally and uh all these sharp angles and letters like A and V tend to be wider as well. Can we kind of extrapolate from these themes into an entire family of typefaces that feels watch-like? And that's where decimal landed. And when it landed two days ago, it was uh in all probably about goodness uh there are probably twenty thousand letter drawings in the entire family because there are uh ten weights from thin to ultra, and then there are italics, and then we have uh small caps, which are uh type typographical invention. These are smaller capitals drawn to the size of the lowercase, and then of course there's numbers and punctuation and accents and so on. So it's uh it's quite a project. It was uh it took five of us to do this. The team was me, uh Sarah Saskolne, our senior designer, uh, Colin Ford, Troy Linster, and Jordan Bell at our office working on this really hammer and tongs for about a year. Wow. Which has been uh a little bit crushing |
| Unknown | . I I wonder, you know, the you talk about scale seems to be a very important part of of this project. And obviously that's relevant for watch styles, but also as we start viewing more and more things at smaller scales, whether it's on phones, on smartwatches, printed at small scale, is there something about that kind of I guess impact of size and and that being sort of at the core of the design that you think makes it kind of especially relevant right now? That is such |
| Unknown | a good question that that I wish clients would ask more because it really does. Um you can get away with more um you can cheat more things in small sizes. Um if I draw for you a capital O and a capital Q and I do these a foot and a half high. And I can just draw a diagonal line through the O to make it into a Q. That's going to look right. In small sizes, you might find that the gesture where the diagonal tail goes through the uh the round part to make the cue is becoming too dark. So as a type designer, I'll probably sneak in and lighten up that intersection. Um you can make these adjustments that are that produce the right effect, but on examination are kind of a strange thing to have done. And the episode of Abstract, The Art of Design, that I just filmed with Netflix is largely about these things. It's about all the things type designers do to really trick the eye into seeing what we want you to see as opposed to what's actually there. Yeah. And um I I I should caution anybody, caution anybody who wants to watch that um this is going to ruin you because I mean this seriously, you you will never see letters the same way again. You'll notice things you've never noticed before. Um some of them are very simple, like an O is always taller than an H, which seems bizarre, but go measure the hodinky logo and you'll see that this is actually uh a real thing. Yeah. It's an effect called overshoot. And once you notice that, you'll notice its absence on things that are poorly, poorly lettered. Um strokes that cross don't really cross. An X is never made from two strokes that intersect. One of them has been broken very slightly to overcome this very strange thing called the Poggendorf illusion. Um the episode of Abstract was largely about these things and trying to kind of demonstrate with practical props that once you begin dissecting letter forms, there's been some very strange decision-making going on to give them the effect they actually have |
| Unknown | . Yeah, I love this part. It's kind of a recurring part throughout the episode where you have these translucent cards with forms on them and you're sort of overlaying them and and kind of unpacking these illusions in a very visual intuitive way. D does any part of you feel almost like a like a close up magician revealing his tricks on on TV? Um, I do, but I guess |
| Unknown | the the joy of this is I think people enjoy learning how the trick works. Uh whereas as a magician, of course, you're sworn to, you know, uphold secrets of the guild and all of that. Um this the sequences you're describing were the invention of Brian Oakes, the director of the episode and, uh I I should just begin by saying that Brian, the director, and Claire Popkin, the cinematographer, and Scott Dadich and uh Dave O'Connor, the two executive producers, uh are all really quite conversant in typography. So it was wonderful to get a chance to work with them on these things and begin with the idea, we're going to explain sophisticated things to actual civilians in a way that is going to be, you know, understandable and relevant. Um so yeah, it was it was actually great fun to do this and to to make physical props that uh that demonstrate what happens when you take things apart and all the kind of strange decisions that go into making things look very similar. Type design is the is the art of making things different so they look the same. And it's what's so um mystifying about it and oftentimes so difficult about it that uh you think about things like a letter E is just, you know, four lines put together. And then upon examination, you realize that the horizontal lines are thinner than the vertical line because they have to be, because of how our brains work. And it's possible that the center arm between the top and the bottom is shorter than the top and the bottom ones out of custom. And the center one might be thinner than the top and the bottom because it's surrounded by more context. There's there's lots of kind of sleight of hand going on. And there's also more to learn every day, which is what what makes type design so uh at once satisfying and difficult. Um I've been doing this now for 32 years and I still reach points of saying I can't figure out why this doesn't look right. And I'll have conversations with our designers and we collectively have, you know, more than half a century experience doing this. And none of us can figure out why does the M look heavier than the H. Doesn't make any sense. But uh it it's a lot of trial and error and um just making corrections that seem intuitively wrong to produce an end result that is practically correct. That' |
