Experience is the son of difficult mistakes. Excerpt from "The Book of My Letters"

A new book by Yuri Gordon, "A Book About My Letters," has been released by MIF Publishing House. Yuri Gordon is a talented artist specializing in working with text. The book features his projects and typefaces, notable among them being "FaRer," "Forward," "Gordoni," and "Artemius." With the publisher's permission, we are pleased to present a chapter dedicated to the MonteSumma typeface. This typeface was an important experience for the author, helping him understand why, in typographic design, it's best to avoid mixing multiple ideas in a single typeface.

MonteSumma

MonteSumma is a prime example of the fact that a font shouldn't combine more than one idea, two at most. Initially, I aimed to create purely decorative capital letters. At this point, I would have stopped, added a few variations, and gotten something similar to the Mr. Mixter font, but with a Mexican accent. However, twenty-two years ago, it seemed to me that geometric lowercase letters could be added to a set of hieroglyphic capitals, and they would combine harmoniously. This desire seemed strange, but at the moment when I began working with a huge number of fonts, creative ideas came spontaneously. Perhaps this complex task has its solution, but the first lowercase letters seemed too simple to me, and I decided to refine them in the direction of capital letters.

Oh youth, oh greed! The text about a greedy Aztec, for whom stone pyramids are not enough, was published. He needs the steel springs from Cortez's astrolabe. This character embodies the desire for possession and the boundless thirst for wealth. He never rests on his laurels, constantly desiring more, reflecting a profound human nature. Greed, like youth, sometimes leads to obsession, causing us to forget the value of the present moment and the beauty of the world around us.

Since then, I've been looking at it and can't decide: should I disassemble it in two or create alternative versions so that the pyramids finally disappear into chaos. Moral of the story: don't include more than one idea in a font unless you have a clear understanding of how to work with several concepts simultaneously.

1998. Exhibition "Design and Advertising". A mascot with a stylized Letterhead head in the Monte Summa spirit. Image: Yuri Gordon / MYTH Publishing House.

"Monte Summa" is strictly geometric: it is assembled from illustrative primitives. But the assembly method is far from simple. If you look closely, you will notice that the details are not repeated from letter to letter. Image: Yuri Gordon / MYTH Publishing House.

Poster postcard for the 1998 exhibition. We were still a bit breathless after The End of Print, so we printed everything that came to mind for the last time. This was facilitated by the collaboration of Letterhead studio with the Alfa-design printing house. Image: Yuri Gordon / MIF publishing house.

The letter I is very reminiscent of my current signature in the form of a vertically placed long-necked |━━━━oImage: Yuri Gordon / MYTH Publishing House

Image: Yuri Gordon / MYTH Publishing House

Experience is the son of difficult mistakes. Excerpt from "The Book of My Letters"

Contents:

MonteSumma