The Right Questions with James Victore
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The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 86: Two Type Nerds Geeking Out. Charles Nix
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Most people think creativity is about talent and inspiration.
We don’t. Creativity shows up as obsession, rebellion, and a strangely tuned attention to tiny details and Charles Nix is the perfect guide for that. Charles grew up with a real offset printing press in his basement, went on to teach typography for decades (including leading communication design at Parsons), and now serves as Senior Executive Creative Director at Monotype. Two type nerds, one deep rabbit hole.
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Why Creativity Starts With Obsession
SPEAKER_00The best interviews about creativity are not really about creativity. They're about obsession. They're about hunger and rebellion and identity and seeing the world differently. In this week's podcast, I talk with Charles Nick. Charles is the son of a printer. I love saying that. Son of a printer. That's my new expression. Son of a printer. He's the son of a printer, a designer, typographer, and educator with a lifelong passion for type. Charles taught typography for over two decades as the chair of communication design at Parsons and is currently the senior executive creative director for Monotype. Charles and I share a lot of history, and it was a joy to reminisce and also to think about the future with Charles. So I present to you two type nerds talking about what they love. Here we go. It is my pleasure, James. You know, I'm glad we bumped into each other at uh at that uh South by Southwest um dinner, which was very fancy, by the way.
SPEAKER_02It was super fancy, and the level of conversation uh always makes me feel way out of my depth.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I I love being the dumbest person in the room. Yeah, that's the room. Um, Charles, I'm gonna I'm gonna begin like I begin
A Printing Press In The Basement
SPEAKER_00every um interview. Um, and I think I know part of the answer. What made you weird as a kid?
SPEAKER_02What made me weird as a kid? Do you want the real answer? Or I'll give you uh I'll give you a real answer, but not probably not the deeper answer. Um the thing that made me weirdest as a kid is that we had a printing press in my in my basement, like a real printing press, like an offset lithograph machine that um my father, when he would come home from work, would begin manning a second press. So he worked as a pressman all day long and then come home and work as a pressman in the evening doing stuff for like local block club organizations and the local churches. And so we we had printing around us and the smell of ink in our house from my earliest memories.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, excellent. What's the what's the other part of that answer?
SPEAKER_02Uh the other part of that answer is the because that's an outside source. I grew up in uh in a large Catholic family in Akron, Ohio, and there were six of us, so sort of very brady bunch. Um and we didn't have they weren't three from two separate marriages, but um, but yeah, my oldest oldest sister Peggy and my older sister Molly are uh the the the three of us made up the olds, and the youngers were uh Jenny, Freddie, and Michael. And they still are. Um Molly is developmentally disabled. So from a from a very early age, I was sort of that was a big part of my sort of formative experience of the world. Um and it it's a big part of my worldview um of how we are here not just for ourselves and to sort of like claw at the top, but to sort of keep everyone who is not able to fend for themselves front of mind.
SPEAKER_00What a beautiful answer. That's the truth. I knew about the I knew about the the the the printing press um that your dad had. That's that's freaking fantastic. Um and obviously informs a lot of your love of printing and design
Learning Craft Before Computers
SPEAKER_00and typography. Uh we share, we share a lot of history, kind of a kind of a kind of a similar upbringing, you know, the New York scene and um um graphic designers, very similar, um, very close generationally, uh, you know, doing work uh I think just before uh computers came in in the scene.
SPEAKER_02I've been thinking about that a lot lately as we sort of confront this sort of agentic design wave that's about to crash on the shore here. That um there are so many parallels um and so many sort of unknowns, but so many sort of parallels with the way that that transition from mechanicals to to digital took place in our lives. Like it was we were we I think you and I were both well formed enough as designers that we had done mechanicals boards and sort of lived at that pace of design. Um, and then suddenly being the age that we were when it arrived, um, it was so easy to adapt because you know, people in their early 20s adapt really well to things. Like it's it's just uh the realities of of of the work are not so fixed, the sort of realities of the craft are not so sort of deeply ingrained that you can't adjust to a new reality right away. I think at this stage in my life, if I was confronted with the same thing, I might be a little more sort of hesitant about it, but I took to it like a duck to water.
