The Design Process

Bourget is my first typeface to be properly completed. It was released in early 2019 and took me about half a year to complete. However, the first sketches date back to 2010. They were inspired by the typefaces from the Art Deco era. Stretched, narrow shapes, a fine decoration line, very elegant. At that point I had no knowledge of type design and my priorities went in other directions without losing sight of it entirely.

Sometime in 2018, inspired by the Arte series „Typo-Safari“, where type designers walk through their hometowns and present the city typographically, I was „captivated“. I started to delve deeper into type design, pulling information from the Internet and rolling through books.

At the same time I started to draw a forerunner of Finador in Adobe Illustrator. Initially totally enthusiastic, I learned and recognized more and more faux pas, so I put the design aside. I remembered the old draft of the Bourget design and pulled it out of the drawer. But what software do you use now to continue? Here, too, research had to be done in advance. I chose the Glyphs app – luckily – because it turned out to be the right choice. A clear interface, intuitive operation and easy-to-understand tutorials were and still are very helpful. So, I used Bourget as a practice font to familiarize myself with Glyphs and type design. It soon became clear that many things of the original design were not correct and had to be adjusted.

During this time I also met Marc Lohner. He shared his extensive knowledge with me and taught me a lot, since then a true mentor. That’s how I also learned more about Open Type Features and started working on topics like alternative letters and ligatures. Very exciting features, especially for display typefaces.

When the upright was finished, I wanted to add an italic. But again, the first question was: How? Slanted, Oblique or True Italic? What are the differences? True Italics are completely redrawn and are based on a handwriting. Slanted is simply tipped over. This creates trunks of unequal width. These are compensated manually with the Oblique. A clean solution that I also chose.

Finally, how to name the font? I tried and researched lot. Some names already existed or didn’t really work well. But the name „Bourget“ didn’t existed for a font yet and also looked nice. It origins from the airport near Paris Le Bourget, where Charles Lindbergh landed his plane „The Spirit of St. Louis“ in 1927. The first nonstop flight over the Atlantic, from New York to Paris. This is the right name for my very first font because the name comes from an era I was inspired by for the design, and because it was my first bumpy flight with a (more or less) safe landing in typedesign.