יום שישי, 12 במאי 2017

Is Typography Important to Branding? An Interview with Product Designer Erica Heinz






How can designers work better in start-up culture with their razor thin deadlines? Product designer Erica Heinz believes typography is the most effective way to create a brand. TypeThursday sat down with Erica about her approach, work with the Occupy Movement and teaching. Enjoy!


Erica’s Thoughts on Typography for Branding

MARCAPOLITICA: One of the things that caught my eye about you was, in your New York City Prepared campaign, you worked on you talked about how in the typography, you wanted it clear and friendly, to make it welcoming for volunteers of any skill level. It would seem to me that typography matters a lot to you.
Typography is the quickest, the most powerful way for you to establish the personality of a brand.

Erica Heinz: Yeah. I work a lot with startups where it’s really fast-paced. Typography is the quickest, the most powerful way for you to establish the personality of a brand. It becomes a really major part of identity. Especially for startups and people who don’t have the time or the budget to do a perfect photo shoot and make imagery really the focus.

MP: Considering the pressures that exist in the startup culture, always with a tight budget, typography is a really great resource to help convey branding and identity, right?
Startups don’t always have the patience for a proper branding process, but we can start with a logotype.

EH: Yes. For me, it’s more natural to me. I can express your voice literally through the typeface. Unique imagery, it’s harder to find. For me personally, in my experience, that can take a lot longer. Startups don’t always have the patience for a proper branding process or a logo process, but we can start with a logotype. And that’s a big step in them having a voice, a personality. That’s always my first thing for branding.

MP: It seems like type is a strong point for you; Your natural habitat. Is that a fair assessment?
I always start with the type because that feels the most familiar to me.

EH: Yeah, I would say so. I think I’m in the realm of designers who are more into reading and books and the arrangement of information (versus those more into movies and images). I veered into UX and product stuff because it’s a little bit more logical. Typography is much more “is a thing legible,” “what’s it nodding to,” “what are the references?” It’s a little more left-brain, versus someone who’s a pure art director. Of course, color and image and everything are of equal importance, but for me, I always start with the type because that feels the most familiar to me.

MP: When you start doing a UX project, could you walk through your process? Is type always the start of your process?
We had a lot of trouble because [The Occupy Movement] was very international at the height. Even a decent open source typeface doesn’t always have all the international characters we needed.
Working with The Occupy Movement

EH: It depends. For example, NYC Prepared [a disaster-relief network] was a longer process, two years, because it was all volunteers. And it had some particular constraints: one was that it was all open source. That was new for me. Because it grew off Occupy Sandy, in order to share the design files among all these volunteers, everything needed to be open source, which is really hard (especially for typography, where there’s a lot of not-good options).


MP: Terrible!

EH: Right? NYC Prepared had even more constraints and I was just thrilled to find one open source typeface that looked good. And again with Occupy, we had a lot of trouble because it was very international at the height, even a decent open source typeface doesn’t always have all the international characters. We had such a hard time finding a headline face that would work across all these Occupy Reykjavik type Icelandic words [e.g Occupy Ólafsfjörður!].
We had such a hard time finding a headline face that would work across all these Occupy Reykjavik type Icelandic words [e.g Occupy Ólafsfjörður!].

MP: To clarify, you mean Occupy, is it Occupy Wall Street?

EH: Yeah, a bunch of websites that were offshoots of that. I did several sites with the TechOps group. And then a lot of the websites that we built for protests were one-off WordPress sites, so we did a connected WordPress multi-site, and then made it into an open source platform that anyone could use. It was all about taking that model of knitting together all the grassroots groups.
I had gotten involved with the Occupy movement because I was just inspired.… I want to do what I can to support these people with the energy to speak up.

MP: Do you feel like those campaigns are really important to you?