SPEAKER_00Um, I often think about that period uh in my own life. And what I what I think about is how blessed I was to have learned all the crafts and skills. If I needed a dingbat, I made a dingbat. If I needed a particular typeface, I made a particular typeface. Um and I I was kind of um reared in a design studio. Um, I don't know if you ever knew of this character, um Paul Bacon, who's a uh a book jacket designer. Um, and his work, he did all of Joseph Heller's work, all of James Clavell's work, all of Robert Ludlam's stuff that became all the Born Identity series. Um you go to an antique bookstore and it's just like full of you know Paul Bacon's work. He did Jaws that became the movie poster and Cuckoo's Nest that became the movie poster. Wow. Um a real genius. He could, he could, he could paint like God in like small gouache watercolors. Um, and he was a um um hand lettering expert. Like there was nothing he couldn't do. So I I love that I grew up in that place. Um and then, you know, and then of course uh I try to carry those skills on, you know, today. Um so I think I think you and I both have a have a certain relish for that that ability, and I think that stuff helps us today, even definitely. Um so I think both of us were basically born to do what we love. Yes. Um, you know, were there were there besides besides it being kind of bred in the family, were there um I do for a living early on?
SPEAKER_02Um when you know, despite the fact that as Ellen Lepton said, I was born with a silver typographic
Running From Type Then Returning
SPEAKER_02spoon in my mouth. Um and you know, it's no joke that UNLC was on the coffee table when I was in grade school. Like it was, it's true, all that stuff was around there. Um, but the my Aunt Claudia, who I admired so much because she was so talented as a as an artist, um was more of the sort of traditional like draw and paint kind of artist. And the my formative influences in in high school weren't necessarily around graphic design, but more about art and drawing. So drawing and painting, a little bit of sculpture. Um there was a constant sort of pull because I had the ability to to make letter forms and to sort of you know sign paint and stuff like that as a as a youngster. But when I left home and from Akron at age 17 to go to New York, um I was bound and determined to go study painting and drawing at at um Cooper Union. But my first job as a as a work study student was in the Center for Design and Typography. So, I mean, the more I sort of ran away from it, the more it sort of pulled me back in. Um, and the allure of letters was, you know, it was there from from when I was a little kid, um, you know, mostly from my mom's handwriting, but from you know, obviously from UNLC magazine, inland printer, and sort of the press type that was all over the house. Um so yeah, you can run from those things, but ultimately once I found out that there were people who were typographers as professionals, I was the die was cast. I was like, okay, I could do that. That's a thing. Like I didn't realize that people actually did that. So I was so excited when I'm when I met uh William Bevington and George Sodek um at Cooper Union because and James Craig too. Um, they really showed me that this was something that adults did, that you know, wasn't just sort of like some sort of weird uh arrival from some sort of weird craft corner of the the universe, that these were practicing professionals who did typography at a high level as as adults. That was their career. And it made me super excited and um like I found my place.
SPEAKER_00Um oftentimes um us as creatives early on, we are um there's a lot of slapping our wrists, a lot of you know, being too much, you know, being too loud, being too boisterous, being too, you know, just too much. I got a lot, a lot of that when I was a kid. Um, were you the kind of kid who um, you know, did your obsession uh or creativity ever ever um cross that border?
SPEAKER_02I think um I think I was more in the in the environment that I grew up in, I was more like the sort of um the odd bird in the nest. And so they sort of in retrospect took care of me and sort of carved a path around me, um, rather than sort of um chastising me for for what I really love to do. So one of my this is it's so indicative when you think of it later, it's just so ridiculous
Childhood Proofs Of A Designer
SPEAKER_02at the time, it just seemed part of the fabric of of my life, as these things are. Um, but in seventh grade, the the school teacher, um, Mr. Becker, um it's my seventh grade teacher, said, uh, you know, you're better at this than I am, so why don't you just teach art class? And so I did this um graphic reduction um project with the students in my seventh grade class. So it was taking a photograph, reducing it to black and white form, and then using a typewriter to make ASCII art of the high the high contrast image. So um talk about hilarious. Like I had come up with the project on my own, it was just something that I did in my spare time. Um, but I was like, sure, I think I can use this for them. They're not gonna be able to paint a bird or something. Like, might have them do something that's more in my wheelhouse. So yeah. So that's the kind of sort of uh rather than them sort of saying, um, would you stop drawing on everything um and stop drawing on your your classmates' notebooks, stop drawing on everyone's um book covers, they said there's some there's gotta be some way we can channel this for this child. Um and you know, I was always a good enough student that they didn't really worry about my um worry about my grades or my academics, but um never sort of ambitious enough in my academics to that they were going to pluck me out and put me into Harvard. I always had like, well, it's you know, it's the work that you're requiring me to do, I'll do it well. But my real passion here is actually painting and drawing.
SPEAKER_00I was thinking this morning, um, up early and making some notes um about talking to you, and all I was just flooded with with my own memories. And one story I've never told people, a very early indicative of being a designer. Uh, I think, uh, at least in my case, was uh when I was a kid, uh my mother would take me shopping with her, and we would go into dress stores, and I was short enough that I could walk underneath, go, you know, underneath all the dresses, or you know, go into the the middle of the carousel of clothes. And I was a um collector and a curator. And I would pull the labels. They might have been red, they might have had some typography, there might have been something. There was something that I was attracted to. And so I would pull all these labels and we'd, you know, we would leave the store, and my mother made a purchase, or she didn't, and we'd leave the store, and she'd notice that I've got this, I'm clutching this handful of designer labels, and she would just look down and go, Oh, Jimmy.
