Brandon Epstein: David Berlow

David Berlow is one of the most prominent typographers in the Industry today. His hobbies are said to include “taking time off, collecting rubber bands and counting grains of sand,” Described as a man with a “quirky” sense of humor and an attraction to the classics; he has established himself to a prestige that not too many designers have and ever could achieve. His work has helped shaped typography to where it is today. Having founded The Font Bureau, Inc in 1989, and having designed or help design 100’s of fonts in his career and still continuing to do so, David Berlow’s influence in typography is seen and felt everywhere.

David Berlow was born in Boston in 1954 but did not grow up there. He moved to Wisconsin a year later and would stay there even through his college years. He grew up in small towns and rural environments until he was a the age of twenty-four. Berlow remembers a moment in his childhood that he describes as a “moment of unmistakable joy.” He remembers quite vividly carving block prints at the age of 7, and if he positioned the palms trees just right, and the position of the monkey swinging; he could repeat the same block print as many times as he wanted for a longer picture. This would be an initial spark to his later profession.

Berlow would go on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a fine art’s major and a friend approached him to draw a logo for a local travel agency. Berlow at this time still did not even know it was possible to be a typeface designer, and even found a similar block printing machine when he “opened up a drawer of type in the first year at the University but still didn’t think to pick up punch cutting”. What turned out to be the logo for his friend also turned out to be extremely typographic. This logo project opened Berlow’s eyes to the world of graphic design and it seemed to get Berlow hooked on type.

When Berlow graduated he moved to New York and took a job in an advertising agency, which lasted only two long months. He said, “I learned pretty quickly that the New York agency scene wasn’t for me…I couldn’t fit with the structure. I probably also had authority issues.” He did not know exactly what he was going to do with his life after the ad-agency but put together a plan for what to do. He said, “ I figured I’d spend a few years learning photo editing and then work as the art director for a music magazine like Rolling stone or SPIN.” It was 1977 and Berlow applied at dozens of places including, a diploma factory, Marvel Comics, and a newly opened drawing office of Mergethaler Linotype, which was a leading manufacturer of typesetting equipment. Berlow needed a job quickly and Linotype would be the place to make the first offer for Berlow, so he quickly took the job and entered the type industry in 1978. Berlow said the money wasn’t great but the job was fantastic. Berlow first discovered here that you could actually make an income by drawing letters all day long. Here he developed many typefaces including “such legible typeface revivals” as New Celedonia, and New Century Schoolbook. In this time period Berlow almost made the switch from letters to photography but his passion and natural inclination for typography disregarded any ideas to change. He would continue to work there for four years as well as at Stempel, and Hass type foundries. Then he left to work with and join many of his colleagues at their own newly formed company in Cambridge, a digital type supplier and foundry called Bitstream Inc. in 1982. He would continue to develop many fonts, font tools, and marketing strategies for the company.

In 1989 Berlow left Bitstream to form his own company with Roger Black called The Font Bureau, in Boston. There goal was to make fonts that were useful to customers, and he says there was just enough confidence and cooperation going around to get things done and sway some customers to move to what they were trying to help create. Initially there customers were only newspapers and magazines, who were Roger Black’s clients. Berlow helped bring along Apple and Hewlett-Packard. There initial objective became tied on to the ever evolving changes in technology. His new independent foundry and design studio gained a nice reputation for producing high quality classic types and vivid “outspoken but perfectly constructed display faces.” One of their first commissions was helping Apple develop its TrueType typeface library. The company originally resided in Berlow’s own eight hundred and forty square foot apartment. When the company started to grow even larger, he hired more designers that had to cram into his apartment. When Berlow started taking some of his clients to have private conversations in his car, he realized that they needed a bigger and better and more private space to do business. Most of his designers though, who are from all over the country and even internationally work from home. The Font Bureau would go on to develop over three hundred new and revised type designs for the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Hewlett Packard, and OEM work for Apple Computers and even the Microsoft Corporation. The Font Bureau Retail Library includes mostly all of completely original designs that add up to over five hundred typefaces.

When Berlow designs a new typeface, it is usually specified by a client’s request for it. He creates a font by not just messing with some drawings and you end up with a brand new typeface. He says its like trying to solve a problem with words. Sometimes it is only a single word, like a logo, yet other times it is for some holiday editions or even the “30^th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge.” He says, “people need a different tone of voice for whatever they are trying to do". Berlow says a lot of his inspiration comes from a book from 1536. He uses a magnifying class and sees what contours there are in a letter, gets the shape then works to develop the other two hundred and eighty nine characters. He says its like “putting together little molecules to form a reading experience.”

