Elliot Jay Stocks – beyond tellerrand Podcast
Elliot Jay Stocks on Fine Specimens, Type Nerdom, and Making Things That Last
You invite your guests because they and their topics are interesting. Sometimes it happens you invite someone, because you have known them for over a decade and it’s simply long overdue. Elliot Jay Stocks falls firmly into the second category and episode four of the beyond tellerrand podcast is proof of just how much there is to talk about when two old friends finally sit down together. ;)
Elliot is a designer, author, and self-confessed typographic obsessive. You might know him as the founder of the beloved magazine 8 Faces, as former Creative Director of Adobe Fonts, or as the co-creator of Google Fonts Knowledge. He’s spoken at beyond tellerrand more than once over the years, and in April he’ll be back. Not on stage this time, but as part of the fringe programme, hosting a book launch gathering on the Monday evening of the Düsseldorf event.
That book is Fine Specimens: A Showcase of Contemporary Type Design, published by Quarto, and it’s the main thread running through our conversation. The idea behind it is deceptively simple: every time a type foundry releases a new font, they create stunning specimen graphics to go with it. And then those graphics get scrolled past, buried by algorithms, and forgotten. Elliot wanted to save them. To put them in a book, on a shelf, where they belong.
We talk about how the project started life as a failed Kickstarter (launched … oops … two weeks after his previous book), how his publisher picked it up and helped shape what it became, and why he made the deliberate decision to include typefaces from across writing systems, like Arabic, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hangeul, Japanese, and more, presented inline rather than shunted off to a separate section.
We also get into his return to Adobe Fonts as a full-time employee after nearly two decades of freelance life, the joys and perils of making music purely for the love of it (he records electronic music as Otherform and has recently been rediscovering the guitar), and that shared belief that the best antidote to the endless scroll is something stubbornly, deliberately real. Whether that’s a magazine, a book, or a conference that people actually travel to.
Elliot will be at beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf in April with books to sell and sign. Ans surely I hope you’ll come and say hello.
In the meantime: listen, enjoy, and maybe order a copy of Fine Specimens from your local bookshop.
Podcast (Audio-Only) Version
Full Transcript of this Episode
Marc (00:00.000)
Hello there! Today’s guest is someone I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for well over a decade, if I remember correctly.
We share many friends and memories and he’s one of those people where, no matter how much time passes between seeing each other, it always feels like you just picked up right where you left off.
We’ve crossed paths at countless events over the years, shared many a conversation about type, design, and everything in between, and I’ve been lucky enough to have him on the beyond tellerrand stage more than once.
He’s a designer, author, and all-round typographic maniac, the founder of the 8 Faces magazine, former Creative Director of Adobe Fonts, co-creator of Google Fonts Knowledge, and now the editor of a beautiful new book called Fine Specimens, which is also part of what we’re here to talk about today.
Please welcome Elliot Jay Stocks!
Marc (00:02.266)
So here it is. Hello Elliot.
Elliot (00:03.214)
Hello! Hello! Lovely to see you and thank you for having me.
Marc (00:08.612)
Likewise, it’s fantastic to have you as one of the first people in my now kind of podcast. So usually I recorded all these episodes just without having a podcast. And two weeks ago I decided, you know what, I just gather all these recordings and say like, no, it’s a podcast, whatever that means.
Elliot (00:15.085)
Yeah.
Elliot (00:24.428)
I didn’t realise, I didn’t realise that was the thing. Cool. I thought you, but you had the Stay Curious podcast before as well.
Marc (00:29.05)
Yeah.
Yeah, that was more like a live online show during the pandemic, you know? Yeah, but you know, exactly, exactly. But that’s coming back in person, actually, the stickier thing. So I’m going to have a small format, not like as big and as much work as the bigger events. anyways, we’re not here to talk about me and my stuff, but about you.
Elliot (00:35.688)
Yeah, yes, I suppose so. Yes, was a live stream, wasn’t it? Because I did the one with Craig. Yeah.
Elliot (00:45.989)
cool.
Elliot (00:50.958)
Amazing. Sorry.
Marc (00:57.7)
Yeah, as I said in the introduction, I’m lucky enough to know you for quite a while. It’s always great fun. It’s great to make you being late on stage. It’s great to hang out with you at chat. yeah, actually, you will be back at my event, not on stage speaking, but as part of the whole event and for you as part of your upcoming book launch tour in a way, right?
Elliot (01:03.352)
same.
Elliot (01:06.862)
you
Elliot (01:26.455)
Yeah, that’s right.
Marc (01:26.822)
So you have got a couple of stops coming up. But before we speak about the book, which is quite nice, what are you doing these days? Give me some updates.
Elliot (01:38.126)
Well, I’ve entered the real world. got a real job at last. actually, yeah, actually, so I’m working for Adobe fonts again, which is sort of the second time around. But this time I’m actually employed by Adobe, which is very new for me. I was independent for like 18 and a half years. becoming an actual employee again with a real paycheck and all of those kinds of things.
Marc (01:44.749)
Marc (01:48.741)
Okay.
Marc (02:00.186)
Yeah, I know.
Elliot (02:06.892)
And perks, I didn’t know that perks existed, apparently they do. And that’s nice. So yeah. So I’m back at Adobe. Actually it’s weird because I was at Adobe when it was still Typekit many years ago, you know, over a decade or so ago. And then I left and then I, although I worked, it was my full-time job, but I was, technically a contractor then. Left, did various other things and then came back to doing contracting again with Adobe fonts about...
Marc (02:19.565)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no.
Elliot (02:36.418)
nearly two years ago now, it was in June that I started to see it nearly two years ago. and then we just carried on doing that for a while. And then the opportunity came up for me to sort of make it full time and actually kind of become an employee. And to begin with, I was like, well, I’m not sure about this. I’m so used to independent life. And it was a, you know, I’ve always, always been espousing the benefits of being freelance and being independent and things like that. But I think for me personally, it was a really good opportunity to just
fully indulge in full on type nerdery full time and to carry on working with a team that I really love with a really great work life balance. You know, I work remotely from my home here in Somerset and nearly all of my team are on the either the East or West coast of the US. it’s, yeah, it’s a lovely balance. enjoy it. I enjoy the work a lot. And so, yeah, so I’ve been doing that since October. So that’s the newest big thing.