EH: Yeah, they really woke me up. I had gotten involved with the Occupy movement because I was just inspired. Like, “Oh my god, Americans are actually getting involved in activism!” They’re not just being apathetic and consumerist. I was just like, “I want to do what I can to support these people with the energy to speak up.” I got drawn into that for a couple years, so then when the hurricane came, I knew some of the people working as Occupy Sandy. So I could say, “You guys are doing great work but the website looks terrible, let me help with that.” Those were very event-driven projects. We just had to really prioritize: what can we get done in the time available. We redid the whole site in six days.
We just had to really prioritize: what can we get done in the time available. We redid the whole site in six days.

Then for a while, I was doing a lot of these rush projects, other political clients where they were like, “Oh, we’re going to these talks in Ireland and we need a website in three weeks.” And I was used to it. I can get the typography looking good, we’ll have a couple of background images and I’ll still have time to build the site. You’re going to find something serviceable and functional and then bring in details. It’s again, lean startup methods where you prioritize again and again. And then when things are decent, you start being able to add a little bit more depth and personality to each. It’s continued iterations and continued revisions.
…You prioritize again and again. And then when things are decent, you start being able to add a little bit more depth and personality to each.

So now, I work a lot on startups, where there’s always constraints (like any design project, I guess), but there’s a lot of ridiculous time and sometimes budget constraints. If they’re very early stage, where they’re asking, “What is this? Who are we?” the process would be doing a little bit more research. But again I would generally start with the words on the page, because that’s what makes sense to me.
Teaching Product Design

MP: You teach, both at Parsons School of Design and on Skillshare. One that caught my eye was your course about prototyping. Why is prototyping important in your perspective?
A Screenshot from Erica’s Prototyping for Web I: Information, UX, and Paper Prototypes

EH: When working on apps and products, there are so many interactions within them that there’s just way much more complexity that needs to be addressed. So it’s better to break out a small chunk and make sure that piece is working before you start building it into a whole design vocabulary. You don’t want to hold it all in your head, undisturbed, like you might for a creative campaign.
When working on apps and products, there are so many interactions within them that there’s just way much more complexity that needs to be addressed.

Assuming that you have the time, you need to start with empathy and really understand who you’re designing for and representing with this site. And then a high-level mapping phase of site maps or flows, however you want to sort through your features — which also gets everyone on the same page about scope. And then for me, I do creative direction before I get into detailed UX. Once I’ve done all of the UX work, I’m way too constrained; I know how difficult the tech stuff is going to be. I like to do the creative stuff while things are still very loose and I feel like I’ll be a little more impractical and dreamy about the ideas, versus very box-headed if you’ve already plotted out all your features and functionality.
You need to start with empathy and really understand who you’re designing for and representing with this site.

MP: When you say “box-headed,” what do you mean by that?
A Screenshot from Erica’s Prototyping for Web II: Visuals for UX and Branding

EH: If I design a project focusing all on the technical constraints, I tend to come up with safer layouts. I noticed especially in the early years of being someone who built my own sites, my designs were constrained by what I was able to build. (And I know that there’s firms that don’t allow designers to build their own work because of that.) You design these safe layouts, “Oh, how about three even columns…” and it just looks like back in old school web development when everything was built in tables. That’s box-headed. But now tech has come so far that you can do a lot more crazy stuff. We can do videos, which ten years ago even like a big background image was like “Are you kidding? That will take forever!”
Agile Design Philosophy; Can it Relate to Type Design?

MP: Yeah, for the sake of the audience, for the type designer group: “agile design”, “user flow” — could you just walk through those concepts?
It’s about responding to things that arise, versus having some rigid goal. You have closer, more regular communication with people.

EH: Yeah. Sure. Agile is a development philosophy. Instead of a “waterfall” process, where you’d research the whole project, then design the whole thing, then finally build and test and launch, you research and design and develop a small chunks of work in sprints of two weeks or so. It tries to get coders out of their caves and have a seat at the table a bit earlier, instead of everything landing in their laps six months on. It’s about responding to things that arise, versus having some rigid goal. You have closer, more regular communication with people (which can be excruciating if you’re more on the introverted side of the team). But it’s good for development; It really changes how companies work.
It’s really hard to fit design into agile workflows because — say you’re doing a three-week sprint: you spend the first week researching and sketching and getting your head around things.… It’s really hard to fit it all in there.