SPEAKER_02I, you know, it's funny, I I would like like throughout my throughout my teens and twenties, I would I would grab pieces like real fragments, like bits of ephemera, that just struck me as compositionally so perfect in their sort of miniatureness that um that where it's just like you know, a fraction of a of a piece of a letter form and you know, deeply letter pressed onto a parking ticket that's on a blue, you know, a blue uh baby blue background, where it's just like it's so there's something so sort of perfect about this little thing. And I have I still have a case full of them. And you know, they informed some of the the work that I did as a as a book jacket designer. Um, and they definitely informed my our uh wedding invitations. Um, but I've yeah, I've it's it's probably like a recurring theme of my of my sort of adult life that there is so much um to borrow uh uh Elvis Costello's thing, so much useless beauty, so much of it. Like there's just like it's hard to walk through the the world with the visual acuity that you have or that I have and not just be overwhelmed by these moments of perfection that exist yeah in the spaces between the things that are supposed to be beautiful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. My um I I I um you have a you have a um one boy.
SPEAKER_02I have a boy and a girl. My boy just turned 16 and my daughter is 11.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. My son is um 11 and my daughter is about to turn nine, and they are why you know they're they're they're children, so they're wildly creative, but um, and they know me to be pedantic, meaning I'm always we we walk around and I'm always pointing things out, and I'm saying, oh my god, I take them for walks in the woods, and I'm like, oh my god, look at this. And I spoke to I we just this morning, or no, not just last night, we were watching a um um we don't they don't have iPads, they don't do anything on the computer except at school. Um, but we do have movie night occasionally, and um I'm often stopping the movie, going, pointing something out. It might be a social cultural moment, or it might be, yes, it might be a visual, or it might be go, oh my god, look at these titles, you know, that kind of thing. And what's funny because I stopped and I I said, Oh, why, why, why, stop the movie, stop. And and I said, Hey guys, by the way, I've realized I've stopped movies a lot for you, and I'm I don't want to ruin the movie for them, you know, for you. And they were like, Oh, no, we like it when you do because we understand it better. And I was like, Oh, fuck me.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's hard you do it so naturally, like it just sort of you can't help yourself but do it. But then that sort of I mean, this is the great thing about raising children is that you are then helping them sort of understand how to make sense of the craziness that is life. Like that's it's a beautiful thing when they suddenly they suddenly accept that your superpower is not just your weirdness. It's a way of sort of framing the world. It's great.
SPEAKER_00Um, earlier you were talking about the bits
Finding History Without A Canon
SPEAKER_00and bobs that we collect. Are there are there historically um a handful of pieces that just hit you emotionally when you were when you were starting out? Like other people?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I so I talk about this with my friend um Jan, who I I walk with regularly, um, usually run with, but yeah, I'm in sort of that in-between phase, that trough while I wait for the surgery to take place and then heal from it. But we um we have known each other for since we were at college, so a long time now, decades. Um, so the conversation is very shorthand. But when we first started hanging out together, it was a time in New York City and the tri-state area where there was no internet, and you could drive to a used and antiquarian bookstore and um and go through the shelves and find absolute um gems, the bacon work that you're talking about, but also for me, Dwiggins, Bradbury Thompson, all Rand to a lesser degree, but Brad Thompson and Dwiggins to me had this sort of there was something in their aesthetic and Dwiggins' craft that um and his ability to sort of move between sort of hard edge typography, um forward lettering, and then really beautiful illustration, all sort of um layered with a sort of hyper-unique color sense. Um that stuff really that stuff really informed a lot of how I sort of picked and um picked and poked around the edges of what design would be for me.