Marc (03:26.405)
Okay?
Marc (03:36.016)
Nice.
Elliot (03:36.662)
Yeah. then, but alongside that there’s been, you know, I’m doing my newsletter and, and this new book obviously has been sort of been produced over a fairly long time. but that’s finally coming out, in, in the middle of March. So yeah.
Marc (03:53.818)
Yeah. So the newsletter, I mean, I get it, the newsletter. I liked was the... Yeah, true. You mean I’m pretty annoying.
Elliot (03:59.338)
you’re very good at filing bug reports that have to do with dark mode. No, it’s great, it’s great. I know if I’ve just sent a newsletter out and I get a ping, I’m like, that’s Mark, he spotted something.
Marc (04:16.742)
So what is that about type I guess as well, right? What’s the deal with the newsletter?
Elliot (04:20.813)
Yeah, the newsletter is meant to be about sort of all things. It’s meant to be very casual, very informal. It’s called typographic and sporadic. that is what it is. It is about typography and it is sent out sporadically and it’s new font releases, new foundry discoveries, new events to do with type or adjacent to the type industry. And they might be new, like brand new, or they might be
just new to me because I haven’t happened to have seen that those type foundries exist or those typefaces have been out. And a lot of, there’s usually a lot of stuff in there to do with kind of the website of typography as well. Cause that’s kind of always been sort of my background coming from web design side of things and just sharing interesting things that I think will be relevant to typefans. And I do share my own stuff in there. Obviously at the moment I’m kind of talking a lot about the book and
things that I talk about if I’m speaking somewhere and things like that. But I, I try not to make it a, Hey, here’s the Elliott newsletter about all of my things. Like it’s not that like there’s some, sometimes there’s a bit of a, as a project I want to talk about, or of course with the book stuff, there’s a bit more about that recently, but I try to keep it as like just things that I think, you know, type nerds will find interesting. And occasionally if I’m doing something in that space, I’ll obviously throw, throw in a bit of news there. and it’s fun. I love doing the newsletter, but I also love doing
Marc (05:42.928)
Yeah.
Elliot (05:46.113)
these pop-up newsletters and I’m going to be doing one of those soon for when this tour starts so I’m going to document this book tour via a pop-up newsletter which should be really fun.
Marc (05:48.83)
yeah, nice.
Marc (05:54.308)
Nice. Yeah, I can recommend anyone listening or watching this. It’s really nice because what you do there, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s just like a temporary newsletter about a specific happening. I usually an event where you go to and it’s more like a little diary of how you get there, you experience and a little bit of that happened along the way. I really like that.
Elliot (06:22.977)
Yeah, thank you. Thanks man. Yeah. I did one when we were hanging out at Berlin letters a couple of years ago and that was, that was, yeah. And I did one with Type Harris where sort of like the journey to and from the event and a bit of sort of, like you say, like a diary there. This one’s going to be a bit different because this book tour, I’ve got five dates for it. There might be six, but at the moment there’s five solid ones, but they’re all quite spread out. So they’re from the book’s release in mid-March through to about
Marc (06:29.956)
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Marc (06:44.059)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (06:50.501)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (06:53.067)
the end of May is the last one. me. And so it’s not, had this idea in my head that the book tour would be this continuous thing where I get the train from one event to the other, this very romantic idea.
Marc (07:05.99)
It’s lovely, right? I still love the idea of doing a beyond tellerrand tour at one point. Like I did with Sascha. Actually in 2005, I did something like this already for Macromedia back then, for the Studio 8 and Flashforum. So Sascha and I, did like five cities. I enjoyed it a lot.
Elliot (07:11.787)
Yes.
yeah? really? awesome! nice!
Elliot (07:25.109)
Yeah, as a non-stop thing. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Actually Akira and I did it for the Insights tour. Do remember that back in the day? Yeah, and we did that. Was that continuous? Did we do one after the other? I think we did. Yeah, I can’t remember now, but anyway, it turns out that for this book tour, it’s just impossible to book the dates in that way. So the newsletter is gonna be a little bit different. It’s more just gonna be sort of...
Marc (07:32.646)
True, yeah I remember that.
Marc (07:43.526)
Ahem.
Elliot (07:53.25)
Yeah. Talking about each event and sort of life on the road, quote unquote, going to and from that kind of thing. But, but it’s going to be different to the other pop-ups because it’s kind of spread out over this longer period of time. But I’m, I’m hoping that it will be still that kind of, yeah, that kind of sort of travel diary kind of, form to it. And the thing about the pop-up newsletter format that I love, and this is, know, inspired very much by Craig Maldon.
I don’t know if Craig invented it, but he certainly popularised the popup format, but that idea of just being in the moment. And so there are no online archives. You can only read it in your inbox. There’s no way to get the, it to afterwards. And the, importantly, the database of subscribers is deleted as soon as the popup is over, which goes against every bit of like email marketing wisdom ever. There’s probably email marketers listening going, what? Why, why not do that?
Marc (08:45.487)
Hmm?
Elliot (08:49.377)
But it’s, yeah, exactly. You build up a list and then just nuke it. Like, why would you do this? But that is the appeal of it. It’s all about just kind of being there in the moment. And I think when it’s... Yeah.
Marc (08:49.956)
Idiots!
Marc (09:00.218)
Yeah, that was my idea actually with... Sorry, but that was my idea with Stay Curious as well. Stay Curious is the same format. It never has been recorded and it was gone. So be there or miss it, which is nice.
Elliot (09:08.075)
Yeah, no archives. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, there’s something really nice about that. think, think it’s especially right now in, you know, the endless doom scrolling and everything just being so ephemeral and being completely over saturated with any form of content on social or anything. The idea of something being temporary, but you know, people are going, right, I’m going to, I’m going to look out for this. I got to save this in my inbox or whatever to kind of be focused on it or to, as you said, for security to turn up.
at a specific time to actually be able to enjoy that, think is, yeah, it’s kind of an antidote to the current state of social media in a way.
