Craig Ward Interview

Interview with Craig Ward

Craig's work involves consulting and creating pioneering,
award winning typography for a diverse range of clients from fashion to advertising and editorial.

A contributor to several industry journals and former ADC Young Gun, Craig’s work has been shown, awarded and documented globally in countless books, publications and exhibitions.

In your opinion, has typography been affected by technology in a positive and/or negative way?
Both I guess; the arrival of desktop publishing in the 80's took typesetting out of the hands of master printers and put it in the public domain. As good and important as this was, you know full well that the general public do some pretty nasty things (visually) when you give them the option to. In the right hands, however, the ability to create custom type quickly has led to some really great things - look at Non Format, Alex Trochut etc. Both would have done good work with a pen and drafting table 30 years ago BUT they'd have been less prolific, the technology has helped them make good work more quickly.

If you're talking about technology in terms of the way type is viewed - as in, primarily on screen - it's currently in a state of flux. 90% of type on the web is dreadful, not helped by the 72dpi displays you're forced to view it on. Iphone/iPad screens etc are better and helping, plus now we have HTML 5 and the option/ability to call in any number of fonts for display. That in itself can be a good or a bad thing. personally, I think those who specialise in web design would have been better off spending their time learning to use the 5 fonts they had first before jumping in with both feet. But that's just the desktop publishing thing again in a new form.

What is your response to 'typography should be invisible'?
That's an old adage, and something I've played with myself. From the phrase that, if a typographer has done a good job, you won't know he's been there at all.

I think it's true to an extent -certainly with regards to large quantities of printed text etc - but I think, when it comes to headlines or instances where the type is the only element it shouldn't be the case. I also think advertising, particularly above the line - whatever that is anymore - has often been guilty of relegating type to the bottom right hand corner of the ad, locked up with a tiny packshot. I don't want to repeat myself here too much, you should check the article I wrote for Creative Review, the original version of which is on my blog:

http://wordsarepictures.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/you-cant-make-people-read-but-you-can-make-them-want-to-unabridged/


How important is a formal education to graphic designers before experimenting with layout, grids, typographical hierarchy?
I think it's important to an extent, but only in so much as typography has rules, unlike a lot of creative disciplines, and it's important to at least acknowledge them in your work, even if you don' always stick to them. A good type tutor will, in a relatively short time, be able to give you some good rules of thumb to work by. A formal education in the university sense is probably overplayed. I went and studied, and I do think I'm a better designer for it, but that's more to do with the time you spend experimenting. I think, if you try and go straight into a career as a designer then you miss that stage where you're finding your visual voice, learning different techniques etc. Just my two pence.