{"id":6304,"date":"2026-02-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.test\/canvas-wp-test\/blog\/2026\/02\/11\/jane-doe-on-building-type\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T19:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T19:38:14","slug":"jane-doe-on-building-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/2026\/02\/11\/jane-doe-on-building-type\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Doe on Twenty Years of Building Type"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"container\"><div class=\"row gx-5 justify-content-center\"><div class=\"col-lg-8\"><article class=\"entry\"><header class=\"mb-4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/category\/interviews\/\" class=\"entry-chip mb-3\">Interviews<\/a>\t<h2 class=\"mb-3\">\n\t\t\t\t\tJane Doe on Twenty Years of Building Type\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">\n\t<ul>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tInterview by <a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/author\/canvasadmin\/\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcanvasadmin\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<i class=\"uil uil-schedule\"><\/i> \t\t\t\t\t\t<time datetime=\"2026-02-11\">11th February 2026<\/time>\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span data-reading-time=\".entry-content\">2 min read<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/header><figure class=\"entry-image mb-5\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" class=\"rounded wp-image-6257\" src=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22.jpg\" alt=\"Jane Doe at her studio desk\" srcset=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-440x293.jpg 440w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-22-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><figcaption class=\"mt-3 text-muted text-smaller\">Jane Doe at the studio in Rotterdam, January 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure><div class=\"entry-content\"><p class=\"lead wp-block-paragraph\">Jane Doe has drawn twelve retail families and more custom commissions than she is willing to count. We talked about the parts of the job that never appear in the specimen.<\/p><div class=\"qa-item\"><div class=\"qa-question\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">Q<\/span><span>You have said the drawing is the easy part. What is the hard part?<\/span><\/div><div class=\"qa-answer\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">A<\/span><div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Deciding what the thing is for. A typeface that is trying to be usable everywhere is usable nowhere in particular, and the market is now saturated with those. The hard part is committing to a set of constraints early enough that they actually shape the drawing, and then not flinching when someone asks for a weight that would break them.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"qa-item\"><div class=\"qa-question\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">Q<\/span><span>How long does a family take now, compared with when you started?<\/span><\/div><div class=\"qa-answer\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">A<\/span><div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The drawing is maybe three times faster. Interpolation tooling got genuinely good, and variable fonts removed an enormous amount of duplicated work. But the total time is roughly the same, because the expected character set has quadrupled. In 2006 a professional release meant Latin with decent kerning. Now it means Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, a real italic, and somebody will ask about Vietnamese.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the tools got faster and the job got bigger, and those cancel out almost exactly.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><blockquote class=\"longread-pullquote\">A typeface that is trying to be usable everywhere is usable nowhere in particular.<cite>Jane Doe<\/cite><\/blockquote><div class=\"qa-item\"><div class=\"qa-question\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">Q<\/span><span>What do you tell people who want to start?<\/span><\/div><div class=\"qa-answer\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">A<\/span><div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Draw text faces, not display faces. Display work is more fun and gets more attention, and it teaches you almost nothing about spacing. Spacing is the entire craft. You can hide bad spacing at ninety point and you cannot hide it at nine.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"qa-item\"><div class=\"qa-question\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">Q<\/span><span>Has the licensing model changed how you work?<\/span><\/div><div class=\"qa-answer\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">A<\/span><div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Enormously, and mostly for the worse. Web licensing priced on pageviews means the people who benefit most from a typeface pay the least attention to who made it. I have had a family on a site with forty million monthly visits, licensed for less than a single custom logotype.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The custom side subsidises the retail side now. That was not true fifteen years ago and I do not think it is healthy, but it is the arrangement.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"qa-item\"><div class=\"qa-question\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">Q<\/span><span>What are you working on?<\/span><\/div><div class=\"qa-answer\"><span class=\"qa-marker\">A<\/span><div><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A newspaper face, which is a category everyone says is dead. It is dead in print and it is very much alive on screen, because the constraints are identical: small sizes, dense setting, long reading. Nobody wants to call it that, so we are describing it as an interface text family and pretending we invented something.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"post-author-card mt-5\"><div class=\"row g-4 align-items-center\"><div class=\"col-auto\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"rounded-circle wp-image-6339\" src=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-25-245x300.jpg\" alt=\"Jane Doe\" style=\"height:88px\" width=\"88\" height=\"88\" srcset=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-25-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/08\/3-25-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 88px) 100vw, 88px\" \/><\/div><div class=\"col\"><div class=\"issue-kicker\">About the interviewee<\/div><h5 class=\"mb-2 fw-semibold wp-block-heading\">Jane Doe<\/h5><p class=\"mb-0 wp-block-paragraph\">Type designer, Rotterdam. Twelve retail families, three of them still in active use at newspapers she declines to name.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"tagcloud mt-5 mb-5\"><a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/tag\/interview\/\">interview<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/tag\/type-design\/\">type design<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/tag\/typography\/\">typography<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/tag\/craft\/\">craft<\/a><\/div><div class=\"mb-5\">\t<div class=\"share-rail\" data-share-url=\"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/blog\/2026\/02\/11\/jane-doe-on-building-type\/\" data-share-title=\"Jane Doe on Twenty Years of Building Type\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"share-rail-label\">Share<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdemos.canvaswp.com%2Fclassic%2Fblog%2F2026%2F02%2F11%2Fjane-doe-on-building-type%2F\" data-share=\"facebook\" 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We talked about the parts of the job that never appear in the specimen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-blog-editorial-titled","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[274,287,288,265],"class_list":["post-6304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-craft","tag-interview","tag-type-design","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6304"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6477,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6304\/revisions\/6477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}