New York Times: Jonathan Hoefler on the ABCs of designing a dial

The typography expert Jonathan Hoefler revealed in a recent episode of the Netflix series “Abstract: The Art of Design” how he created one of his latest type designs, Decimal.

Speaking to New York Times, Hoefler also spoke of the typography of luxury watches.

“In the 1980s, we start to see fonts being used. These are things that work in a rigid tradition and are designed to work in systems. Typographic forms are different from those that can come from sign painting or calligraphy or engraving. You start to see forms designed for typesetting advertisements scaled down for watches and the flavor starts to change” he says.

“A lot of the typefaces chosen for modern watches are chosen badly or on the basis of some kind of emotional quality as opposed to a practical one. So you see men’s watches using typefaces used on sports drinks or women’s watches that have the kind of wretched script seen on wedding invitations. There’s very little thought given to mechanical constraint, to what kinds of letters reproduce well small or what kinds of watches can be decorated with different kinds of lettering.”

Read more here.