Briem's typography lessons: foundations
Gunnlaugur SE Briem taught type design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1996. His notes from that course — precise, practical, free of mystification — have been republished with permission on the FontLab documentation site. Here is a distillation of his opening chapters on why you’d make a font and what the basics actually require.
Would you like to make your own?¶
“Take your characters and turn them into fonts,” Briem begins. “Create lettershapes that work together, and print them. Sounds like fun? It can be.”
He is direct about prerequisites. The skills of designing letters can be learned, like any other skill. The techniques of fitting letters together are not secret. The tools are better than they used to be. “The big question is this: What do you want?”
That question matters more than most people expect. Briem’s method rests on it. Know what you want, and drawing the shape takes little effort. Don’t know, and no amount of technical skill closes the gap.
Facts that seem too obvious to mention¶
His chapter on basics opens by acknowledging that what follows “may seem too obvious to mention,” then explains why it isn’t.
A head start, he says, goes to anyone who can write with a broad-nib pen. If you can’t, learn the basics. Alfred Fairbank’s Handwriting Manual is his recommendation. The pen forces you to understand how stroke weight and angle interact — knowledge that transfers directly to digital letterforms.
Bézier curves are assumed. A drawing board with a T-square also works. “What counts is the end result. For 500 years, people created typefaces with simple metalworking tools. Some were masterpieces.”
The chapter also addresses what he calls “facts of optical illusion” — the systematic ways that mathematically equal shapes look unequal, and mathematically unequal shapes look right. A circle that reaches the same height as a square looks smaller. Horizontal strokes the same weight as verticals look heavier. These are not problems to solve; they are properties of human vision that type designers work with deliberately.
Orderly work, he argues, is what lets you manage the complexity. Not inspiration — that “usually needs a good shove” — but a consistent method for testing, comparing, and choosing.
The role of error and correction¶
Briem is explicit that he wants feedback. “If I don’t explain properly, please let me know. I’ll try harder. If I’m wrong, kindly say so.” This isn’t false modesty. It reflects his actual approach: type design is a discipline where the standard for correctness is the trained eye, and trained eyes sometimes disagree.
What he offers is a framework, not a rulebook. A way of seeing, and a way of making that follows from it.