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The new face of typography 

Recently-arrived prof Nathalie Dumont is creating a new font

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Many typeface designers find inspiration in artifacts around them – a few letters on a building or an old sign. Others remake existing fonts, in the same way that filmmakers re-create classics.

Nathalie Dumont, who joined Concordia as assistant professor in design and computation arts in September, is starting from scratch.

“I’m not too fond of revivals that are very loyal to the original font. I’m working from a theoretical standpoint,” she says.

As part of her PhD in studies and practices of arts at Université du Québec à Montréal, she is designing a new typeface.

Her goal is to create a very legible typeface suitable for continuous reading, which emphasizes horizontal movement, making it easier for your eye to follow lines of text. A display typeface, on the other hand, is designed to attract attention.

Less experienced designers often start sketching their initial ideas by hand. Dumont starts with lower case letters a and e, which she admits to being slightly obsessed with, since you can easily add personality to them. Next, she moves on to letters with ascenders and descenders like b, d, p, and q, plus letters with arches like n and h to define the font’s treatment of straight lines and curves.

“The letters can’t just be beautiful, they have to work as a group,” she says.

Born in Montreal, Dumont grew up in several small towns in Quebec and spent time in Guinea in western Africa. She completed her BFA in graphic communication at the Université Laval before moving to England for her master’s in typeface design at the University of Reading.

She taught the basis of typography and typographic design at Université Laval for five years and was a visiting lecturer at the École Inuit Lab in Paris.

Here in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Dumont is teaching Words in Space and Print: Meaning & Process and organizing a winter lecture series featuring professors, practitioners and design agencies.

“I was curious about Concordia,” she says. It seemed like the perfect match for her experience abroad and solid network in Quebec. As for her initial impression of the university, she said, “It’s huge. It’s really a city within a city, with so many opportunities for collaboration.”

All are welcome to attend the final event in the speaker series featuring Erik Adigard, founder of the design studio M-A-D, on March 24 from 4 to 6 p.m. in EV 6.720.