Interview with Ray Larabie – April 2011
I (re) discovered Ray Larabie and his company “Typodermic” on the MyFonts website in spring of 2011. Back in the mid-90s I had known of him because of early explorations of “free fonts.” Ray graciously agreed to the interview and as a bonus supplied me with some cool fonts for the titles of my forthcoming video “City Symphony” (project website coming soon). On an interesting side note, this interview was originally inspired by an assignment I had at school to interview an “illustrator” – but my professor nixed the idea and thus the results lay dormant for the summer. But here it finally is for your perusal and enjoyment!
Ray’s Terminology note: ”I call my self a font designer rather than a type designer for a simple reason. Too many people respond with “what type of designer?”. Font designer requires less explanation, especially in Japan. I’m not a typographer as I don’t work with type.”
1. How did you get started in typography/design? (Did you do graphic design or multimedia or architecture or anything else?)
Being hooked on fonts is one of my first memories. My grandmother rescued partially used Letraset sheets from work and I was addicted to Letraset catalogues for the duration of my childhood. I attended an art/vocational high school in Ottawa and got a diploma for Classic animation at Sheridan College in 1991. I wanted to get into something related to computer graphics and ended up in the video game industry. When I got my hands on Fontographer in 1996, I just got into it. I didn’t have a goal in mind . . . I just liked making fonts. Come to think of it, I worked in a design studio when I was 16 with the waxer, ruby lith, PMT’s, nicking my fingers on the X-acto blade . . . lovely.
2. Why did you give away your fonts in the beginning? How did you make a living and be able to spend time working on fonts?
Back then, there was no MyFonts so there was a quality bar for selling fonts online; a quality bar that I was well below. My video game job wasn’t usually creatively taxing (feast or famine) so I still had energy to put in four of five hours in the evening making fonts. Even when I went full time in 2003, I was making enough with the first few Typodermic fonts to allow some time to work on free fonts as well. Font design is a pretty good paying gig so there’s no reason I can’t still grind out a freebie once in a while.
3. Is there a certain type of art buyer that commissions your work frequently? What is that particular market and why do you think your work is desirable to them?
Video game companies provide most of my commission work. Coming from the game business and having been an art director myself, I can usually read the art director’s mind. I can predict what’s going to work onscreen, especially when fonts ends up mapped onto polygons and rotated/scaled or with outlines or drop shadows. Some of my early fonts were techno so I’ve got a reputation for that. I’ve turned down a lot of commissions from magazines because I refuse to do exclusive work but game companies almost never require exclusivity.
4. Have you ever evolved your style to broaden your appeal? If so, how?
I sure have. I try to anticipate design trends. Not font trends from other designers but how people are using fonts. I think if you look back at my work, you can see that my fonts follow some kind of fashion cycle. I assume most customers already own a few hundred fonts, most of which were not made in 2011. Designers already own the classics. The reason they’re shopping for a font is because those classics aren’t suited to their project. When I made Soap in 2005, it’s because I had seen a storefront layout where the designers “hacked” Cooper Black to make it look funkier. When designers have to modify old fonts to get a certain look, that means there’s probably a need for that type of font and that pushes me into new direction.
5. What was your most rewarding project? Why?
I’ve been doing a lot of work for Apple which I can’t discuss. Apart from that work, there was a job i did for Bioware Inc about 5 years ago. They needed a font for their Mass Effect game. I have to admit I have a bit of a font fetish for 1970′s techno-industrial logo designs. The art director, JC, knew exactly what he was looking for and put a lot of thought into requested changes. It remains my best selling font to this day. Going back to my comment about refusing custom work: I find headline font work commissioned by (paper) magazines to be the least interesting. The technical requirements for a magazine headlines are nil. So, what’s the reason for commissioning custom typeface? I find it’s usually a vanity thing. Only font nerds like me care that a certain magazine uses custom fonts. The general public doesn’t check new font releases every day. They don’t know that your font is exclusive.
If you have any follow-up questions I’d be happy to answer and I can help you choose a font for your video anytime.
Read an amazing profile/interview with Ray at MyFonts:
http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/200905.html
Browse and buy Ray’s Typodermic Fonts at MyFonts:
http://new.myfonts.com/foundry/Typodermic/
