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Let’s Be Clear
October 23, 2014 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Every design, every ad, every form of marketing strives to communicate clearly. Typography is a crucial component of any marketing material, affecting consumers’ ability to absorb the message. Not too many years ago, selecting the type and font for a project was a fairly straightforward endeavor. Today, type matters are increasingly complex not only because traditional media are phasing out in favor of digital ones (think mobile phones) and platforms like print giving way to social, whether Facebook or Twitter. Our use of and how we experience fonts has changed: we touch them, we scale them, we make them move; our interaction is far more personal. Complicating this shift, for typographers, is a relatively new and necessary amount of detail about font usage, from ownership to copyrights and licensing agreements, particularly on the Web, that simply cannot be ignored.
Stewart Devlin, chief creative officer of Red Peak Branding, and Bruno Maag, creative director and chairman, Dalton Maag, guide Type Director Club members through a fascinating tour of type history using the case study of Intel Clear, the proprietary, global font created in 2014 for Intel Corp. by Red Peak and Dalton Maag. Along the way, Devlin and Maag promise to bring clarity to the murky, confusing world of font usage today: how does licensing work? Who owns fonts? Why will the answers to these questions matter more, not less, to typographers and marketers like Intel Corp. in the months and years to come?
Stewart Devlin
From a global technology company to a UK bread baker, vodka brand to the biggest commercial mall in the U.S., Stewart Devlin has put his creative sensibility to work across a broad range of clients. As chief creative officer of Red Peak Branding, a unit of NYC-based Red Peak Group (www.redpeakgroup.com), Stewart leads a fast-expanding studio of graphic designers, brand strategists, photographers, and art directors in finding solutions to the most complicated marketing problems. His guiding principle: “We cannot blame a client for buying a ‘safer option’ if we cannot articulate why a more creative solution will make better business sense.”
Stewart built a portfolio and reputation over some two decades, starting at Lewis Moberly, London, moving onward to Williams Murray Hamm, Desgrippes Gobé and The Partners. He joined Red Peak, founded by former Omnicom Group vice chairman Michael Birkin, at its 2010 launch. He heads the firm’s creative work for global clients including Intel, Acer, and You On Demand as well as domestic brands HarvestMark and Free Arts NYC.
Stewart’s work has been recognized by D&AD, CLIO, Type Directors Club, New York Festivals, American Graphic Design, LIA Awards, FAB Awards, Graphis, Epica Awards, Mobius Awards, American Corporate Identity, Communication Arts and Art Directors Club.
He’s served as a juror for the CLIO’s, New York Festivals and Art Directors Club and Kinsale Sharks.
Bruno Maag
Bruno began his typographic career with a traditional apprenticeship as a typesetter at the Tages-Anzeiger, Switzerland’s largest daily newspaper. In his apprenticeship Bruno learned to typeset with metal type, and with the introduction of new technologies also worked with photo and digital type. During this time, he also gained an in-depth knowledge of all aspects of the printing industry. His further education in Typography (BA level) and Visual Communications (MA level) at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland allowed Bruno to expand his technical and organizational skills into design and identity development. At Basel, Bruno cemented his interest in type design under the supervision of Andre Guertler and Wolfgang Weingart. After graduating Bruno emigrated to England to take up a position at Monotype. Here, he received extensive training in drawing letterforms using traditional hand skills and software. Monotype made him responsible for developing a ‘custom font department’ to answer the growing needs of a design and printing industry that was embracing these newly emerging technologies. After 18 months of working in England, Bruno was transferred to Monotype’s Chicago USA office where he continued to work with design and publishing clients to create brand specific fonts. One such project was to digitally recreate the fonts in use, at the time, for ‘The New Yorker’ magazine. He established Dalton Maag after returning to the UK. Since 1991 he has steadily built the company to become one of the world’s leading typographic studios. Bruno’s background and experience make him a valuable addition to a brand team. As an external resource with a very specific skillset he is able to offer impartial advice to ensure the best possible result for the client. Bruno also lectures frequently in the UK and internationally on the subject of typography and its implementation within a brand environment.