Marc (09:51.622)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, nice. So I really enjoy the pop-up letter. And also, like, the standard newsletter. It’s one of the few typographic newsletters I’ve got. Like, I’ve got the one from Emma. I like that one a lot as well, because it has got some of graphic design stuff in it. Oliver Schoendorfer, for example, that’s a good one as well. I like his font pairing things and recommendations. Yeah, so a couple of good ones out there, I have to say. Yeah.
Elliot (10:04.367)
yeah, nice. Typographic treats. Awesome. Yeah.
Elliot (10:11.441)
yes it’s paint my type one yeah yeah fantastic
Marc (10:20.524)
so if, you, if you, if you don’t work on the type stuff, I see in your background, there’s a lot of like musical cables and stuff around you. So yeah. So is it.
Elliot (10:20.769)
that’s good.
Elliot (10:28.781)
Yeah, it’s a bit of a mess. It’s a bit of a mess. And I’ve realised that my camera is focusing on everything in the background and not me. don’t squint too closely.
Marc (10:38.2)
Yeah, but...
Yeah, you got me interested there. So what is it? Like is it like your little recording studio or is it like your music gear?
Elliot (10:46.605)
A lot of this, I must admit, yeah, so I’ve made electronic music for a long time and put out lot of stuff under the alias Otherform, but actually I haven’t... I just kind of... put out... when was the last EP came out? The beginning of last year, the beginning of 2025, and so I’d finished recording that at the end of 24. And actually since then I haven’t put anything out and I haven’t actually made any music since then. I’ve taken a real... like a...
Marc (10:54.149)
Hmm?
Marc (10:57.509)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (11:15.677)
hiatus. I’ve got a bunch of fun kit behind there. I’ve got, you know, there’s like a drum machine and a bunch of synths and a controller and there’s some more stuff over there, some fun little synths. But yeah, I’ve taken a real big break from it recently. I just sort of suddenly fell out of love with that side of music. I’ve been playing a lot more guitar, I think partly because my youngest daughter Gwen is learning guitar and so I’ve been encouraging her and we’ve got this
Marc (11:27.366)
Yeah.
Marc (11:37.285)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (11:44.482)
little orange amp in the sitting room and I bought a multi-effect little zoom multi-effects pedal recently for her slash me to mess around with. And I’ve really enjoyed that. actually I, what I really want to do is to do some, record some guitar based music. I’ve been writing some stuff, but I haven’t, I haven’t put anything out nowhere near putting anything out yet at all. But I’d love to like, just take a couple of weeks off and just do some, do some recording, like get some of these ideas down. And even if only rough.
Marc (11:49.616)
Nice.
Marc (12:03.06)
nice.
Elliot (12:13.793)
That’s one of my aims this year is to get out one piece of guitar based music, get that out there into the world. Yeah.
Marc (12:21.062)
Okay. So is music some kind of like time off the other work for you? is it like, how do I put it? Well, some people have this kind of stuff where they go like, oh, I want to be a musician and like go deeply into it. Or in my case, you know, know I’m too old to like get anything near like well known in music, but I really enjoy the Thursday with my band. like every Thursday for 20 odd years now we practice.
We have a rehearsal and we meet for a couple of hours and do music. And as we know each other for such a long time, we arrive there and start making music without asking like, how was the work? How was the week? How was the family for the last couple of... You know, no chit chatting, just like straight into music again. it’s really something where as soon as I opened the door to the band house, all the rest is like left out.
Elliot (13:00.183)
Cool. Yeah.
Elliot (13:07.703)
Get on with it. Yeah.
Elliot (13:17.707)
Yeah.
Marc (13:17.999)
It’s not coming inside, right? So that’s so fantastic for me. And is that something similar for you? Like if you do the music, is the rest then forgotten or like at least for the time being?
Elliot (13:27.693)
Yeah, I think so. think to music of any sort, whether it’s kind of the electronic music that I’ve done sort of traditionally and put out a lot of stuff for, or even just playing guitar, it’s very, I was going to say meditative, not necessarily, but you have to be so present for it that it doesn’t leave much room, I think, for other thoughts. So I see it as a very separate thing. think music is, and I’m like you, I’m...
Marc (13:45.2)
Okay.
Elliot (13:56.64)
I enjoy it. I’m not sort of trying to go after some idea of becoming a famous musician in any way. just love it. It’s something that I feel I have to do, much like yourself, think. that, no, you went very pic-
Marc (14:07.63)
a disconnect.
Marc (14:12.39)
you’ve been disconnected. We’ve been disconnected briefly, yeah, but... Yeah, something, maybe my... I think we have a broken line somewhere in the house, so I need to fix the cable. Sometimes it’s a bit wacky, so it could be my side. Yeah. Anyways, you’re back now. I don’t know if it recorded anything.
Elliot (14:20.353)
We’re back.
Elliot (14:25.677)
you went a little pixely for a bit. A little bit pixely, but... Yes, cool. I’m just... Cool. It’s still... Yeah, it looks like it’s still... It’s still going. Cool. And I’m just checking my router. It’s still got Wi-Fi, so we’re all good. Yeah, but...
Marc (14:39.268)
All good.
Marc (14:44.356)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the same counts for me, right? This kind of stuff, especially as I think we both are in a position. And again, correct me if I’m wrong. We have something as our jobs or day to day jobs that is already somehow our passion, right? Like I love to run these events. It has to do with the work I do and do that for like over 20 years now.
Elliot (15:00.813)
Mmm.
Marc (15:07.632)
Therefore, it is hard to differentiate. It is my job, but still it’s my passion as well. And the same counts for you, right? So it’s very dangerous, I think, to learn burnout on that because you enjoy it so much and you’re constantly working on it and it’s still your work and you have to earn money with it and all that kind of stuff. therefore, this stuff is something, it’s really just nothing I need to do to make anything for the family work awesome. It’s just my pure and lonely pleasure.
