{"id":3352,"date":"2009-09-01T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/?p=3352"},"modified":"2018-04-17T05:08:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T12:08:36","slug":"focus-on-fontstructors-tobias-sommer-shasta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/2009\/09\/01\/focus-on-fontstructors-tobias-sommer-shasta\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus On FontStructors \u2013 Tobias Sommer (shasta)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(This article was originally published on FontShop<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFontFeed\u201d blog. Many thanks to MonoType<\/a> for permission to reproduce this article here.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This is the sixth in our series of mini-\u200binterviews with FontStruc\u00adtors<\/a>. In this instalment we talk to Tobias Sommer, better known on FontStruct<\/a> as Shasta<\/a>. Now you have to realise that I am contacting most FontStructors to be inter\u00adviewed blindly. See, I work from a list called \u201cTop FontStructors\u201d on the internal message board for FontShop projects. Origi\u00adnally it only had the alias, URL<\/span>, and a short description for all the potential inter\u00adviewees each. For example Geneus<\/a> is simply listed as \u201cgeneus1 \u2013 the master of complex, themed FontStruc\u00adtions\u201d, and Funk_\u200bKing<\/a> as \u201cfunk_\u200bking \u2013 purely prolific and versatile work\u201d. You would expect from any self-\u200brespecting journalist to at least check first who is the person he will contact, but hey, whoever said I take myself seriously? This is why I was surprised (and amused) to find out that \u2013 when I sent a request for an interview to Shasta on Monday July 20th \u2013 I actually had contacted the very same Tobias Summer who had commented on the Em42 interview just the day before. It was partic\u00adu\u00adlarly funny that he ended his comment with: \u201d(\u2026) A very well-\u200bdeserved article! They\u2019re doing a great job picking out top FontStructors so far.\u201d<\/em> without him or me knowing he would receive an invitation himself the very next day. How\u2019s that for a coinci\u00addence?<\/div>\n
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Tobias Sommer (shasta)<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tobias Sommer was born 23 years ago in St.\u00a0Gallen, a small, quiet town in the east of Switzerland. Growing up drawing and scrawling a lot, he went through high school, discovered his interests for graphic design, photog\u00adraphy, languages, music, politics, history, liter\u00adature, snowboarding, mountain biking, geography, creative writing and whatnot, and of course ended up not having a clue what the heck to choose of all these things to do profes\u00adsionally. Thank\u00adfully many of them \u201cfell away due to lack of talent\u201d (as he says so himself), and so he ended up having to choose between design or languages\/politics\/history. Tobias then started studying Inter\u00adaction Design<\/em> at Zurich University of Arts<\/a>, stopped after a year and switched to Inter\u00adna\u00adtional Affairs<\/a><\/em> in Geneva. And that\u2019s where he is now: studying and enjoying life in Geneva.<\/p>\n

Tobias randomly ran into FontStruct on some web design award site, one or two weeks after it was released.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPunched Out<\/a> and Punched Out Fill<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

You started on Fontstruct very early after the launch. What were your first impressions?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, we fell in love at first sight. We\u2019ve been a happy couple ever since. Of course we have our ups and downs at times, but it\u2019s looking pretty good.\u00a0:)<\/p>\n

It was by the way very impressive to notice how many FontStructors and FontStruc\u00adtions were already there when I first got on the site. I only realised how young the site actually was when they posted the \u201c21 Days\u201d post (The First Three Weeks<\/a>) on the blog. Someone had done some good PR<\/span> there!<\/p>\n

You did one year of Inter\u00adaction Design, but did you have any actual experience with graphic or type design?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think I\u2019m one of the few regular FontStructors who don\u2019t make a living with anything related to graphic design, typog\u00adraphy, or other creative stuff. As a regular student, the only connection points to the design world in my profes\u00adsional life are the eye cancer provoking Power\u00adPoint presen\u00adta\u00adtions<\/a> of our professors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nGreat Depression<\/a> by Shasta<\/span>
\nStill I can\u2019t deny having a past with design. First of all, my whole family\u2019s pretty fond of design and visual arts in general. As I mentioned, I myself started studying design, but switched to Inter\u00adna\u00adtional Affairs<\/em> after one year. That year at the University of Arts certainly was a big step ahead for my design skills, but it also made me realise that keeping design just as a hobby along the way might be enough. And that works great so\u00a0far.<\/p>\n