| Unknown | s super fascinating. I love that. Um one of the other things that struck me, you know, when when I first heard that you were working on on a typeface inspired by watches, and you've addressed this a little bit is, you know, m watches we look at the especially the vintage era of of watches, which is what decimal is is rooted in. You mentioned it, it's it's hand lettering, it's not type design, right? These things are not standard, even you know, the same watch one year to the next might have a slightly different logo. It might be slightly different in in a lot of ways. Um in some ways then the the sort of challenge of decimal is is making an ordered system out of chaos, you know, artistic chaos, but chaos. And sort of how how does that impact your design process? Sort of how much of that sort of like chaotic artistry do you want to remain? And how much do you purposefully need to eliminate in order to make this a useful typeface? Because the the end result here is not this isn't a sort of like arts and crafts project where you have a typeface and this is the end product. The typeface is meant to be useful to other |
| Unknown | people, right? Yeah. That's a really good question. And I I think there's kind of an artistic component and there's a um ethical component as well. The artistic component is is your goal to do a a warts and all replica of something or do you want it to have uh greater value for more things. Um I side with greater value. I I the thought that I might spend all this time producing a typeface that would really only be useful to people who are forging watch dials uh doesn't really feel like the right thing to do. Yeah, that's probably not the best use of the thing. No, I'd I don't think I'd be welcome here if that was the case. Um but the idea of doing something that could be used to uh appear on a future watch dial and feel like it has that watch heritage that's that's identifiable as being like this feels right in a way that I can't quite figure out as a as a consumer, but it gives me that watch feeling in some way. Um that's very appealing to me. And then finally the chance to bring this to media besides the wristwatch. Decimal is not just designed for watches. It's designed as a multi-purpose typeface. So it's going to be used in books and on websites and banners and you know movie titles and book covers and things like that. A lot of it really comes down to uh how much you want to uh continue the past versus how much you want to interpret the past. And some of the more exciting projects I've done, and decimal is certainly among them, have been the ones that are more interpretive. And so this didn't end where I thought it would. It didn't end with the this feels just like an old Speedmaster. Um, but it did end with this is a new typeface that is it's steeped in the the traditions and the virtues of something interesting and familiar to some to enthusiasts and collectors, and I think uh new to everybody else, which is uh kind of a satisfying ending. Aaron Powell Yeah. |
| Unknown | I mean the idea of endings is is interesting to me, especially in the context of decimal kind of growing while being shot for an episode of television, uh, for for abstract. You know, when I I would assume that when you started shooting, you didn't quite know where the end of decimal was going to be. So what kind of pressure does that put on you, positive, negative both, neither, uh as you're doing the work, knowing that sort of the process of this is is being documented and in theory at some point like it needs to resolve somewhere. Yeah |
| Unknown | . I mean, certainly the pressure of a television crew makes this very manifest. Um it's funny, I think I this has been actually a theme for type bases I've been doing for years, and I hadn't that until looking back on Netflix. In the 90s, I was commissioned by Esquire Magazine to do a typeface for them. A man named Robert Priest is an extraordinarily talented art director. And uh we had an early discussion about what the themes of the magazine are, what the typeface should convey. And I came in with this idea of doing a a very authentic historical revival of this Baroque type face from eighteenth century Holland and I had all my sources and this lovely presentation and drawings and Robert was very kind about it and it's like yes this is this is pretty nice, lovely, lovely, it's terrific. And um his uh associate art director walked in and said, Yeah, this is great, but it's nothing to do with the magazine. And i he's absolutely right. I mean he he was the the first person to really say, and thank God he said at an early meeting that the idea that I went in with might have had its own integrity, but it wasn't relevant to their project. And it