Elliot (15:10.891)
Yeah.
Exactly. Absolutely.
You
Elliot (15:22.018)
Mm.
Elliot (15:32.928)
Exactly. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s it. That that whole thing of just I mean, I don’t want to like try and elevate it to like, I’m saying it’s like art status or anything like that. But just the idea of like something that you simply must do, that there is no, there’s no kind of commercial consideration and there’s no sort of end game for, you know, anything. It’s just I need to do need to make music in some way. And that’s, that’s, you know, that’s the driving.
Marc (15:44.079)
No, no.
Elliot (16:02.551)
force and it is and I love it for that because there’s there’s no ulterior motive to it it’s just the thing I need to get out of me I guess
Marc (16:08.902)
Yeah.
Yeah, wonderful. And talking about driving forces, we’ve spoken about briefly, about it briefly. You’ve been at my beyond tellerrand stage a couple of times giving some fantastic talks. Now you’re back. Thank you. Now you’re back, but as part of the whole site program with something that we call a book launch tour, or that you call a book launch tour, and that’s part of it. It’s for your new book, Find Specimens.
Elliot (16:21.357)
Yeah. Oh, thank you. It’s always, always a pleasure to be at BT.
Elliot (16:40.941)
That’s right.
Marc (16:41.062)
So what was the initial spark and drove you to publish a book again? I mean, that’s like a shitload of work, to be honest, right? It was nothing that you just go like, well, I do that. it’s painful, it?
Elliot (16:56.544)
Yeah, well...
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely not without its challenges. That’s a polite way of putting it. But yeah, I find Specimens is a funny one because it actually started life as a Kickstarter. And it was, it was not successful. It was an unsuccessful Kickstarter project. It didn’t, it did not reach its funding goal. And I, I put it down to a couple of things. One is that, this is my terrible planning on my part. I released
Marc (17:11.152)
Yeah.
Marc (17:17.138)
really?
Yeah.
Elliot (17:29.433)
universal principles of typography, which is that, you know, that, that one, from that’s published by quarto. And then about two weeks later, I launched a Kickstarter campaign to get find specimens funded. And so I was in this kind of like, Hey, here’s my new book, go and buy my new book. And then like two weeks later, actually, I now I’ve got this other book I’m to try to get funding for, which was just really, really bad timing. I mean, it, it a decent, a decent amount of money for sure. You know, the, the, the pledges that we got were great.
Marc (17:34.842)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (17:52.038)
Okay, so timing, yeah.
Elliot (17:59.206)
but it wasn’t, it wasn’t the goal. anyway, I, so that, that finished and I went, okay, well, you know, that’s, that’s fine. That’s, that’s what it, that’s, that’s the end of that one, I guess. And so it’s, fine. And then my publisher, the, who, did the other book got in touch and said, we would be interested in publishing fine specimens if we revisited some, some of the sort of, we’ll do the core aspects of it, changed a few things. And one of those things.
The original pitch to Kickstarter was that the book would sort of maybe be something that comes out every year. Whereas the publisher, as with traditional publishing, they prefer something to have a little bit of a longer shelf life. And so they talk about sort of evergreen content and tradition. And I think it generally equates to they’ve been sort of about every, you want it to sit on the shelf for a good sort of five or so years. So said, if we could expand it a little bit so that it felt more evergreen.
Marc (18:42.576)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (18:58.573)
we could still have lots of new typefaces in there. So I extended it so it’d be any typeface released from 2023 onwards. Because I knew it was going to be published in 26. I was kind of working on it in sort of late 24, early 25. So I thought, OK, if it’s 2023 onwards, it comes out in 26, it will still feel like you’re choosing from contemporary type. It’s still very, very new releases in there.
It was great because with the publisher then behind the whole thing, obviously I had the sort of support with getting things like an advance to prepare it, to write and design it and stuff like that. and, and to, kind of have the, the backing of people who believed in the project. and so yeah, it’s, it’s been, it’s been great to, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a funny one because unlike the other book, it, I haven’t sort of written those for it. It’s more of a curation kind of.
Marc (19:37.862)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (19:57.742)
role that I’ve played as well as the design, of course, because it’s other people’s content, the book is, you know, a sort of a coffee table book of graphics produced by foundries when type foundries want to promote the typefaces that they’re publishing. And I feel that it’s really sad that those graphics that go on social media get scrolled past on their go on websites and websites change or it’s all ephemeral. And these things just vanish. And I guess that’s been a sort of
Marc (19:59.984)
Okay.
Elliot (20:27.659)
recurrent theme in a bunch of my projects, Eight Faces that you mentioned in the intro was a similar sort of motivation that I was very much 100 % a web designer at the time and I wanted to make something that would be real and sit on shelves. And so that was my motivation for that. And in a way, this has sort of come through to this again, whereas I want to, I don’t want these graphics to just disappear into the ether. I want them, I want to give them a space to be preserved and enjoyed.
Marc (20:32.281)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (20:55.521)
And I think when you do look through the book, look through any book, a printed book, you do absorb and appreciate things in a different way to just looking at something on screen. know, it has a different physical weight to it. And yeah, and so that was really the primary motivation to share all of this wonderful work because the typefaces themselves are beautiful, but the graphics that these foundries make are beautiful as well. And...
Marc (21:09.179)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (21:22.605)
And it’s interesting because you can also get, you can have a really beautifully designed typeface, but maybe the promotional graphics around it aren’t. That doesn’t necessarily make, they’re gonna be, not saying they’re bad, mean anyway, but they, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the best typeface is gonna have the best graphics and the other way around as well. And also, oh, sorry.
Marc (21:40.838)
Okay. Do you... Yeah, so just to get the idea, do you also criticise those specimens or is it just like show them, I don’t comment on them?
