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Veer:

What is your process for designing a typeface?

Corey:

Initially, almost always what it is, is a bit of type that’s drawn as a logo for a project. If it’s not that, I have several of my typefaces that come from a type treatment I’ve designed for another client. Or I have an idea, what if - I’m throwing it out as a terrible example - what if it was a serif typeface done completely the proportions of a sans typeface.

I have to be grounded in an initial idea and then it has to work across multiple letters. And that’s the thing that kills me. Everything I do is a display face. I have never designed a proper text face or a proper typeface. It’s such an undertaking. I’ve got 30 typefaces sitting on my hard drive right now that will never get made because I can’t get them to work for more than about seven characters.

I wish I could get into it much more as a philosophical thing, but it’s not for me. It’s much more of a gut approach. This feels correct, right now... and then I have insomnia. So what happens is I’ll sit on the sofa and start banging out a typeface, working out the fundamentals. Then I’ll go back, like a week later, look at it with fresh eyes, and go “Wow, this really worked. This didn’t.”

Later on, I’ll go back, be it a week later or a year later, and pick up one of those sketches - and they’re nothing more than sketches - and sit down and like “Wow. Okay, this one actually works.” I’ll start applying proper proportions and type rules to it, and if at the end it still is a cool piece of typeface, I’ve got something that will work. Probably completely like the idiot end of idiot savant.

Veer:

What differentiates art and design?

Corey:

Design is commercial. What I mean by commercial is that you’re doing it for someone else. I think that any point that you’re creating something for someone else, as a commercial enterprise, that is design. You’re solving problems - you’re commissioned to do a piece of artwork for them. I think that actually is design, but that doesn’t mean it’s solely a piece design. As long as it emotionally evokes a response in someone, it can become artwork.

That’s why you get these cult designers now, where they’re being seen as artists. People are buying these posters and hanging them on their wall. It does speak to people. There is an artistry in it. That’s my distinction - what makes it design is that it’s somehow commercial, and what makes it art is that it evokes an emotional response. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Veer:

Where do you turn when you have no ideas?

Corey:

It’s just everyday stuff. I’ve got notebooks. You know how people draw and have sketchbooks? I have the same thing of just scrap. Of anything that I find. Like parking tickets. If I get a parking ticket - instantly into the book. Receipts, anything at all. I clip things from magazines. Trash I find in the street. I photograph graffiti. Or just a photograph of a building because it’s a fascinating color.

That stuff I’ve amassed and collected percolates and “Oh god, remember that one color off that piece of graffiti was absolutely perfect and that feels right for this” and then “That typeface on that CD is the right kind of typeface.” It’s like I’m cribbing from other people’s work, but it is like this inspiration from everyday life.

Veer:

Do you think design can be taught in school? How much of it can be learned or gained through experience, and how much is innate aptitude?

Corey:

If you’re going to be successful - and by successful I mean doing work that makes you happy - you have to have an innate skill. What school does is teach you how to solve problems and to think and how to be reliant on yourself to come up with solutions to a project.

I think that the craft of design and the nuts and bolts of design - Design with a capital D - is taught on the job. And for the most part, a lot of it is through failure on the job. Of course, I can only speak from personal experience - the greatest lessons I learned were through my failures.

Veer:

What’s been your greatest work?

Corey:

It’s one that I have kept in my portfolio and will never get rid of - a poster that didn’t get bought, for a movie called Mission to Mars. It was the first time in a poster where I had worked in the concept. It’s not the greatest design, it’s not the smartest design, it’s not anything like that. But it’s the time where I can pinpoint, “That one was the first poster that I ever did that had a concept in it.” It’s like my firstborn. It’s the one I look back most fondly on.

Veer:

What is your biggest failure?

Corey:

There are so many failures. They are innumerable. I can’t even mention. I was working on an art book, the first book I designed. I was hot waxing the type down onto a book, and I was using the proportion wheel, trying to figure out how to size all the photos. Because it was an art book, and because it was a piece of art, I was afraid to crop any of the pieces. It was like ’60s art, this conceptual art, that I didn’t understand. What if by cropping the photo I crop out the whole point of the piece? So I cropped it two different ways, so I could leave it behind with a Post-it saying “Double-check my crop on here.”

I must have forgotten to tell this to my art director, and the book got sent to the printer. We got our first printing back, and all the photos are running into the type. You can’t read any type. It cost the company money - a lot of money. It taught me a huge lesson of being able to speak up for myself if I was unsure of something. It was a huge failure. It got me fired.

 

Veer:

What role does design have in society and how important is design?

Corey:

Design is a really, really powerful medium. You can’t change someone’s mind, and you’re not going to change what they believe, but you can put a wedge in the door. You can open it up and make people think. It’s the thinking that changes people’s minds.

Veer:

What do you love to do to stay creative when you’re not working?

Corey:

I’ve recently started taking up photography and am desperately trying to teach myself how to do it. It’s furthering my ability to design. If you mean completely outside the world of creativity and design and any of that - I am utterly obsessed with video games. Honestly, from the Super NES up, I have every single gaming system. When I’m stuck on a project, I’m like “It’s time to play Halo and kick some ass.” That will make my mind clear.

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