But, it’s really hard to fit design into agile workflows because — say you’re doing a three-week sprint: you spend the first week researching and sketching and getting your head around things. You have like a day or two to design things, and then you already have to get things to the developers. It’s really hard to fit it all in there. Or stagger the stages. People are still figuring it out. There’s a lean UX / agile UX meetup in New York where people talk about how do we do this, “how do we design in agile startups?”

MP: You feel like it’s the tension, like the nature of design seems to run up really hard against these startup culture attitudes?
You can’t design a page smartly until you know the initial personality and the initial distinctions. You have to do some prep work.

EH: Yeah. Because if you have a few days to design something, you’re really just styling it. You’re just making it look better. But if you’re really going to rethink something, then you can’t expect those ideas to come right on the second Tuesday or whatever. There’s this unspoken thing in agile, “sprint zero”, when you’re doing a brand new startup. It’s a longer research and design phase at the beginning, suspiciously like a traditional design process. You can’t just jump into two-week sprints — your first sprint would be like, “We made a headline!” You can’t design a page smartly until you know the initial personality and the initial distinctions. You have to do some prep work.

Once you’re going, yeah, you can find some kind of balance. And the shorter sprints makes meetings much better. They’re way more focused. For example, I’m doing this branding for a client and the imagery has been contentious and we’re still talking about what’s going to work for this brand. Meanwhile, I’m just going to talk about typography on Tuesday and be like, “This is the type that we’ve chosen. Here’s how the system looks on the various colors we’ve already agreed on.” And then get more information about the imagery we want to make. You break out that one discussion, versus having these big floating meetings about everything at once.

MP: This is very interesting from a type designer point of view. The way you describe working in UX is very similar to type design. We’re very incremental. And we use these things called proofs. We’ll start out with like four letters, six letters, then we’ll build to 26. Then numbers, punctuation, extended characters, the whole thing. It builds up, up and up. And along the way you’re getting feedback from ideally the user base or parties involved along the way.

EH: Is that a newer approach, to get more feedback?

MP: That’s always how it has been. Always. A lot the building for type design is incremental, meaning the decisions you make in the beginning have ripple effects down the road. Therefore, if you go down a certain track of thinking or a certain track of design and then you are almost done and you realize, “Oh, wait, no.” Then you’ve got to basically go back to square one and you’ve just squared out weeks of work.

EH: Right. Right. It’s like any discussion, figuring out how to let people know what feedback could help at this point. Not just like free discussion.
Lessons Learned from Teaching

MP: Do you feel like that’s one of the main skills you’ve learned from teaching?
How do you structure everything you know and fit it into four months of lecture.

EH: Teaching was about — the first thing was just, how do you structure everything you know and fit it into four months, three months of lecture. The exercise in getting together a syllabus, versus just putting together one-hour talks. It was crazy. I mean, it’s 80 hours of class. The most daunting thing was, how do I plan an 80-hour long movie. That was the first year.

Then the second year you’re like, “Okay! I can just reuse it,” but you’re like, “No, I learned so much the first year…” of course you switch things around. And I learned how to involve the class better, not just talk at them. It’s one thing to explain something to someone, it’s another thing to plan an activity where they learn it themselves. Now, I’m like, “Okay, my syllabus is solid.” So finally I’m like, “Okay, now the human dimension.” Which is the really hard part.
I’m thinking more about how you motivate certain students. It’s all this individuality: one student wants pressure, this other student caves under pressure.

I’m thinking more about how you motivate certain students. It’s all this individuality: one student wants pressure, this other student caves under pressure. All the interpersonal stuff — which again, I’m more on the introverted side, so that can be really draining for me. My sister teaches third grade, so I’ll call her and be like, “What do you do when a student used to be motivated but then not as much?” I feel like, for nine-year-olds and 19-year-olds, probably not that much has changed…

MP: I think that’s an excellent place to end our conversation.
Thank you so much, Erica.

EH: Sure. Yeah. It was fun!

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