took this uh Rocky Harwood, this other art director, really saying, you know, this is awesome, but not what we're about. This is journalism. This is contemporary culture. This isn't, you know, funny old curlicues on typefaces from the 1750s in Flanders. What we did with that project was to really take a hard pivot into looking back at this material that I was just so attached to and felt some sort of resonance with the project and figure out what we can keep and what we can throw away here. And so in the end, the typeface that emerged called Mercury doesn't look like anything old. It's it's a thoroughly contemporary typeface, but it shares some of the qualities of this thing that I liked originally. It kind of sparkles. It's very sharp, it's very fierce, it's got a very kind of aggressive italic. Declare was the same thing. It was really finding ways to identify what the themes are that are important as opposed to the forms are, but they are elusive. And um one thing I had to say about the episode of Abstract, which was I I I hope is visible to viewers, um it's it really is documenting a real process. This isn't reality TV where we, you know, staged fights and you know have confessionals and moments of crisis. Yeah well that that was all off camera. Um uh there were things like um we took a trip to the New York Public Library Maps Mus Maps Library, the maps collection, excuse me, uh to look at examples of other kinds of small-scale lettering to see what different kinds of artists had done. Uh, in this case, looking at uh 19th century American maps that had been made with an engraver on a copper plate reversed actual size. And that exercise was born in small part of the desire to have another location to go to and shoot things that are interesting, but in large part just a moment of kind of crisis for me, of you know, I don't like where this thing is going. Um, the version of decimal you'll see early in the episode that is much more authentic to watch lettering and kind of extrapolates from those ideas into what new characters like a lowercase might look like. Um I would say it has integrity as an idea, but I didn't like the results. And if I don't want to myself use the typeface, I'm not going to invest all this effort in uh in making it. Yeah. Um these these moments in the episode of like having long conversations with Sarah Saskolney, my senior designer, or going to the map collection and talking to Ian Fowler, who is librarian at the uh NYPL, were really about trying to find new ideas and trying to resolve things in unexpected ways, and and really kind of abandoning some of my devotion to the original idea, saying, you know, this is not gonna look like it came off of a bright link top time. It's gonna look like a new typeface, which is evoking this thing in some oblique way |
| Unknown | . So one thing I want to make sure people get a sense of uh just because I think it's it's a little hard to understand the project without it is where did the name come from? Where did this name decimal come from? Why is this the sort of like banner you want to put at the top of this project |
| Unknown | ? I should start by saying that naming a typeface is one of the hardest things to do. It seems like it's the most superficial, but it is actually the most difficult. Um part of the problem is a legal one. You're trademarking a piece of software and nobody else can have this name, and the process of finding something original that's unused is very difficult. Uh especially in type design, which is a very robust field with many people making typefaces. I like to find terms that are personally meaningful for me in terms of the origin of the typeface uh familiar to to to designers who will hopefully buy decimal and use it and contain some signature letters. All three things landed at the same place, the decimal. Stylistically it's got a letter E, a letter C, and a letter M, and a letter A, and those are four of the kind of signature letters in uh in the typeface that are identified identifiable as being distinctive. Um, but it also has a horological meaning, which is really interesting for me. Um I was familiar with decimal time, which is a French Revolution innovation that hoped to uh as part of reinventing the calendar, they hoped to uh divide the day into ten hours with a hundred minutes and 100 seconds, and happily that uh didn't last more than a few years in the first republic. Um but there's also the decimal watch, which is a marvelous thing. I'm wearing one today. It's the one decimal watch that I own. Um a decimal watch has an additional chapter dial that divides uh sixty minutes or sixty seconds into hundredths instead. So you find these very strange things like when the uh minute hand reaches twelve, it says one hundred on top. And the reason for this, and it it should have been obvious to me, but never occurred to me before, is that the chance to divide hours and minutes into um decimal points is more useful. For an aviator to know that a trip takes two point five hours as opposed to two hours and thirty minutes, um uh it makes the math easier. And to think about um aviators, scientists, um, you know, I don't know, uh racing coaches, bakers, whatever, um really being able to think about the math behind the time in that way, I thought was interesting. It's it's strange to remember that we have this Babylonian number system that goes back thousands of years based on the idea that it's divisible by twos and threes and sixes and whatever else. Um but but the kind of m metrification of time in this way is of additional value. And what I love about the decimal watch is that it has both systems at once. I can I'm wearing my one decimal right now. It's a uh Witten hour two forty two T and I can see that it's quarter to twelve, but I can also see that it is 75% of the way into the hour between 11 and 12. The idea of these two systems coexisting and providing additional value to people just felt like a good theme for a typeface. I want this to be not just reproducing the past or changing the past, but offering something old and new in the same context. |