Elliot (21:53.486)
Yeah, it’s, it’s, there’s no, there’s no criticism in there. It’s, shown with some, some edited version of the text that the foundries have supplied as well. There is some, there is some sort of critical thinking in there that I’ve got a fairly big introduction where I sort of talk a little bit about these concepts. And then there are six essays in there as well, that I commissioned. So John Boardley, founder of ILOF Typography, and Ellen Lupton, who’s written a million fantastic books, but especially Thinking with Type, which is
Marc (21:57.604)
Okay.
Elliot (22:22.669)
my personal favorite book on type in general, typography. Eric Spiekerman, who we all know of course, Laura Massagua. I’m never quite sure how to pronounce Laura’s surname, so I apologise for that. She’s one of the founders of typotones. Minyoung Kim, who’s done some fantastic stuff across Korean and Japanese typography. And I worked with her when I was doing the Google Fonts Knowledge stuff. She wrote some really great articles around...
CJK type and Veronica Burian. one of the founders of type together and they’ve written some really lovely essays that talk about specimens and the nature of presenting type in a specimen format and type design in general. And I think there’s a really, there’s a really nice mix of content in there. And it’s a great, a great honor to have those people in the book.
Marc (23:20.74)
Nice. Yeah, cool. So how does it look like? If I now, as you describe it, I think of something like we have old flyer designs from back in the techno area where you just collect them and put them in a book and show them. So how does it look like in terms of that? Is it like you introduce the typeface, the specimens, and say, who created that? What’s the approach?
Elliot (23:45.652)
Yeah, so it’s, I’ve intentionally gone for like, I’ve gone for a very simple, a very simple thing. Does this, is this, is this going to go out as audio as well, or is it just video? As in, okay, cool. So if you’re, if you’re listening, I’m just going to quickly flick through some of the book, but if you’re watching them, you can maybe see some of it. So it’s, it’s obviously very, very heavy on the graphics. The, the text is, is kept to a minimum really. But we...
Marc (23:56.984)
Both, audio and video.
Marc (24:04.902)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (24:10.395)
Yeah.
Elliot (24:14.957)
try to just make it very useful. So it’s divided into four different sections, which is serif, sans serif, what’s the actual full thing, calligraphic, I forget the order of the thing now, where are we? It is, let me find the actual content space so I don’t get the order wrong, black letter, script, calligraphic, and handwritten as one section. And then classification-defying.
which is anything that doesn’t sort of fit neatly into those other kind of boundaries. But yeah, and that I really struggled with this for a long time about whether I should, how I should divide these things up because font categorisation and filtering on websites, and obviously this is something we do with Adobe fonts as well, is hard and it’s, you’ve got to balance.
Marc (25:06.544)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (25:11.457)
the ability for people who are really into it to really know there’s very specific categories and subcategories and then to also make it approachable for people who want to not get bogged down in all of these kind of confusing terms and all this kind of thing. So I ended up going with those four sections just to kind of make it very accessible. And even if you’re a type pro, when you’re looking for a typeface, I’d still find that generally speaking,
it’s going to sort of fall into those buckets. Like you sort of know if you’re looking for, are you generally looking for a sounds? Are you looking for a serif? Sure. Within serif, there’s going to be a bunch of different sub-categories and even like grouping, black letter, script, calligraphic, et cetera, together is like somewhat controversial because sometimes they can be very, very different styles, but
Marc (25:44.304)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (26:01.862)
I think for anyone in the type industry themselves, yes, but for someone who’s consuming type in a way, makes sense in a way. I get it.
Elliot (26:05.164)
Mm.
Elliot (26:08.651)
Yeah, exactly.
That’s right. So it’s just there to kind of have this kind of way of just making it easy to navigate for people. So if you’re looking for a new typeface to use, something that’s only come out in the last sort two to three years, and you know roughly what sort of general categorisation you want to search within, then it’s just very easy to flick through that. But yeah, I really tried to kind of steer away from critical...
thinking around each particular typeface. Because also, you know, do you criticise the typeface? Do you criticise the graphics? For me, this is about sharing these graphics that people have made and stopping them from disappearing. yeah.
Marc (26:41.637)
Yeah.
Marc (26:49.35)
Okay, it’s showing and leave the judgment to the one looking at it, right?
Elliot (26:54.815)
Exactly, exactly. That’s right. And you know, some people will find some stuff in there that they might love and someone next to them would absolutely hate and say, why on is this in there? Yeah, very much wanted to leave that to the reader.
Marc (27:08.528)
Yeah, so I think it’s like over 200 typefaces, right? Am I correct? Roughly? I think it is.
Elliot (27:15.373)
Yeah, that’s a good, how many typefaces are there? That’s good question. It’s yeah, it is, yeah, so there are two, let’s see, there are 210 pages of typefaces. Most of them, we got us a variety, some are double page spreads and some are single pages. So, there’s...
Marc (27:35.462)
So it is definitely a amount of inspiration in there. It’s not just like 50 typefaces, which is also a lot, but it’s like way more. And it’s all, I think, from 23 onwards, like to 2023 onwards. it’s.
Elliot (27:43.359)
No, no, exactly. Yeah, way, way more.
Elliot (27:51.246)
for 20, 23 hours, that’s right. so, yeah, there’s, yeah, there’s about, yeah, cause summer double page spreads, but it’s in the region of sort of 200-ish typefaces, something like that.
Marc (28:01.408)
Mm-hmm. yeah. just in case someone who’s not just from the Latin space of lettering and there’s also Arabic and Cyrillic stuff in there, right?
Elliot (28:13.183)
Yeah, absolutely. And Devin Agri and Hangul and Japanese and all I’ve tried. I’ve made a really big effort to make sure that there are plenty of writing systems represented. And one of the other decisions was to, a lot of books can be guilty or not just books, but sort of things that try to classify typefaces of grouping quote unquote non-Latin into one section.
Marc (28:29.882)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (28:41.582)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was about to say that,
Elliot (28:43.321)
which I really wanted to avoid, wanted to make sure that, you know, Latin was in there along with any other writing systems as well. Obviously it is predominantly Latin. There’s still mainly Latin, in terms of, you know, for my own, my own perspective, you know, most, a lot of the foundries that I know that it’s sort of predominantly for kind of, Latin based audiences. It is predominantly Latin, but there are still lots of other scripts in there.