Type design on the other hand was pretty new to me. I had always been very inter\u00adested in the subject, right from my very first attempts with graphic design (drawing pixel logos for my own imaginary brand in Microsoft Paint at the age of 12\u2026 Yee-\u200bhah!). Yet my sporadic and desperate attempts to find appro\u00adpriate software to put my ideas into practice always found a sudden and bitter end, either at the price of the program or the size of its manual. So discov\u00adering FontStruct was pure bliss, and the starting point of my type design \u201ccareer\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCupra<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

You mention the \u201ceye cancer provoking Power\u00adPoint presen\u00adta\u00adtions of our professors\u201d<\/em>. Do you remember when you started noticing such things? As I know the feeling, I was wondering inhowfar it distracts you from the actual content being presented, and how compelled you sometimes might feel to redesign the damn things? :)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Laughs)<\/em> Good question. I\u2019m not sure when exactly I started noticing how bad some things are designed, but I guess the progressive sensi\u00adti\u00adsation to this phenomenon is a key aspect in every designer\u2019s devel\u00adopment. It probably starts when as a child you realise for the first time that your black T-shirt adorned with dolphins jumping over orange Caribbean sunsets might not be the most beautiful thing in the world, and ends when you want to throw books at professors for using Times News Roman<\/a> on their slides again<\/em>. OK<\/span>, it probably doesn\u2019t end there, but you know what I mean. For me this moment was quite certainly the most intense after coming from Art University. There every\u00adthing is sleek and beautiful and you get booed for not having your titles perfectly aligned on your presen\u00adta\u00adtions, whereas at normal university most people only care about content, and not a second about form. Those were pretty painful moments for my retina. Especially when they force you to use typefaces that make you shiver just so they can compare the length of your essay to others. :)<\/p>\n

Anyway, you mentioned the distracting aspect of bad design. The main problem is that poor design often goes hand in hand with poor structure. I think I could even live with Comic Sans<\/a> and rainbow backgrounds, as long as the content was consis\u00adtently struc\u00adtured. But when they randomly use five different typefaces and seven different layout concepts within one single presen\u00adtation, it becomes practi\u00adcally impos\u00adsible to under\u00adstand the structure and the hierarchy of the content. This causes hours of additional work for every student, whereas a redesign and a good structure of these presen\u00adta\u00adtions would probably take the same amount of time for one person only. I usually do redesigns whenever I get the raw Power\u00adPoint files from professors, and always insist on doing the collect-and-harmonise job when we have to do group assign\u00adments. Self-\u200bflagellation in the service of aesthetics\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nDisparador<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

Which of your friends and\/or co-\u200bstudents know you now design type, and what was their reaction when they found\u00a0out?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s only a few of them who know I do that, and even fewer who are actually inter\u00adested in it. I think the most common reactions are that they call me a freak or a nerd, tell me the exams are getting pretty close or ask if this is why I have these dark circles around my eyes. (laughs)<\/em> But well, I can live with the fact that typog\u00adraphy is a pretty specific hobby that you don\u2019t share with every second person in the world.<\/p>\n

How aware do you think they are of typog\u00adraphy and fonts?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of my co-\u200bstudents are either completely uninter\u00adested in the subject, or their interest goes as far as to replace the standard fonts with things like Papyrus<\/a> in their essays, and then I often think they\u2019d be better off with no interest in typog\u00adraphy at\u00a0all.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently started exposing some of my FontStruc\u00adtions on Facebook, to reach some of my more design-\u200binterested friends, but there too the feedback is pretty lean. That\u2019s by the way one of the slightly bitter things about FontStructing in my opinion: it mostly seems to rotate around itself and the amazing, but relatively small active community on the site. If you don\u2019t have any means to show your work to a greater audience (like a well-\u200bfrequented blog or online portfolio), you\u2019ll have to live with\u00a0that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nTeatral<\/a> and Teatral Stencil<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