| Unknown | I love that. Um I I think one of the other that makes me think of one of the other things that I think is sort of unique about type design, this idea of two things sort of at once, two systems at once, which is that you put all of this work into creating a typeface up front. So that's one system. But then the second system is how people use it. Right. So you're out in the world and you then experience your own work sort of reinterpreted by other people or used by other people to communicate in a sort of secondary way. What what is that experience like? What is it like to have to sort of like digest your own work in that in that way, to be confronted by in that way? |
| Unknown | It can be strange. Um it's mostly It's mostly great in that I I think people who come to uh typography.com to invest money in buying a typeface, they are already invested in the idea of making a uh a choice about type as opposed to using the fonts that come with, you know, Microsoft Word or whatever. So the same people who are are determined to choose a typeface tend to use it with care. So I'm very fortunate that the typefaces that we do are mostly used kind of lovingly and attentively by designers. The strange moment is when it appears where it's unexpected. My wife was reading a book last year and just suddenly sat bolt upright because there was a mention of the Archer typeface, something I designed as a plot point. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And it was suddenly like, this is this is my I mean she's also the CEO of our company. It's like this is this is my day job intervening in contemporary literary fiction. Um this is uh the book A Little Life. It's it's and uh there's a Patricia Cornwall mystery that mentions our Gotham type face as a plot point as well. And they're like, you know, three characters discussing with the detective, you know, why some document was was forged in the Gotham typeface. And it's like, this is this is odd to have this kind of yeah. And it's um typographers and and graphic designers certainly are famous for uh not being able to see movies because the type is always wrong. Someone's always got like a copy of you know the New York Times and it's set in Times Roman and the typeface that the Times never actually used, and you think, oh, no designer could get this thing right. Um I've seen my typeface as being used in uh in historical movies and that's always weird. It's like it's not nineteen forty nine because I made this in two thousand and six and it's that's I feel like it was just yesterday. So uh that's definitely the strangest |
| Unknown | uh strangest context. Do you ever have issues? I mean, we we don't have to get uh too political here, but one one of the one of the things mentioned in in the episode of abstract is is that Gotham was used pretty heavily by by Obama's campaign. Yeah. And since then has been adopted largely in in politics. It's one of the most popular and most used typefaces in sort of political communication, whether that's campaign signs or other things Is there something, you know, there's there's a famous story of uh, you know, Bruce Springsteen uh suing Ronald Reagan for using Born in the USA during his uh his original presidential campaign and sort of saying like I I won't have my art being being used this way. Yeah. Um do you ever have have moments where you see political or otherwise where you you see your work being used and someone has paid and has licensed the typeface. It's it's within their rights to use it. And you see them using it to communicate something and you're just like, oh, |
| Unknown | I really, I really wish this wasn't it. I I I do. I mean certainly politics um is a hot topic for typography and Gotham as being such a central part of the Obama campaign has become kind of the political typeface for candidates in both sides of the spectrum. I thought I'd had all my I'd gotten out my bad feelings about this seeing candidates I don't like using my typefaces and things. And then I read a piece in the Atlantic Monthly a couple of years ago that talked about a magazine that ISIS was putting out in Germany for recruitment and there was a full page ad designed in Champion Gothic. And so, I mean, I made this typeface when I was twenty, working out of a spare room in my dad's apartment. I mean, I remember very concretely making this thing and the art director at Sports Illustrated who commissioned it and working with their team. And I I just I have this very personal connection to this thing because it came from my own hands, but the memory of making it is so specific and to see it used in this way is uh it's horrific. It it just is. Um you have no control as a typeface designer. Um, we're on the raw materials end of things and we don't know where they go. And uh it is potent. I I think it's a potent thing though that affects everybody in this the connected world. Um, no matter what you are making, um, you're not free from its being misused, abused, misunderstood. Uh it is it is a consideration. But um the good news is that I do think that most of the work that designers do it is indeed in the interests of progress. Graphic designers I I think are overwhelmingly moral people who use typography, use their full set of abilities and talents um for things they care about. And I really have been extraordinarily fortunate to see most of the work that I do use for things that I think are forces for good. Go |