Marc (28:54.842)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (29:10.352)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (29:13.425)
And that was a real sort of conscious decision to sort of admit that like we can’t sort of help but see it through a Latin centric point of view, but to make sure that there are a variety of scripts in there as well.
Marc (29:14.203)
nice.
Yeah.
Marc (29:24.832)
That was something I noticed when I got your PDF and had a look at it. It wasn’t categorised in the different categorisations, but it was in line, I’d say, with the Latin stuff. Interestingly enough, those things often catch me. Nadine Chaheen, she spoke about Arabic type in my 2012 edition of beyond tellerrand. And then this year, Kimya Gandhi has come in speaking about typeface as well.
Elliot (29:39.083)
Yes.
Elliot (29:44.909)
Mm.
Elliot (29:53.898)
awesome, yeah.
Marc (29:54.956)
kind of stuff. I’m always very curious about stuff like this. if you look at it, it looks so exotic, right? And it’s not what I’m used to. And I’m like, that looks beautiful. No matter what it says, but I have no idea. would be one of those people tattooing something going like, your mom is a bitch or something like this.
Elliot (30:04.877)
Mmm.
Elliot (30:08.321)
Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really, it’s really important to have that representation in there to make sure that people don’t, like I said, in many ways you can’t, you know, I also think we should admit that we are seeing it from a Latin centric point of view, but to try and make sure that there is that variety in there as well. And that, to be honest, is like one of the big
Marc (30:15.056)
So yeah.
Elliot (30:37.643)
challenges in the type industry or rather for users of type if you’re working for an international brand and you do need to cover multiple scripts the sad truth is that there aren’t really that many typefaces in the grand scale of things if you look at all available fonts in the world there aren’t really that many that do have multi-script language coverage I mean if you’re talking about some might have you know they’ve got a
Marc (31:03.514)
Mm-hmm.
Elliot (31:07.095)
Devin Agri version and an Arabic version and Hangul or the Hebrew version. But to have ones that are really truly multi-script, there aren’t many of them. And what that means is that people go, well, I’ll have to use a different typeface for my Japanese side of things. Or I will have to play it safe and use something like Noto, which has the really big international coverage.
Gradually, I think the type industry is becoming better at multi-script typefaces in general and hopefully, fingers crossed books like this help to raise awareness of that stuff to folks who maybe that’s entirely new, know, like, I actually didn’t think about, you know, maybe they just think that thinking about other languages, other places means making sure that you’ve got, I don’t know, umlauts in there or something like that because, know, there plenty of...
plenty of typefaces that don’t even have basic European diacritics and stuff like that. And obviously they’re generally poor quality typefaces or maybe work in progress typefaces. yeah, to kind of truly have something that’s multi-script is actually quite rare.
Marc (32:24.986)
Yeah,
more questions I have towards the book. First of all, and I might know the answer already, why a book and not a webpage?
Elliot (32:30.541)
Mmm.
Elliot (32:34.861)
Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s a really good question. think, well, for me, like I mentioned before, when I was talking about Eight Faces, because I was a web designer when that project came out, and that was very much an effort to make something physical, because I was literally very tired of all of my work just disappearing after such a short period of time. I think that’s always been something that’s motivated me to have some sort of physical
manifestation in, in, some way. And, know, I, I, I still love the web. I still work predominantly on the web and I love, you know, microsites. If someone’s made a microsite dedicated to the release of a typeface and they’ve done some, really special GT, really type all of their like GT, whatever, GT international, all of their typefaces. have these beautiful, dedicated microsites that are all singing or dancing. They’ve all got their own kind of brands. All the very interactive.
And it’s great. And I absolutely fully support that stuff. I love it. and share a lot of that stuff in the newsletter, but I really wanted to kind of capture that sense of there’s so much great stuff out there that is ultimately being scrolled past or being lost in the continual flood of information. And, fonts are not immune. There are a lot of fonts out there and they’re coming out all the time and
There are some great websites out there for discovering them and accessing them and filtering them and all that kind of thing. But I really wanted to make something physical, especially some of the foundries in here, especially some of the indie foundries in here really don’t have anything beyond their own website or maybe a little bit of maybe they’re on my fonts or maybe they’re elsewhere. But I really wanted to kind of capture something with them and make sure that there were some small one person indie foundries amongst some of the
bigger, well-established names in type as well.
Marc (34:32.57)
Yeah. What would you say these days, what is one of the biggest challenges for type designers and type foundries, like the smaller ones you just mentioned, right? Is it like the amount of work that goes into producing typefaces? Because I know I had just another foundry whose name is it? Tim, yes. He once spoke.
Elliot (34:56.158)
Tim. Tim Arends. Yeah.
Marc (34:59.238)
Yes, he once spoke in 2010 in Cologne at my Flash event. Spoke about the whole procedure of the work that happens after you designed the type to make it work. And I was blown away by that. And sure enough, that’s hours and hours and hours of work going into one specific typeface, if it’s well-made. So would you say it’s that, the amount of work going into it and the profit they make with the typeface in the end?
Elliot (35:08.532)
yep.
Elliot (35:15.821)
Mm.
Mm.
Marc (35:26.2)
It must be pure passion to actually be a type designer or?
Elliot (35:28.493)
Yeah, I mean, it’s, think, yeah, there are two, what the one is that sort of, quality. there’s quality, there’s quality in terms of like the general sort of the drawing quality, having kerning data in there. So it’s well, it’s well spaced, this kind of thing that you could have with a single weight, single style, you know, it could still be really well drawn, really well spaced. You’d be a very usable typeface.
Marc (35:31.526)
What’s the biggest challenge?