Talking about that relatively small active community, what are your thoughts on the voting system as opposed to the Top Picks<\/a> selected by the FontStruct Staff?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phew\u2026 Obviously the voting system as well as the Top Pick system have been subject to a lot of discus\u00adsions recently. I under\u00adstand why people are sometimes unhappy with any of the two systems. If you publish a font you\u2019ve been working on for several hours or even days and then it either gets random 1\u2019s or doesn\u2019t get the pink badge even when you think it\u2019d deserve it, it can be very frustrating and painful to see your work flushed away into oblivion among the 8,000 something mostly mediocre FontStruc\u00adtions. I myself have in my opinion a few pretty solid designs that somehow slipped under the eyes of the admins, and I consider myself lucky if they get downloaded ten times like this, whereas the same typeface with a Top Pick would easily get twenty times as\u00a0much.<\/p>\n

Still I\u2019ve recently come to the conclusion that the current system is probably not too bad after all. In the end it\u2019s simple, doesn\u2019t leave the admins with an insur\u00admountable amount of work, and even the despised font trolls<\/a> somehow contribute to some justice when they downvote high-\u200brated typefaces: they constantly refresh the ranking, always giving new designs a chance to get some fame. I\u2019m actually more worried by the \u201cfont fairies\u201d that give 10\u2019s to every halfway decent font. Though this is very well-\u200bmeaning and really shows the encour\u00adaging atmos\u00adphere on FontStruct, it tends to cement the upper regions of the ranking with typefaces are virtually imossible to surpass anymore, even with a true masterpiece.<\/p>\n

But in the end all these things shouldn\u2019t bother people too much. Constant good work always gets rewarded eventually. If it\u2019s not by instant Top Picks and 9+ ratings, then it\u2019s with a good reputation and the respect of your fellow FontStructors\u2026 Which in the end is worth more than any formal distinction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEscheresk<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

We were quite impressed by a recent Top Pick from you that we promoted to Featured FontStruction, your M.C.<\/span> Escher<\/a> tribute Escheresk<\/a>. Where do you get your inspi\u00adration for creating new FontStructions?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find it pretty hard to retrace how and where I got the inspi\u00adration for my fonts. Sometimes it\u2019s a design I see somewhere or an existing font that inspires me, but mostly it just seems to come out of nowhere. In the case of Escheresk I couldn\u2019t even tell you when or how I came upon that idea. It probably just started scrib\u00adbling impos\u00adsible polygons on my sheets during some boring lecture, and somehow turned them into letters.<\/p>\n

I also have to admit that there isn\u2019t any bigger theme or concept behind my work. I just take the ideas as they come and make the fonts I have in mind, but I simply wouldn\u2019t have the patience and expertise to seek perfection within a certain genre. The only \u201cconcepts\u201d I try to implement in every FontStruction I make are usability, consis\u00adtency and completeness. Guess I\u2019m pretty Swiss in this regard\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nExempla Slab Serif<\/a> by Shasta<\/span>
\nAs a final note I think I partic\u00adu\u00adlarly like FontStructing because creating a typeface to me sometimes feels more like \u201cwatching the face grow\u201d: you have an initial idea for maybe two or three characters that you think would look cool (you could call that the seed), and in there is already an implicit set of rules for all the other characters (the DNA<\/span>). Then you just go from letter to letter and see what the rules make it look like. In the end you have a full grown typeface and you find yourself pretty surprised by how great some of the characters look. That\u2019s very rewarding, and the great thing about it is that you don\u2019t have to be the full-\u200btime ultra-\u200bcreative mutant brain to do it. One good idea now and then is enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCapitalia Rounded<\/a> by Shasta<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This article was originally published on FontShop\u2019s \u201cFontFeed\u201d blog. Many thanks to MonoType for permission to reproduce this article here.) This is the sixth in our series of mini-\u200binterviews with FontStruc\u00adtors. In this instalment we talk to Tobias Sommer, better known on FontStruct as Shasta. Now you have to realise that I am contacting most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focus-on-fontstructors","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3352"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3382,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}