SPEAKER_00Um I was talking with some students recently, and I can't have those conversations with them. I can't talk about even, you know, Paul Rand, because they don't know it. And when we were when you and I were growing up, there was one book. Right? And you memorized it pretty much. I mean, from it was one, there was one book, and it had to everybody, and it was the you know, the history of graphic design. Um, and I'm I forgot his name. I met him, I met him eggs. Phil Mags. I met him at the end of the life, and it and actually got into his second edition, luckily. Um, but um, we don't have that anymore. And I don't know if that loss of history um is a good thing or a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean a vacillate because it's there's it's a reality, like the everything is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The you know that what was for us, I think, as as designers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, sort of the grab bag of history was it was clear what the canon was because it was it was still so new as a as a thing, and Megs really codified it. Um that when you found something outside of that canon, it was like discovering something, something truly novel, like doesn't exist in Megs. Um, but now everything is everywhere. Like um, and what I you know, what I realized early on when back to the the introduction of the Macintosh, the Macintosh saved me so much time from my sort of stupid, not stupid, I shouldn't say that, from my regular job of sort of doing rectilinear layout, that I was like, I can get all the work done by noon and then go spend the time in the library. So I read everything on typography in the Cooper Union Library um in the afternoons when I was a uh uh uh designer there, um, because there was so much free time. And so I realized in doing that that every book itself, including Meg's, but especially Meg's, but every book that you read on typography was a signpost to five other books on typography. So you would slowly sort of begin to map out the the history from you know from sources that would point to other sources. Um uh you know the the web sort of made everything completely connected, like hyperlinked, but the the sort of what's missing is the sort of uh signage system. Like, I mean, and I suppose that's that's us as instructors, it's us, it's the you know, it's the role of design criticism or design history to sort of offer those signs up to people. But it was it was a clear landscape then with with clear
When Templates Make Style Numb
SPEAKER_02clear indicators of where to go next to find out more.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm going to read a quote by you from your Instagram. I just want you to clarify it. For me, my own education. Um, you said style is dead, long live style. Style for style's sake has left us numb. Charming templates, infinite scrolls of dopamine beauty, samey branding everywhere you look. When everything dazzles, nothing sticks. Talk to me about that.
SPEAKER_02So there is this, you know, this sort of promise that everyone in this templated design economy can be a designer. But I think that what it does actually is turn everyone into an art director. Um, because design is the sort of understanding what the problem is, sort of like imagining all of the sort of experience and um work that you've done in the past, all that you've seen, and then trying desperately to push something new into being, like to sort of re reframe enough that you can actually find a new way of saying something visually. Um I think, especially with on the on at the sort of doorstep of agentic uh design systems, that we're going to see the level of average design raised to a degree that looks incredible by yesterday's standards. Um, yesterday's standards where it was really difficult to get those things. Um so that means like that the when the floor raises and the ceiling stays the same place, that it just pushes out dramatically and either either it's sort of an endless horizon of of you know of sameness, um, all of a degree that looks professional, um, but that then calls into question what professional is. Um and so designers are the sand in that gear system. Like we true designers are just going to sort of say, like, well, if this is what good looks like, then we need to find another definition of good. Um, we need for ourselves, um, and for you know, for culture, for whatever, just to keep things moving forward, because that is our sort of way of framing the world in order to make sense of our existence. It is that once everything becomes so good, you have to sort of keep climbing, keep keep flashing, keep sort of grinding things up and and looking for something new. Um, the experimentation, as much as it's it's it's inefficient, is the sort of the reason. It's the work itself, not the end product. Um, so I mean, I don't think I've made it clearer than what I wrote on Instagram, but I think that was my last post on Instagram before I just sort of said, like, I'm done with this. I can't, because I was seeing in Instagram precisely what I was seeing in the in the Brando sphere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Um, what does bad typography reveal about a uh a culture?
SPEAKER_02Bad typography reveals about a culture, precisely what it reveals about an individual or a company or a brand that um that there is a lack of understanding of how all of the details add up to the overall the quality. So, like if you if an ad has really great display typography, but then the text typography is garbage, um, it sort of is an indicator that somebody cares about the big things but is not paying attention to the details. So it's a very frank way of interpreting it. Yeah. But I think writ large, like if you if if a culture doesn't care about typography, then they're not they're not keeping their eye on the totality of the presentation. And nobody sees everything. Like, you know, you and I both described looking at landscapes and picking out things like you know, the flit of a goldfinch is something that's in hyper contrast to the totality of nature. We can't see everything. Um, but we notice when things are off, and we can't, even if we can't put our fingers on it. Um, and I think that's what bad typography reveals is that somebody's not paying attention to the details.
Mentorship Offer And Free Call
SPEAKER_00Right now, you're thinking, oh man, I wish James Victory could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to your work is a gift.com. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration. Let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to your workisagift.com. Let's talk.
