Fred Wiltshire

Have you always had a fascination for letters? How did this vocation for type design come about?

The fascination with letters was progressive. It all started with drawing graffiti as a young teenager, to finding a love for graphic design around the age of 17, to delving into the world of editorial design at university. From there I tinkered with modular typographic experiments, and found a true passion. After getting a job in editorial design, unsuccessful in finding one in type design, I dedicated my evenings to refining my skills, eventually applying for a Masters in Type Design at the university of Reading.

You have dual British-French nationality. Do you think that your apprenticeship in Reading reflects a more British type design culture or do you consider yourself an international designer?

I like to pretend I have dual nationality, but in reality, after 12 years of living in France, I decided to not get a French passport as I was unaware that Brexit would ever be a thing and that my British passport would do me fine. This is the biggest regret of my life, and I am now stuck on this miserable island. 

I think both countries have influenced my design practice and aesthetic preferences, but I think the true driving force for my fonts is based on my previous editorial experience (I never do anything too display, there’s always a certain usability to them), and a love for cheerful, playful typefaces, something I rarely get to do with freelance projects.

How did you come to meet Matthieu Salvaggio and Blaze Type? How did the agreement to publish Fautive come about?

I was already in contact with Léon Hugues during my time at university. He suggested I should release a font on “the box”. I never followed through with this unfortunately, but once I had graduated I contacted some foundries for freelance work, Blaze Type being one of them. This led to doing some refinements on Apoc, then Matthieu asked if I had any typefaces I would like to release through the foundry. I jumped on this opportunity and showed him early Fautive sketches. The rest was history. 

Fautive is your first typeface signed to Blaze Type. Can you tell us what interested you in the work of Louis Perrin, the inspiration for this family? 

During my time at university, I was researching revivals for my dissertation. Louis Perrin was one, or the first, to actually use the term “revival” for his set of capital letters inspired by Roman inscriptions in Lyon. This was absolutely fascinating to me, and was instantly drawn to the Elzevir style, Perrin’s drawings, Les Caractères Augustaux, and his original source of inspiration. 

What's more, your typeface has an almost lapidary look, although the italics retain a calligraphic feel. How was this balance achieved?

Through various trials and error. Although Perrin didn’t create an italic for Les Caractères Augustaux, he did for other typefaces, a starting point for my design. Additionally, I have a particular penchant for calligraphic italics, and the final result seemed to pair well with the Upright. 

Routine seems totally removed from historical inspirations, and is closer to an industrial character (close to that of road signs with their rounded corners). And yet you mention that your inspiration came from French newspapers of the late 19th century. Did you push the character away from this source, or did you stay true to it?

With a lot of my work, there is a historic starting point. But with little interest in doing a faithful revival, the design is often pushed in various directions due to contemporary needs and injecting my personal aesthetic preferences. Although Routine’s characters aren’t faithful to the source material, I believe they still show the inky, expressive Sans I found in French newspapers.

Indecisive combines two different sources of inspiration (the sans serifs of the early 20th century and Granjon's old-style italics). The family takes a more surprising turn with the launch of the Mono version. Was this initially planned, or has this addition allowed you to exploit this formal vocabulary to the full?

This whole family was originally planned as a geometric and a mono, two styles I have wanted to create for a while, but I could never figure out how to create something original. On a granular level, some Mono aspects were not planned from the start. The swash characters, for example, were introduced very early on in the sans, and went through various stylistic changes, but I had not considered how they would work in the mono. When the time came I found the challenge incredibly fulfilling and as you can see, they differ considerably from the sans to compensate for the additional space. 

Right from the start, you extend the glyphset of your creations to other alphabets, such as Cyrillic and Greek. Is this a parameter you take into account from the outset, or does it flow naturally from the Latin alphabet?

I know with every typeface I create, Greek and/or Cyrillic will play a part. I am hoping to delve into other scripts at some point. Sometimes the design is considered early on and the scripts play off of each other, other times they are created after the Latin.  

You are co-founder of Type & Faces. Can you tell us a little about it and explain its purpose?

Type&Faces is a friendly monthly type event, run by a fabulous team of 9 designers and co-founded by Olivia Alexander, Giovanni Isnenghi and myself. We launched last November and have built a strong a loving community of designers from and around London. We invite creatives to share their work, focused on type or letters, and encourage an open dialogue between our speakers and the audience. Our goal is to uplift the creative community, by providing an open platform for both fresh talent and established designers to share their work, be inspired, improve, and connect. Community and letters, what more could you ask for. 

Is there a particular glyph you enjoy drawing when creating typography? In particular, I've seen that you systematically draw an fff ligature, even though its use is limited to onomatopoeia…

Like most people, a two story a or g is fantastic to draw, but I find a joy in exploring various ways of creating the lowercase r. As for the fff ligature, once you start thinking that limited used glyphs are unnecessary, you start going down a dangerous path.

Which typefaces in the Blaze Type catalog do you secretly admire, and why?

Firstly, Ethan Nakache’s Homie is right up my street. It is well crafted, cheerful, usable/legible/readable and creative, and what a brilliant name for a typeface. Additionally, Avril by Laurene Girbal, and Balete by Jad Maza are both stunning. It is very hard to only pick a few, there is a lot of fantastic work.