As a designer, no matter how long you’ve been in the industry you’re constantly learning new things. As trends change and software develops, you find yourself coming across new techniques and things you’re stronger at than others. These things are not necessarily a weakness but there’s always some things that you could improve on – mine is fonts.

Before working at Superfly, a whole year ago now, I had never really explored the do’s and don’ts with fonts. I remember at University, as we created letters using the contents of teabags, biscuits and quavers, typography was never something I enjoyed. Maybe it was that which stopped me being interested in learning more about typefaces, I don’t know, but I never really understood the importance and the impact letters can have on a design.

I have a long way to go with fonts, it’s something I feel I do really need to look into more and develop on, that is why I started to explore monogram logos a couple of weeks ago now. I found it interesting how you can combine characters so effectively and produce very simple but eye catching designs. Okay, so I wasn’t learning about existing fonts and how designers have a tendency to hate Comic Sans, but it was giving me ideas and inspiration to create my own.

       
I began by drawing out a few designs that I found online, just to explore various techniques and how different letters can be combined. From these I then chose my favourites and imported the designs into Illustrator. I chose a few different styles to help with my development and then recreated them as vectors, the same as what I’d do if I was creating them for a logo.

Working on these designs showed me that there’s more to fonts than teabags and quavers and that they can be really interesting to work with. The possibilities of what you can create with type are just as endless as any other form of design and I’m starting to understand just how important they are.

No one is ever perfect at everything in design and it’s about identifying your weaknesses and working on them. It’s not a bad thing to admit that you’re not good at everything.

Let us know below what design elements you struggle with the most, your pet hates within design or how you’ve managed to overcome obstacles in the past.