Typography Speaks Before Words
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um you have said before the about typography there were three facets of it. It's the making of the type, the um the usage of the type, and the reading. Um what does type what does typography uh communicate before language even begins?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I've been thinking about this a lot. I just read this book called uh 32 Words for a Field, which is about the Irish language. Um I just finished it. It took me too long to finish it. Um, but I finished it in uh in a uh spate at the end where I just sort of like plowed through the last part of it. I was like, why did I wait so long to read this book? Because it sort of talks about the the the sort of it talks about the Irish language and sort of peculiarities and specificity of the Irish language, but also about the the desire of a language to capture the sound quality, and that that that there are within within the idea of incantations these sort of sounds that have that have meaning beyond their meaning, um, that just the the the sort of like pre-almost pre-language language, um, that the way that it it strikes your ear, even if it doesn't mean the thing to you that it means to me, um, will carry the meaning. I think typography is that sort of there is a visual language of typography that in its sort of most charismatic moments, like in display typography, the largest type, um, actually reads before the language itself. Um, that we see it and it says something. I mean, this is a great example of typography reading before the language. Like I know what it means before I before I actually read it. Um, I'm sorry, we're on a podcast and I just showed it. Pegged to my wall here. Um, yeah, it's that I think that I know it made me that book made me immediately want to go and make things typographically that were as purely visual as they could possibly be. Um almost, and initially I thought, oh, and this was only two days ago. Um, initially I thought of in a traditional typographic or design designer's sort of contrarian way of like, what if the words were different than what the the visual form was? What if it was like precisely meant to be the opposite thing? And how precise could I get in making something that was the opposite in its meaning to its form? Um, but to me, that's the it's the richest territory. It's like what there's a variability of the language itself. Like we never know precisely as designers which language is going to be given to us, thus we choose it ourselves. Um, but then when you cloak it in something, when you clothe it in in typography, it becomes something completely different. It become serious, it can become more sort of um scary, it can become less serious. Um, I that part I really I really love, and I don't have a complete atlas for it, um, which is sort of my my life's desire would be to have a somebody tell me this does this to this language. But it's so variable that that the sort of experimentation of design really keeps it keeps it vital, keeps me at it, keeps all of us at it.
SPEAKER_00Uh you're making me think of a particular point in my career, uh, back when the in the Paul Bacon days. So I was in my, it was like early 20s. Um there were um these fantastic type selection books from the different typehouses. Tall, two-inch thick spines, tall vertical books, and they were specimen books, and they would, they would just they would go from serif all the way through to sans serif, and it was just like every line would be slightly different, a different face, different face, different face. And I remember the phase of mine, and I would started as a book jacket designer as well. I remember that phase of looking for the right font, and I would spend hours going through is it this? Is it Torino or is it Badoni or is it right? And but I got to a point and I was like, wait a minute, I feel that this is useless. Because now what I'm doing is I'm allowing the font to depict. Like, um, I went to the monotype site today, and there was some typeface that was like, it basically said, This typeface says fun. And I'm like, no, no, don't allow that. You fucking make it fun by how you use it, you know. It's like it's like I think a good designer can use Hellvetica and make it say a number of different things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree. I mean, I agree. I was sort of I want there to be a um a concordance that sort of says this typeface is fun. Um, but you know, I think one of one of my students when I was really young as a teacher um brought in uh uh you know eight by eight composition, I think it said happiness in Helvetica. And it to me at the time, I was like, what's happy about it? And she's like, look at it. I was like, well, I think when you when you put it that way, it actually is true. It says happiness, uh it says it in the most blank way possible. Um and that that sort of intersection of that word and that typeface um was the sort of discovery, was the sort of she unlocked it.
Teaching Taste Without Teaching Taste
SPEAKER_00Uh you are, I think, also at like me, also at heart, a teacher. Um and you teach at a couple different places right now.
SPEAKER_02Right now, I I I teach, I have not taught for a year. Last year I did a stint as uh at SVA um in a branding with type course with a whole star-studded cast of um amazing people um put together by um Joe Newton and Mateo Bologna. Um and that has been my only teaching beyond sort of like trying to wrangle the 1,000 people of monotype to understand more the value of what it is that we sell. Um I've I left teaching about the time my my second child was born, um, because it was just as much as I loved it, um, I loved spending time with them so much more. Um and so yeah, I haven't been back. And I I had also this sort of feeling that um that teaching is, despite all sort of reports to the contrary, that teaching is a young person's game. Um because it it because of the role of metaphor and simile in teaching, um, that the references have to be, there's a sort of sweet spot where you have where there's shared references that you know, whether it's pop culture or the depth of their their education, where those things sort of like overlap with one another, um, that makes it particularly potent. Um, and then as I was getting older, I was the frame of my frame of reference, the sort of things that I would toss off as sort of we all know about these things, right? Um were becoming less and less things that we all knew about and more things that I knew about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I particularly remember that period when I left teaching at SVA because I was there for I don't know, almost 18 years, and I remember like being like like a comedian on stage, right? Anyone, anyone, anyone? What do you mean you don't get my Simpsons reference? Like my Stanley Kubrick joke.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think what happened after that was that it forced me more to become more sort of um direct about the formal aspects of my critique. So um I would say less this is like this, or this is like this, and more. Um, could you could you stare at this and see what I'm seeing here? Like that these two letters are too close together, or that if you if you reduced these five elements to three, you'd probably stand a better chance of success of organizing this space, like really getting into much more sort of uh brass tacks formalist um critique, and then let it expand back out from there into something like you know, let them tell me what the simile or metaphor is.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that that level of uh taste is teachable?