Elliot (35:58.222)
And that’s one side of things. If you want it to also be usable in real world context, then you need to have realistically multiple weights and styles. know, at the very least, obviously you need bold and italic and bold and italic. Really you need a full, you know, nine weights and matching italics at least. If folks can make variable fonts and even better, it makes it more flexible for the end user. But as you say,
the quality and the sort of robustness of the fonts themselves only get you so far. You also need to do all of this marketing stuff. You need to make these promotional graphics that appear in certain books. But, you know, it’s a lot of work and I have a lot of type designing friends and I know a lot of them really struggle with that fact. And actually, you know, I think I’m guilty of this for sure. And other friends who aren’t type designers, exactly same.
When you’ve done a project and you finish the project and you’ve used up every last bit of energy and enthusiasm you have for it, the last thing you want to do is then start promoting it and then making all the promotional assets. no, all the social media and all this kind of thing. And anyway, I know a lot of type designers who they do find that a real, a real challenge to then kind of find the enthusiasm to do all that kind of thing. And then of course the other big challenge I think is
Marc (37:16.942)
yeah.
Elliot (37:20.269)
over saturation of the market. There are just so many fonts out there. And you can counter that to a degree by producing really well-made fonts because places like Adobe fonts, for instance, will only accept things of a very high technical standard. There are certain literal sort of quality tests that they have to go through and meet, standards that have to be met to go in the library. But also if you
put a typeface out on either independently or on one of the other kind of distributors. There’s just so many fonts out there that it can be just hard to just find people. And this this is a true everything, right? Same with, same with music, same with books even. Same, you know, it’s like, there’s just, there’s a lot of great stuff out there.
Marc (38:04.336)
Yeah. And therefore, totally, totally. therefore it’s always great to get to know certain things through recommendation. And it’s fantastic. That’s what I like with Oliver for the new beyond tellerand website. said, so no saying from me, let’s say I don’t want to say anything, what would be a typeface for that design that you pick? And so he gave me a little video introduction to three different
type pairings that he thought would fit, right? So really well done. so I got back and was like, well, the problem was he gave me three really good looking and well working ones. So was like, damn, I have to make a decision now. But that was actually really, really cool. Because you know, the pain really is like, what do I pick and choose? And what do I even know? Of course, that’s the problem. Oftentimes you don’t know some of the stuff that someone else would recommend to you.
Elliot (38:33.387)
nice.
Hey, fantastic.
Elliot (38:52.108)
Mmm.
Elliot (38:57.961)
Mmm, exactly.
Marc (38:59.148)
For inspiration and knowing and then actually seeing it work, well, it helps a lot.
Elliot (39:04.893)
Yes, because that’s the other big challenge is that when you maybe fall in love with a typeface that you think you’re going to use for your project and then you realise that, it’s missing certain characters, certain glyphs where, you know, perhaps certain languages aren’t supported or certain styles that you need. I mean, I see people use beautifully designed, upright typefaces that don’t have an italic style. And then what happens, yeah, inevitably you’re going to need an italic in there and then the browser renders it as a faux italic or whatever.
Marc (39:26.731)
And then they force it into italics.
Elliot (39:34.431)
app you’re using to do your design stuff. you still see that a lot. There are a lot of typefaces out there that don’t have some of that kind of those kind of fairly basic needs,
Marc (39:45.42)
Very true. Yeah, and then if we talk about the life happening, which is happening end of April in Düsseldorf, what would people expect or can people expect from that? Will you bring books? Will you sign books? Will you give like a little introductory to it? Can people ask questions? How do you like try to prepare it?
Elliot (39:54.252)
Yeah.
Elliot (40:02.069)
Yes.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, all of the above, all of the above and thank you so much, by the way, for making that happen. Really, really appreciate it.
Marc (40:11.908)
Yeah, totally happy. I’m, I’m, as said, I’m curious and it’s always great to have this kind of stuff. Cause if I have the chance to introduce this to people who are maybe not from the type field sector or like not yet as interested as they should be. Well, that’s always an opportunity, right? So, and that’s, that’s the idea of beyond tellerrand, expose them to stuff that they don’t know yet. And then that’s great.
Elliot (40:22.636)
Mmm.
Elliot (40:26.006)
Yep.
Elliot (40:32.553)
Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I will be there on the... well, I’ll be there for the whole event, but on having this sort of launch party on the Monday evening after the last talk. And what’s the stage called? I’ve forgotten the name of the stage. It’s the exhibition stage. that’s it. Yeah. So yeah, so I have a ton of books with me.
Marc (40:45.094)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (40:51.044)
Also that’s the exhibition stage. It’s like in the exhibition, in the upper free, exactly. So that’s where we stream.
Elliot (41:01.141)
which I’ll be selling directly in theory, as long as the card reading stuff on my phone works. Might be doing some mad tests with you in the morning, but charging vast amounts of money to your credit card. And yeah, I’ll have books with me. I will, I’ll be happy to sign books if folks want me to as well. And yeah, definitely there for questions and just to kind of talk about, about that and just hanging out and having.
Marc (41:06.98)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Elliot (41:26.891)
having some drinks as well and just, yeah, it’d be lovely to kind of, yeah, to meet people and it’d just be a pleasure to be at tellerand again. Because as you say, I’ve spoken a few times, but last November I had the pleasure of attending and it was great just being an attendee, coming to the Berlin event and just getting to soak it all up and see all the lovely people who always come. It’s always such a nice atmosphere. I’m always, Mark, honestly, I am always raving about beyond tellerand people. I’m telling everybody.
Marc (41:35.238)
Yeah.
Marc (41:41.755)
Yeah.
Elliot (41:57.246)
need to go to beyond tellerrand. It is one of my very, very favourite events ever. And so yeah, I’m selfishly just looking forward to being there anyway. But yes, hopefully we’ll be there with some books and well, I will definitely be there with some books, but hopefully that will be of interest to people as well.
Marc (41:58.118)
Thank you.
Marc (42:08.442)
Yeah, cool.
Marc (42:15.406)
I will, I will. I make sure it is. I force them to, but no that!
Elliot (42:17.801)
Thank you. It’s like when you when you leave a museum and you have to exit through the gift shop, you force people that way, you can’t go until you hold your phone up. Exactly. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. Should be great. And Technic, and I’m trying to do this kind of book tour. So a few events that are effectively celebrating.
