MOCT by Randy Dunbar

MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPDGRAPHY

TOBIAS FRERS-JONES

obias FrereJones (born Tobias Edgar Mallory Jones; August 28, 1970) is an American type designer who works in New York City. He was formerly a partner with designer Jo n at h a n Ho e f l e r at Hoefler & Frere-Jones, a type foundry in lower Manhattan. Frere-Jones teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program, with type designer Matthew Carter. He is a son of Robin Carpenter Jones and his wife, the former Elizabeth Frere, and a brother of music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. He is a grandson of Alexander Stuar t Frere-Re e ves, the former chairman of the board of William He i n e m a n n L td , t h e British publishing house, a great-grandson of the writer Edgar Wallace, who wrote the screenplay for the film King Kong ,[3] and a nephew of Vice Admiral Sir Richard Tobias Frere KCB. After attending Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn and receiving a BFA in 1992 from Rhode Island School of Design, Frere-Jones joined Font Bureau, Inc. in Boston. As Senior Designer for over s e ven ye ar s , h e

created a number of the typefaces that are Font Bureau's best known, among them Interstate and Poynter Oldstyle & Gothic. He joined the Yale School of Art faculty in 1996 as a critic. In 1999, he left Font Bureau to return to New York, where he began work with Jonathan Hoefler. While working together, the two collaborated on projects for The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Nike, Pentagram, GQ, Esquire magazine, The Ne w Times, Business 2.0, and The Ne w York Times Magazine. He has designed over seven hundred typefaces for retail publication, custom clients, and experimental purposes. His clients have included The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Advertising Age and the Cooper-Hewitt, National D e si g n Mus e um, the Whitney Museum, The American Institute of Graphic Arts Journal, and Neville Brody. He has lectured at Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art, Pratt Institute, Royal College of Art, and Universidad de las Americ as. His work has been featured in HOW, ID, Page, Print,

TOBIAS FRERS-JONES

Eye, and Graphis Inc., and is included in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In 2006, FrereJones received the Gerrit Noordzij Prize, an award given by The Royal Academy of Art (The Hague) to honor innovations in type design. He married Dr. Christine Annabelle Bateup in 2006. In January 2014, Frere-Jones filed a $20 million lawsuit against Jonathan Hoefler. The lawsuit was filed following a disagreement over terms of the H&FJ ownership structure. Frere-Jones claims that Jonathan Hoefler originally offered a 50/50 partnership in forming the new company. When talks about completing this supposed proposal fell through in 2013, Frere-Jones left H&FJ. Court documents say that Tobias FrereJones technically sold Whitney, among others, to Hoefler Type Foundry for $10

when he co-founded H&FJ.The Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague awarded Tobias the Gerrit Noordzij Prize in 2006 to honor his unique contributions to typeface design, typography, and type education. (Exhibition and catalog designed by the Type & Media class in 2009, catalog published by Uitgeverij de Buitenkant.)The Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague awarded Tobias the Gerrit Noordzij Prize in 2006 to honor his unique contributions to typeface design, typography, and type education. (Exhibition and catalog designed by the Type & Media class in 2009, catalog published by Uitgeverij de Buitenkant.)

TOBIAS FRERS-JONES

MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPDGRAPHY

TOBIAS FRERS-JONES

MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPDGRAPHY

1400

1470

1501

1734

Nicolas Jenson created Roman Type, inspired by the text on ancient roman buildings. It was far more readable than blackletter, and caught on quickly.

Italics begin to be used as way to fit more words onto a page, saving the printer money. Today, we use italics as a design detail or for emphasis when writing.

William Caslon created a typeface which features straighter serifs and much more obvious contrasts between thin and bold strokes. Today, we call this type style ‘old style’.

A 1780

1757 John Baskerville created what we now call Transitional type, a Romanstyle type, with very sharp serifs and lots of drastic contrast between thick and thin lines.

Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni created the first ‘modern’ Roman typefaces (Didot, and Bodoni). The contrasts were more extreme than ever before, and created a very cool, fresh look.

1920's Frederic Goudy became the world’s first full time type designer, developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.

1815

1816

Vincent Figgins created Egyptian, or Slab Serif – the first time a typeface had serifs that were squares or boxes.

William Caslon IV created the first typeface without any serifs at all. It was widely rebuked at the time. This was the start of what we now consider Sans Serif typefaces. During this time, type exploded, and many, many variations were being created to accommodate advertising.

1957

contemporary

Frederic Goudy became the world’s first full time type designer, developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.

ype is everywhere – street signs, magazines, the web. Every typeface you see around you has been painstakingly and carefully planned out, and each has its own personality and vibe. But have you ever stopped to wonder how the typefaces

we encounter everyday came to be? Who invented them, and why? If you’re interested in learning more about typography, you’ve come to the right place. TERMINOLOGY EXPLAINED What’s the difference between a typeface and a font? Before you jump in, let’s clarify the

terminology used. Typography is the art of creating the letters we use everyday. It’s designing them and creating them and making them real. A font is a collection or set of letters – they’re the mechanism you use to get your message across to your reader. Every letter and dash and semi colon would be

considered part of a specific font. A typeface is the design you see – the style and look of a specific font. Throughout history, typefaces have been influenced by technological advances, culture shifts, and just general boredom with the state of typography. Here’s how it all went down:

MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPDGRAPHY

t MOCT we are tasked to design roughly 40 different title walls each year to accompany a wide variety of exhibitions. To manage workload, we made the decision four years ago to have two-thirds of the workload “templatized” by sticking to one typeface—our house font, MoMA Gothic (which is based on Franklin Gothic)—for all collection rotations. Our goal was not only to alleviate workload, but to inject some

visual (temporary loan shows on the sixth and third floors) and the 28 collection rotations, and to give us enough time and energy to focus on the big shows by making those designs more unique. At first, our decision to eliminate the choice of different typefaces for the collection rotations got quite mixed reviews from curators and our in-house designers. The fear of losing their freedom of expression and “templatizing” ourselves was a scary proposition.

MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPDGRAPHY

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