SPEAKER_02No, um, but it's like teaching itself. Like, I don't know how much of what's in your head or my head is transferable to another person directly. Um, but the inspiration for them to try and create something of their own um is I mean, that to me was the juice. Like by the time I taught for 10 years, I'd seen so many of those same solutions to problems that you need to end up changing the problems themselves, and people still wander into the same same solution parlor that they were in before. Um and it's not that they're going to create something completely new. Um, it's that they're going to try to create something completely new. And if you could get them to do that, to try and sort of change the way that they see things or to look closer at things, then you then you win because they will become a better version of what they were when they sort of arrived. I always said this thing like you get 15 students on average in a in most college uh design courses, and one of them would fail, and it's just like nothing you could do about it. Like somebody just sort of and uh they why they were there to begin with is is the mystery. Um, but they would inevitably just sort of either fail out by not showing up to class or just by just not doing the work. Um and then one would be so good that you would just be like, What are you doing here? Like, what why am I your teacher? Like, um, just keep doing you, and then everyone in the middle um was who I was teaching to, like really trying to get the C's to be B's and the B's to be A's, like get them to see um to see the choices that they were making um as conscious choices and to continue sort of pushing it further. Um so yeah, I do miss it. Obviously, I miss it. You can tell by the way I'm talking about it.
SPEAKER_00I I I freaking love teaching. Um and I and I love teaching, meaning I love turning people on to themselves and their powers. That's a fantastic uh such a fucking great job.
Monotype And The Company As Project
SPEAKER_00Um, what is it like stewarding? Let's talk about monotype for a little bit. Um, what is it like stewarding typography inside of, dare I say, a giant global corporation?
SPEAKER_02It is a giant global corporation. Um and you know, stewarding anything at that scale is just sort of, I mean, it's almost a pipe dream. There are teams of people inside of Monotype that have lots of different different roles, like big chunks of people doing things like you know, foundry um foundry management, um, which is like how many typefaces do you have in the in the library? Um, where do they come from? Um, what are you looking at um acquiring next? What's missing in terms of tone of voice and in type, um, and managing the the relationships with all the independent foundries that make up the sort of totality of that nearly half a million fonts. Um, then there's the group of people who are involved in engineering and designing and project managing around fonts, um, and those you know, custom or modified fonts, like special expressions of typography for for brands or for companies. Um then there's an entire group that I'm a part of, which is about the relationships with creative teams um and design teams at the largest companies on the planet. Yeah. Um, and at that scale, the it's a level of abstraction around typography that um takes a while to sort of get your head around, which is that it is not the typography that is the project. It's not the typeface that's the project. The company itself is the project, their relation to typography, their relation to creativity, their relation to the way that um type flows from that designer to that audience through all of the crazy multiplicitous machinations of these mass magnificently large global companies, like helping them sort of unpack that for themselves, like trying to understand it yourself, but also treating them in that sort of way of that you would treat a design problem, which is to say, like, what is the problem? Is the problem as stated, the actual problem? How do we reframe it? Um, what are the components of this problem? Like, um, and really like trying to improve the overall sort of typographic um ethos of a company or ecosystem of a company by treating the company itself as a design problem. So it's great because I get to go talk to really interesting people at really cool companies um all over the planet. Um, but like I said, it's a level of abstraction from from what I entered the profession doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, here's an oddball question. Um, and this has been coming up a lot in my life dealing with designers right now, the uh especially because of the you know AI coming into view. Um when I was at SVA, there was always the a conversation with a student or a group of students they would say, you know, my my parents don't know what I do for a living. And of course I would say, okay, but have you sat down and have you educated them? Have you told them what it means to you? Have you given them examples of the work and the power that we have? And um do corporations understand like that, or is do we need to do we is that your job to kind of go to understand?