But he also says his inspiration and where he is taught varies between everything and anything. “It is not over ‘til it is over” he says. He is still learning from all the people he is supposed to be teaching, and says “all the designers from the Font bureau are my latest teachers.” He then learns to look at things related to type today from a variety of stylistic and entrepanural perspectives. Berlow says that before The Font Bureau, there was many designers that helped influence him. At linotype and Bitstream from 1978 until 1989: Mathew Carter, Mike Parker, Cherie Cone, Larry Oppenberg, Alex Kaczun, Richard Stetler, Walter Petty, and George Ryan all helped tune him as an artist and designer. He says he learned most of what he knows about qualities of any design and especially lines themselves from John Quaranta, a master designer at Linotype. Berlow quotes his learning experience as this “ That’s the living. Type designers who live hundreds and occasionally thousands of years ago are still teaching me, because type design is pretty much infinite, and all it takes is a letter you’ve never seen before to incite learning, I think.”

Berlow does not ever make types randomly or for no initial use. He says he has not worked without an initial assignment since The Font Bureau was founded. When he has produced a large font family it is usually for a big group of clients who want it all at once. He says when he starts to create a whole typeface family he starts with the letters H-O-D then n-o-p, and then all the lowercase of the lights and darkest blackest styles of roman to italic then from a to z. Then he starts thinking of the possibilities and purpose of what the typeface is supposed to produce and the relationship to the client. He looks at many solutions and historical references. He sometimes draws and builds tables for everything. He says the first hundreds of characters are the most fun to work with, trying to “get the monkey to swing right.”

Berlow continues to be extremely active in the industry. He is now the vice-president at Interactive Bureau, a new media company and is the organizer of Type Lab, which is a “traveling thing” on type and typography. He recently received the 2007 SOTA Typography Award for his work with The Font Bureau. He now lives Martha’s Vineyard fulltime after experiencing it through many vacations he took there, for some time off. He says he likes the way urban living gives you some amount of inspiration for your work, but for him to work he needs a lot of concentration and an isolated environment.

David Berlow has designed: Agency, FB Agency, FB Condensed Agency, FB Wide,  Belizio,  Belucian,  Berlin, Sans FF, Berlin sans,  Bureau Grotesque Five Three, Bureau Grotesque One Three,  Bureau Grotesque Three Seven,  Bureau Grotesque Three Three,  Californian FB,  Californian, FB Display,  Californian FB Text , Charcoal,  Cheltenham FB Bold Condensed,  Eagle Eldorado, Display Eldorado, Micro,  Eldorado Text,  Empire (FB), ITC Franklin Gothic Compressed, ITC Franklin Gothic Condensed, Gadget Giza One Five,  Giza One One , Giza One Three, Giza Seven Nine,  Meyer Two,  Numskill,  Phaistos,  Rhode Medium Extended,  Rhode Medium Normal , Romeo Medium Condensed, Techno Throhand Ink Italic,  Throhand Ink Roman, Throhand Ink Roman (FB), Throhand Pen Italic, Throhand Pen Roman, Throhand Pen Roman (FB), Throhand Regular Italic, Throhand Regular Roman, Throhand Regular Roman (FB), Titling Gothic, Titling Gothic Compressed, Titling Gothic Condensed, Titling Gothic Extended, Titling Gothic Narrow, Titling Gothic Skyline, Truth, Truth Light, Truth Ultra, and Village.

One of the major fonts David Berlow has designed would be Belizio. Belizio is based on Aldo Novarese's Egizio, designed in 1955 for Nebiolo. Belizio is a modern font, that Berlow created in 1987. Belizio is a “headline face” with Clarendon style characteristics. It supposed to be strong and simple. Belizio fonts are adapted and work well for headlines and titles for and for a wide range of products.

Another font that came from his design was Agency FB. The family of this font was designed on the basis of a single titling font that was created by Morris Fuller Benton in 1932. Berlow liked the squared, monotone forms of the existing narrow capitals and adapted Benton’s’ concept to form his own. He created five different weights and five different widths, all were lowercase, to come up with Agency FB, a geometric sans. The font with its useful condensed nature and straight lines with smooth corners was instantly a big success. It is used when a modern unconventional text is useful.

1990 the year Agency FB was created, seemed to be a relief of dictoral “agencies” throughout the world. It was the year the Soviet Union fell apart, and the communist party finally lost power, thus putting an end to the cold war. South Africa freed Nelson Mandela after 27 years of imprisonment that year. General Noriega surrendered Panama to American troops. Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and set off the Persian Gulf War, and East and West Germany finally re-united.

Sources:

Type

http://www.itcfonts.com/fonts/font/pid/409003/Agency+FB+Thin+Wide/detail

Bio

http://www.identifont.com/show?12J

Biio

http://johndberry.com/blog/?p=126

Bio

http://www.myfonts.com/person/berlow/david/

Bio

http://www.monotypeimaging.com/ProductsServices/TypeDesignerShowcase/DavidBerlow/Biography.aspx

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