You Can Be Anything › All careers › Creative Arts & Design
Typographer
Designs and selects typefaces (fonts) for readability, aesthetics, and brand identity.
Did you know?
Vincent Connare designed Comic Sans in 1994, inspired by the lettering in Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns; it's now one of the most mocked fonts.
How subjects help
- Art & Design: Draw each letter so a whole font shares the same style, weight and rhythm.
- Mathematics: Adjust curves, proportions and spacing so letters look even and balanced side by side.
- Psychology: Pick letter shapes that are easy to read quickly on a road sign or a small phone screen.
- Computer Science: Turn hand drawn letters into a digital font file that works in any app.
A famous name
Jan Tschichold: German typographer who designed the Sabon typeface and set the typographic rules for Penguin Books.
Try it yourself: Design a logo for a pretend café
- Invent a café: its name, who it is for and what it sells.
- Sketch three very different logo ideas, each in under five minutes.
- Show them to someone without explaining. Which do they remember a minute later, and why?
- Redraw the winner, making it simpler so it still works when tiny.
Designers often sketch many rough ideas first, test them on real people, then refine one.
Also try: Draw your room to scale.
Known for it in
Switzerland, Germany, UK, USA, Netherlands