SPEAKER_02I mean, every corporation is those children's parents.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And I mean, these are families that are you know 50,000 strong in some cases, so like you know, it's it as I as I am quick to point out uh anyone who gets involved in this sort of level of work, there's like there's connections, like you must make multiple levels of connection to any of these sort of large organizations. You have to set up a regular cadence with them, so it's not like you meet them once a year, you're trying to meet them as regularly as possible and on as many levels as possible. And then there's the sort of um rapport factor or trust factor that is the hardest of all things, which is that conversation with the parents to sort of say, like, all right, I'm gonna try and explain this to you in a way that um that resonates with what you do because I realize your concerns and my concerns are not parallel. Um, but what I do can help you pretty dramatically. Um What I do is actually a big part of your life, whether you recognize it or not. And I'm going to walk you through how deeply ingrained what it is I do as a typographer and what we do as a typographic company is in the work that you do as a consumer products group. Like that uh to me, that's sort of I I find that sort of almost um sparkly or effervescent, sort of this idea of like a level of abstraction that's almost inconceivable, but you have to conceive of it. That's your job. Um so I think that um yeah, a lot of it is sort of explaining to various sort of facets of these large organizations what it is that is valuable about typography. And it's easy to fall back on the sort of optimization of processes and like the the sort of functional aspects of typography. It does this with your message, it carries it this way. It's harder to sort of get to that sort of charismatic level of typography and say, this is one of the key details in the way that people either trust or don't trust what it is that you're saying. Um and they see when it falls apart, but you might not be able to if you don't, if you're not sort of paying attention to the details that are crucial to its success. Um, yeah. So yeah, long one.
SPEAKER_00I think I think whether you're talking typography or color or um a number of different aspects of our work, there is there are so many subliminals. There are so many subliminal messages that you know that that people have to read into these things. I d I rely heavily, heavily. My work has become so spartan that I need everything that's on the page needs to, you know, needs to carry its fucking weight, right? Um does uh commerce at that level does commerce uh make typography, I don't know, safer depending on the vertical.
SPEAKER_02Like, you know, I was looking at looking at these these cake mix pack cake mix packages over the over the weekend, and the typography is bizarre. It's like I mean, I find it so sort of like in the sort of true Andy Warhole, what's going on on this Campbell soup can like level of wonder. Like, who made that decision? Like, I'm glad you did. It's really weird, and I would never have chosen that. But um, but like to sort of uh look at it and sort of take it apart and sort of say, like, okay, what happens, what happens when you when you change this?
SPEAKER_01I it's right in front of me right now, actually.
SPEAKER_02Um the it's super exciting on on that sort of bizarre shaping culture through commerce level. Um, there are places though, like in finance, where you have to fall back on the idea that functional typography can be its own sort of microcosm of interest, and that you know, doing something really truly pedantic well in that circumstance is the name of the job. That is the name of success. So it's it's there's far less sort of charismatic interest in that kind of thing, and more um, more just sort of like the functional aspect of typography executed well is its own sort of transcendent craft um and expression.
Craft Under AI And Speed Pressure
SPEAKER_00Do you do you uh do you feel like you have to defend speaking of craft, do you feel like you have to defend craft in a kind of our speed-driven culture?
SPEAKER_02Um I am in the midst of sort of thinking through what the what craft what happens to craft in the next sort of iteration of technology. Because it's already when we forget that how much craft when we you and I don't forget, because we knew people who actually did photo retouching. They had an office and they retouched photos in that office. Um negative corner. Yeah, yeah. And people who would uh people who would set types. So there were typesetters that that I mean, many typesetters in New York, um, and they were people who worked either in an office or individually, and they would set your type for them, and you would get your type from them. The compression of that craft into what we what we came to practice in the 90s as desktop publishing um is was dramatic. We lost a lot of sort of institutional knowledge or craft knowledge um around um around these sort of component parts because they were specialists. Um imagine that minus the desktop publishing, like the compression of craft um when even the sort of ideation and prompting becomes identified, um one really yeah, one will really have to struggle to sort of promote the idea of craft. And initially it's going to be you know the craft of cleaning up slop. Um which is you know the craft of a mob. I mean editing a piece is much harder than writing a piece. Oh lord, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I um do we you have to defend craft a lot? Yeah, it's uh some people see it, some people don't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um here's an odd question.
Courage And The Questions That Matter
SPEAKER_00What does courage look like in the typographic sphere?
SPEAKER_02Courage is yeah, it's the ability to sort of not do what has been done before. Um that's I mean, and again, I even said this morning I was talking about this is sort of bifurcated. Typography is charismatic typography, the stuff we can all see and we pay attention to the the details of because it's large enough to be in our face and allow us to see the way that you know the type is behaving. Um, and then there's the typography that's that's functional, the sort of text and um microtypography. Um it is courage is sort of knowing what is right and not and choosing to do what is different because that's what moves culture forward. Um that you know, more of the same will not sort of will not sort of be an expression of who you are or where where we need to go to collectively. Like it will just be more of the same. Um, so I yeah, I think it is the sort of the the sort of first the desire and second the ability to sort of push into some new territory. Um yeah, and it's mostly well, I mean desire without talent is not a good thing. Um, but it that desires that desire is the courage. I think that is the sort of that is each of us as designers or as artists sort of saying, um, I believe that there are new ways of framing reality out there, um, and that they make life worth living. Um and that is the that's the courage of typography as a sort of subset of the courage of design as a subset of the courage of the artistic endeavor.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Um are there things that um are your thoughts or views on creativity? Have they changed since you were 25?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, pretty dramatically. Um I think I was very much about the in my teen years, my early teen years, when like say like even like 10 to 20, um, maybe sort of overly um enthusiastic about the formal aspect of things, like things that looked cool. Um and you know, the culture was was crazy alive at that time in terms of I mean music culture, especially, um, late 70s, early 80s. Um and so seeing things and not understanding how they came to be um was not a concern to me. Like I was just I just wanted the things themselves. And I think once I once I started doing it for myself, um, I realized that so much of the form was an outgrowth of the of the process. Um and then I think later it sort of matured into that idea of of the of your last question, more about courage. Like, do you have the the desire to to go further than than you did before? Now that you know how to theorize and reframe, where do you can you go some other place with it? Can you can you do something that scares yourself?