Marc (42:24.966)
Exactly. You want a drink? That way.
Marc (42:43.706)
What other stops then?
Elliot (42:45.067)
Yeah, so I’ve got, the first one’s going to be in Bristol, just firming that up at the moment. So that’s going to be, in theory, just a couple of days before the book’s release date. So that’s the 10th of March, because the book officially comes out. Well, that’s the US pub date. I think the UK and everywhere else pub date is the 12th of March. And when is this going out, actually? Will this go out before then? amazing. OK, cool. So yeah, so it’s the Bristol one. And then in Brussels.
Marc (42:48.496)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (42:55.59)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (43:06.662)
In two days here, I think.
Elliot (43:14.859)
the Waterstones story in Brussels, which should be fun on the 1st of April. That’s not a joke. It’s not not April Fools. It’s really, really will be there. And then it will be beyond tellerrand at the end of April. And then we’ve got London in the middle of May. And then I’m doing another sort of side event at the Type Paris Now 26 conference at the end of May. And that there may be one other one as well at some point, but they’re the five confirmed ones. So yes, so BT will be right, right in the middle.
Marc (43:27.941)
Nice.
Elliot (43:44.141)
which is great.
Marc (43:45.328)
Nice. So do you plan to do more over the year?
Elliot (43:48.706)
I want to kind of keep them close-ish to the release of the book. Yeah. I mean, I’d love to kind of do one further afield, to be honest, because obviously it’s only a very small portion of Europe that I’m managing to kind of get to. I’d love to do, you know, a US one or, you know, further afield there. But yeah, it’s logistically easier to do a UK and European tour, of course.
Marc (43:53.008)
to the release.
Marc (44:12.57)
Yeah, time and money. mean, those events these days are also not easy to put up and you need someone like to financially do it or attach it to an event like mine where people are there already, right? go like, okay, let’s do it. Yeah, it’s also difficult really because I looked into it like bookstores. It’s so hard to find independent bookstores that do these kinds of things these days, right? Especially with a very specific book like yours and not like...
Elliot (44:23.249)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly, that’s right.
Elliot (44:32.895)
Mmm. Yeah.
Elliot (44:42.315)
Yeah, like a Stephen King or something. Exactly. Yeah. mean, and it is hard. I think, you know, book shops want to have, they want to guarantee a certain amount of sales or they want to have it paid for so that if they don’t sell copies, it’s kind of, they kind of get something back. It’s yeah. The book tour thing is definitely not a money-making event. is just a, I see it as a promotional effort basically. And I didn’t do it for the other book for Universal Principles.
Marc (44:42.502)
a sci-fi story or yeah, yeah, exactly. So the more general thing is, it’s very specific, right?
Elliot (45:10.977)
Sorry, I’m looking up because it’s up there on my shelf. but I did do one release event in Bristol, which I’m really happy that we did because it’s so when you put something out there in the world, you know, and you press, you make the website go live so you can take orders or whatever. It’s so, it’s such a non-event a lot of the time. We had this with eight faces and with logon the magazine that my wife and I ran, you know, Hey, the new issues live. And you send out an email newsletter and you post it on Instagram and blah, blah.
Marc (45:11.654)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (45:19.622)
Mm-hmm, scene photos,
Marc (45:38.544)
Yeah, nice.
Elliot (45:41.132)
And it just falls flat. it’s when it’s a physical, a real physical thing, I really like to try and say, Hey, let’s, gather some people together in the real world and have some drinks and have a chat and try and make something of it. And it doesn’t need to be many people. I quite like the idea of it being quite a small gathering, but just, just something to mark the occasion. I think it’s nice to do.
Marc (46:03.098)
Yeah, really great. Yeah. I think that’s a fantastic ending because that’s all that kind of stuff that you just said about like, yes, meeting some people don’t have to be like always like a lot of people, but like bring them together and share some experiences and make it a happening in a way. Yeah, that’s my biggest aim with what I do. And it’s great that you’re part of it in April. I’m very much looking forward to it.
Elliot (46:20.875)
Yeah.
Elliot (46:28.023)
Thank you, me too.
Marc (46:29.368)
not only to see you, but also like to run this kind of stuff. And I know that already a few people from the discord said like, wow, I bring these fine. The other book I bought, like what was it? I think it was the last one that someone said, right? Like, and get it signed and stuff. So, and it’s great to create some momentum, right? Where people looking forward to it. Fantastic.
Elliot (46:43.511)
cool, awesome. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, thank you. Really looking forward to it.
Marc (46:52.462)
Elliot, it was a fantastic 40 something minutes now. It’s great to see you in April. And I am pretty sure that in the show notes, I will put the link to the book and all that kind of stuff where they can... Is it still available for pre-order or do people have to wait now for the actual release?
Elliot (46:57.227)
Yeah.
Great to see you.
Elliot (47:05.751)
thank you.
Elliot (47:09.853)
No, it’s available for pre-order and I’m hearing of people who are already receiving their orders, which is weird because it’s not meant to be out yet. I think that’s folks in the US, but still, yeah, they seem to be arriving, which is early, but hey, it’s all good.
Marc (47:17.241)
really? Okay cool. Okay.
Marc (47:26.714)
Fantastic. Recommendation where to get the book is always, as you did for me, your local bookstore. Go and get there, get it there, because usually they will get it for you and they need it. They need your support as well.
Elliot (47:33.653)
Absolutely.
Elliot (47:40.109)
And if you can’t do that, then bookshop.org is for I think it’s only available in the UK and US. But if you are in the UK or US, then that’s a great way of supporting your local bookstores without actually having to go to your local bookstore. So yeah, folks like that.
Marc (47:47.578)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (47:57.53)
Wonderful. And with that, I’d say we will certainly speak before Beyond tellerrand, but if not, see you there. And thank you for being here.
Elliot (48:02.129)
yeah.
Thank you, mate. Thank you for having me, mate. Lovely to see you. All right, cheers.