| Unknown | od. Well I have a uh before we wrap up, I have a couple sort of more watchy sort of uh things, things I want to get your uh your hot takes on if you if you will indulge me sure for for a few minutes. Um I I would say my number one question would be if you had a bit of advice or sort of uh you know, some thoughts that you would want to give contemporary watch designers, what would those thoughts be |
| Unknown | yeah I mean uh there's a lot of really shitty type on on modern watches um especially high-end watches which I simply don't understand um I I think I I'm gonna guess though that watchmaking is a little like architecture, which I have a lot of experience as somebody who supplies typefaces to graphic designers that do architectural systems, wayfinding and things like that. Um hire a professional. Hire somebody who works with typographic forms to do it for you. Do not do it yourself. In architecture, you will see a splendid building somebody has designed, and somebody in the architect's own office has taken Ariel off the shelf and squeezed it to make it fit for a sign. I think not thinking about the fact that there are specialists that do this one thing, which is extraordinary because they know about rug manufacturers and people who make escutcheons and all these different things. Hire a graphic designer, hire a typographer, hire somebody who actually works the type for a living to make some choices for you and to to you know implement the typeface as well and to choose typeface as well as well. I think what's frustrating about seeing it done poorly, and I'm thinking about things like there's a classic PATEC, I think it's the 2499, the triple time. It's just, it's I mean, if you're a watch enthusiast, you know this is like a high watermark of watch design. Um, to compare that to its contemporary facsimile, which uses like four different typefaces, most of them squeezed, and they're the ones that came free with a copy of Word. It's just it's shockingly thoughtless to me. And the worst part is it's the cheapest thing to get right. I I understand the the watch that it's using an in-house movement versus using an ETA movement. And I understand the watch is using gemstones versus not using gemstones. I mean there are material costs to these things that are profound. But the cost of a typeface is trivial to the purchase price of any watch, even at the lowest possible price point. And graphic design is not an expensive thing to invest in. Um, I've been very happy to see more and more good design on contemporary watches. Um, I'm thinking about um I'm very fond of uh Martin Nero, uh in part because they use our Gotham typeface. I'll just get that out there. Um I saw a new Timex actually advertised on Instagram, which surprised me that also uses Gotham for its typography, but not for its date wheel. It's date wheel actually has that horror logical four with the the wide top on top. So um people are beginning to think about uh conscious choices in watch design, which is nice. Um yeah, I would say hire a designer and and give your designer a budget to choose some good fonts and, uh let them try some things. It's i it is really the easiest thing to get right, and the effect is uh night and day. |
| Unknown | Great. Well you you you may have spoiled my next question a bit, but uh what typeface do you see on contemporary watches that drives you the craziest? |
| Unknown | Well, there are several. Um I think Ariel the most, and it's not merely because I don't like the typeface, it's because it's a default. Yeah. It's because you open up a word processor and the blinking cursor is there and you type and it's just in Ariel. And I think what I resent about seeing that used anywhere is that no one made a choice. No one thought, I want Ariel. They're just kind of, you know, this is the paper that came out of the printer. This is you know the way the water tastes coming out of the tap. Yeah. Um somebody could have examined this choice and and and made a choice, realized that there is no default in design.yt Ehingver is a matter of choice. You're deferring that choice to a software manufacturer as opposed to yourself as a as a an author of of words and forms. So RAL is probably my my my top least one, least favorite one. But there are others. Um I I think a lot of it is seeing typefaces that come from very divergent traditions being used in watches and being used in strange ways. Um there is some watch, it it might be a paddock that's got uh a world time bezel and it's got the names of various cities, and it's all set in. I think it might be zap chancery. It's it's some calligraphic typeface where the capital letters are incredibly florid, meant to be used only as initials, but they're used Oh I know I know what watches I can't remember what watches a horror. It's terrible. It's impossible to read. And it it's the cost of my parents' house. I mean, it it is tremendous to think that like all the effort that goes into creating this incredibly special artifact that's meant to bring somebody who's able to have it a lifetime of love is just has been treated with such indifference. This this choice is so random and so poor. So yeah, I mean, step one is is hire a graphic designer and and give them a font budget. And part two is think about what you're doing. Uh, |