SPEAKER_00That's a good place to be. Um this uh this podcast I called uh the right questions, because I feel like the um the right questions lead to uh deeper truths, right? Um so what do you think the right question uh designers should be asking themselves right now is I sort of I'm right now I am um so last night I woke up at 1 a.m.
SPEAKER_02in the morning. I had the just the most awful dream. Um and it's because I ate too much too much salty food during the day and went to bed reading um reading this book by Ernest Becker called The Denial of Death. And so a lot of my thoughts lately have been around like what um the sort of horns of the day, what it is to be born, what it is to die, um, and whether what we're doing um has enough meaning, not for the world, but for us to sort of um to um to carry on with what we do. Um and so I think the the question the that we have to ask ourselves as designers is whether there is enough art in what we do in order to call it creativity. Um like we have a requisite level of craft. Um, we sort of go through the the sort of motions that help us arrive at the end product, and we sort of ritualize those in a way that sort of allows us to have a job and believe that one day is bound to the next. Um, but it is that um it is our duty, I think, to ourselves, um, which will manifest itself in the work that we do for others, um, to ask whether um whether we are being creative.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Um Charles, I wish I wish more people could hear you. I wish that your your your softness and your senses and your spirit and your love of craft and art and design and type um um could reach more people. I appreciate your this delightful conversation. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, James. Um, and I'm so pleased to have reconnected with you after so long. Um as I as I as I boyishly sort of admitted, even at my advanced age in a sort of blushy way, um, when we last met each other, I was so in awe of your your creativity and verve that I felt a sort of um a sense of not unworthiness, but sort of like like I was afraid of you. Um but to meet you now um and to to talk to you, I realized what a sort of what a genuine creative um um I don't know, signpost, light post, light, light, lighthouse, like beacon you are. You um you embody through the work that you do and through the um through the person you are, um I think the the best ideal of what it means to be a creative courageous creative.
SPEAKER_00Oh well, now you now you're just making me blush.
SPEAKER_02Well, that was not intended just to do that, but I agree with you completely.
SPEAKER_00Good, good. Uh Charles, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, James. Okay, we'll
Limits Versus Freedom With Fonts
SPEAKER_00cut it there. Dude, you're so kind and so generous and so sweet. I could wax philosophical. We I could I could go back and talk about the you know the early New York days forever with you. Um and I'm not one of those guys.
SPEAKER_02I'm not like you know, uh a glory day guy, but you don't suffer from nostalgia, no.
SPEAKER_00But I but I no, but I but I really that that period was very important to me. And um, you know, even even you know, one of the questions I wanted to ask was about um what would you suggest for someone who um likes, you know, I I rarely add on another font unless there's something particular, very, very particular that I need. But you know, I like um limitations, I like restrictions in my work. I I I create restrictions in my work, you know. I still make stickers with Cooper Black. You know, one because it exists, two, because individually they are beautiful, and three, because designers generally hate it.
SPEAKER_02Hi designers. Um yeah, I I um I am on both sides of that fence. I mean, I was sort of like I through my daily work, I'm sort of forced into this this sort of uh quasi in international style of of design, like grids, rectilinear, single typeface. Um but um in my what in the work that feels most natural to me as a as a practicing typographer, um uh I consider all of it paint. It's all paint. Um, I can feel it, I can smell it, I can taste it, I can see it, and I can arrange it on a page in a way that makes me feel like I'm like I'm composing music.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Or painting.
SPEAKER_00Excellent.
SPEAKER_02And it makes me feel extra happy because my mentors hated that. They absolutely loathed it. They could not imagine why anyone would do that. But to me, I mean, the world is so big and so deep and dense that why would you limit yourself?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, excellent. Um, I think we had a false ending there. So Charles Nix, thank you again. And I will let you go on that, okay? All right, man. I'll let you know when this is coming out. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it. No problem. Take care, man. Bye bye.