What’s the difference between a Font and a Typeface?
My colleague at Fontsmith Phil Garnham gave me the best answer to that question: “A font is a building, whereas a typeface is the design of this building”. I would say that ‘font’ usually relates either to the whole conjunct of glyphs or to the font file containing all the technical information like curves, metrics, kerning, hinting, tables etc. We say ‘typefaces’ when referring to the millions of different designs available.

Can you show us your workspace?

Do you have a ritual while working?
I have no specific ritual, though encouraging ‘synth-jazz’ music always helps with a demanding or a repetitive task such as kerning a whole font file. Usually when it comes to sketching new ideas, having some calm music on, probably some piano, will certainly help as well. Type design, like any other kind of creative activity, obviously goes extremely well together with good music.

Was there a brief for designing FS Pimlico and how did it come about?

The typeface’s main idea was to bring back some kind of feeling related to the experimentation with type which guys like Lubalin, Carnase and Di Spigna were doing with fonts and logotypes in New York during the 70s. It is a very personal, experimental project with no given brief. I was raised in the early 80s disco/synthpop era, and somehow have since very young been nostalgic about the transition of the 70s to the 80s. It may well be a personal preference but I just think those times were very important and full of breakthroughs, for both graphic design and music, although people are so used to nowadays standards that they simply don’t know what happened or have a pasteurized view of the era. This personal nostalgia thing obviously had a huge impact on FS Pimlico, which I wanted to be non-mainstream, exaggerated or kitsch sometimes. However, I also wanted to make it a usable and versatile family, so I tried to put some kind of overall contemporary feel to it. I wouldn’t say it is a retro-looking, 70s font but that it is a workhorse brushy sans-serif, something not very common to see in the type world nowadays.

Can you walk us through the process of designing FS Pimlico? Would you have early trials or sketches related to it?
I started it all with sketches of a very fat lowercase ‘a’, just for fun. Pimlico Black suddenly was born as a headline font, and I further developed an accompanying regular text weight and an intermediary bold, plus true italics, in order to make a usable system. After having the family completed, Jason (Smith) came up with the suggestion of making a version of the Black weight with shinny bits, in the same manner of classic dry-transfer fonts from the seventies such as Frankfurter Highlight and Glowworm. The result is a well-humored yet versatile family which travels through text and display possibilities and which can suit corporate identities, small publications and magazines, signage systems and so on.

How long did it take to make it?
I’ve been developing FS Pimlico in between several other Fontsmith jobs for about one year.

What was the last object you bought?
A comic book with a soundtrack by the French artist Mc Bess, called Malevolent Melody (yes, it comes with a small 7’’ vinyl at the end, containing songs composed by the author and his band, which ties nicely to the story of the comic book). Mc Bess’ unique illustration style, inspired by old cartoons, has always grabbed my attention. Here’s a video showing the comic book:

What are your favourite letters or numbers?
Apart from lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’, which in my opinion are the letters that individually matter the most in any font and make their personality visible, I like to design ampersands, sterling signs and also old style numbers. These are all characters in which you can try to put a personal touch more easily than in others.

Tell us a Font fact!
There are probably 10 times more pro type designers nowadays than 20 years ago. A great part of them are young and talented. The challenge for creating innovative fonts will increase more and more in the future, unfortunately!

What software do you use to manage your fonts?
I use only Fontlab on a Mac to design my fonts (well, sometimes Illustrator as well). And because I’m hardly producing any graphics lately, I have in my cpu just a few fonts installed directly into the Fonts folder, but back in the days when working as a graphic designer, I can remember using both Suitcase and Linotype FontExplorer as font managers.

What is the process of naming fonts at Fontsmith?
We try to imagine each of our fonts as a person (sometimes a place) with a certain character, which of course must relate to the character of the font. We have quite a lot of fun when it’s time to come up with the right name, but at the same time it is not an easy or instant thing, we ponder for weeks, sometimes months, to make a decision. It’s more or less like naming a baby, the name’s gotta be right!

I heard that you are a collector? What do you collect? Show us!
I never thought of myself as a proper collector, but I like to find old type books and specimens, vinyl records, toys, etc. I like to go to vinyl shops and find mainly old funk grooves and rare disco stuff. Because funk and disco became very underground when hip hop conquered pop music in the eighties, a lot of artists got forgotten, and it is kind of a nice thing to go to shops in London and dig for rare, non-mainstream stuff which you can’t find for sale in mp3. The album covers for rare stuff are frequently very interesting as well, sometimes with a lot of type experimentation, and it is very common that I buy a record just for its cover art and not for the music. Lately I suddenly realized I have also been building a collection of toy art. British toy artist James Jarvis’s funny characters are among my favourites lately.

We all like to procrastinate, what is your favourite way to avoid work?
Sometimes playing with my synthesizers, or maybe calling friends and going out for dinner, for a walk, or to a pub.  I’m not a person that stays at home watching TV, I am always avoiding rules and routines in my life. And I find London a perfect place for this kind of lifestyle.

You’ve studied Architecture. How does one morphs from being an architect which is working with massive scales to being a type designer working with tiny pixel perfect details. Not saying that architecture doesn’t involves detail nor typography cannot be at a large scale ;) what was your journey?
I did study architecture in university, but I never liked it that much. Although surrounded by very creative architect friends, I always thought architecture was something too technical and not creative or expressive enough for me (well, history of architecture will be always interesting). So I never worked for real with architecture but with graphic design before choosing to follow the type design path 5 years ago. I think architecture is a profession in which you have to work collectively all the time, not only with a team but with builders, electricians, etc, whereas with graphics or type, one person has more control over all the details. With type we have more authorship over our creations.

Mention a music track you are hooked on?
It helps me to listen to electronic music whilst working; it can be techno, house, electro, electrohouse and so on. It keeps me focused with the repetition of bleeps and synthlines, it’s more or less like getting transformed into a machine. I mention the track ‘Babaghanoush’ by Simian Mobile Disco, from their EP Extra Temporary (2010); that’s the kind of music I find perfect for kerning or for any other challenging design task.

What type of work are you interested to be working on next?
That’s a tricky one. Well it’s now a while that I haven’t been dealing with serif fonts. So I think it could be nice to come back to work on a serif project somehow.

Continue this Sentence with whatever you want:
“Monday morning Jeremy the rabbit woke up on an old couch in the middle of a warehouse…
Ludvig:
…He looked down on his feet and noticed that the nail on his left big toe had gotten a scratch. Confused and hangover he drag his half dead body out off the couch and set sails for the kitchen. After this exhausting trip with head banging flashbacks from his brilliant childhood he finally arrived. He opened a bottle of milk. He drank milk. The sense of something frightening was approaching. It’s zombies everywhere! Run bitch! Run!
Fernando:
Before he could reach the kitchen window to escape he felt someone grabbing his right leg. To his surprise it was a hot zombie woman, dressed in her summer pijamas. He felt attracted for her for a fraction of second, but managed to recover his senses on time and break the bottle of milk over her head. He could then reach the window and was now outside of the warehouse and relieved he couldn’t see any zombies anymore. He was in a green garden and felt good he could breathe some fresh air and see butterflies and birds singing. All of a sudden his good old friend Armando the guinea pig came out of nowhere running in his direction with a box in his hands and said he had something to show him. When he opened the box, all Jeremy could say was ‘Oh no Armando! What have you done??’
to be continued…

Thank you for letting us into your world. Who would you like to see us interview next?
Well, the as mentioned toy artist and illustrator James Jarvis could be a good pick!

Fernando Mello from Fontsmith
Twitter: @Fontsmith