Creative matters

Creative Type Director Charles Nix talks with Angelina Lippert, Chief Curator at the Posterhouse museum in New York City, about the history of poster design, the unseen hands behind some of the more iconic posters from history, and the finicky wonder of Rubylith.

Our guest in episode eight was John Norman, a celebrated visual storyteller and former Chief Creative Officer of world-renowned creative agencies like Translation, The Martin Agency, and most recently, Havas Chicago.

In episode seven we talked with Sarah Hyndman, founder of Type Tasting and the author of several books, including Why Fonts Matter and How to Draw Fonts and Influence People.

In episode six we talked with Chris Do, award-winning designer, CEO and Chief Strategist of Blind and the founder of The Futur—an online education platform that teaches creatives how to make a living doing what they love.

In episode five we talked with Terrence Williams, Senior Design Lead at Salesforce, who discusses the emergence of relationship design, and shares why it is important for people to bring their full identities into their work.

In episode four we talked with Tré Seals, founder of Vocal Type, about his efforts to break down stereotypes in design and how a middle-school side gig, born out of a brush with serious childhood medical issues, helped him become the artist he is today.

In our second episode, Monotype Creative Type Director Charles Nix talked with Scott Starret, co-founder of the design studio Tandem NYC, about serendipity and the experience of designing for a transformational political candidate.

In our first episode, we talked with James Sommerville, co-founder of KNOWN_UNKOWN, about his ideas for the future of creative work, community, and work/life balance in a post-pandemic world.

In episode three we talked with Chicago-based lettering artist Jenna Blazevich, about chain stitching, punk rock, intersectional feminism, and whatever the heck Malört is.

Today, it is a moral imperative that companies and agencies prioritize sustainable, environmentally friendly principles and practices. More and more consumers are demanding that brands act responsibly when it comes to environmental concerns. But what role does visual communication play in this topic, and how can type and design contribute to good sustainability practices?

Artists pour their heart and soul into their craft and creations and in an ideal world, every artist would be recognized and paid appropriately for their efforts. In reality, however, artists often have to fight for their rights to be upheld. This has been true for centuries and is only intensifying in the digital era.

Monotype is thrilled to introduce the recipients of the second annual Type Champions Award, a program that recognizes brands for their creative, innovative, and memorable use of typography in developing and maintaining their brand identities.

At its core, type is a storyteller. Letterforms deliver a message. And such messages are perhaps at their purest in the form of community-led designs for protest.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the effect the pandemic has had on the collaborative process that drives creative work at companies everywhere. Here are some ideas about where things could be heading. 

No matter how you look at it, 2020 will be a year that is studied in the history books. From a global pandemic, to economic instability, to mental health challenges, all of us are finding ourselves navigating an increasingly challenging and frightening world.

With seemingly every business in the world launching apps, online services, and other digital properties, many brands are likely wondering how they can stand out from the digital noise.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is not figuring out how to return to whatever “normal” used to look like, but how to let go of the vision we held for the future we thought we’d have.

Typography is an important component of great design. And for designers, selecting the right type can be an enormous challenge with so many varying styles and weights to choose from. To help, pangrams are often used to quickly get an overview of what a particular font looks like in use.