| Unknown | not all tools are interchangeable. It's amazing how good those two pieces are of advice are just like in general. It's not just for watch designers. Like those are just two good things to do. I th I think the thing |
| Unknown | people need to know is that I mean typography, typeface is really our tools. And to choose a typeface arbitrarily is like choosing a spice arbitrarily in the kitchen. It's like saying, you know, I love cinnamon toast. I'm gonna put cinnamon on my pizza and I'm gonna use the whole jar of cinnamon because I've got it here. It it's not gonna make it any better. Um finding the typeface that you've seen on a greeting card that you'd liked there, it might not belong at, you know, half a millimeter high on the bezel of a watch. Yeah. So uh yeah, choosing things with care, um, thinking about their context, and I think also doing the research. Hopefully I would love to see decimal being used on timepiece. I think that it it is that it comes from this tradition and is designed to uh thrive in these conditions makes it a good choice. But there are certainly other typefaces as well. So let's see them out there |
| Unknown | . Yeah. The Ariel thing I find particularly cruel since and and correct me if I'm if I'm wrong here if I have my history wrong, but Ariel, I believe, was developed as as a cheap alternative to Helvetica, correct? Which is arguably like the most Swiss typeface of all time. Probably, yeah. It it kind of kills me when you see these watches come out of Switzerland as supposed to be these sort of great objects of national pride. And instead of using the other great object of national pride, they've used the cheap American alternative to uh to it, which I always, I always just the irony of it just kills |
| Unknown | me. I hadn't even thought about that part. The Swiss connection is profound, but yeah, it is. It's um yeah, it it it it is a kind of indifference. I I understand it. I think everybody is indifferent to something. I mean, we've all met people who are, you know, extraordinarily stylish when it comes to decor but not to dress, or people who are incredibly talented chefs but don't really care about music or we all are blind spots. And and I will admit as a designer, I mean I I'm responsible for ultimately responsible for all the aesthetics of our company from the typefaces to the catalogs we print to the website. And I have blind spots too. I have I don't think about the paper I'm using for a catalog until it's well into production. And I have designer friends who begin with that. They begin with the trim size. They begin with the the binding. They begin with these things that I kind of get to in the last moment. Um so I get that and I I can f I forgive bad typography, but I I I do I would like to sound the alarm that this is easily fixed and there are an army of of experts who can help. Um very affordably priced, I should point to out |
| Unknown | . So to to finish on sort of a high note, um are there any examples of of typography in modern watchmaking that you think are sort of the high watermarks of of what people are doing today? That's interest |
| Unknown | ing. Um I I think you can take one of different one of many different approaches. I mean, uh there are things like I saw that there's a new um zenith El Primero um uh kind of re-edition that's been done that that is very authentic to the original typography. Um so the one approach of taking the original artifact and celebrating it, I think, is a noble thing to do, and that was handled very nicely. The other, I think, is things like brands like Martinero, or certainly this Timex, that are using contemporary typefaces from the graphic design tradition, but in very attentive ways. I think Bell and Ross does a very nice job with their typography. And then there are the watches where typography is almost irrelevant. It's funny, one of the watches that I'm the most in love with and I certainly don't own um are Laurent Ferrier watches and some of the best ones have no type on them at all. So uh there are different ways of involving typography. I think uh use a lot of type, use no ty typepe, use a little, do with purpose. That's that's the best thing you can do as a watchmaker. Gre |
| Unknown | at. Well thank you so much for taking the time. I I know like we said at the top, it's it's been a busy week for you and um we're gonna link up in in the show notes here to the episode of abstract to typography.com. We'll uh make sure to send people your way so that they can they can dig a little deeper and learn a little more. Well thank you very much for having me. This has been a pleasure This week's episode was recorded at Hodinki HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference for us. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week. |