No font is inherently evil. But according to R/GA Digital Studios graphic designer Sasha Kurtz, a typeface can fall into the wrong hands. That old Bodoni may be beautiful if produced by metal, says Sasha, who studied typography at the Rhode Island School of Design and whose mother is president of the New York Type Directors' Club, but computer-generated Bodoni is crap. And worse than choosing the wrong font is abusing the right one. "Some people don't even bother to get the kerning right, and they leave odd spaces in the text," she gripes. "That really pisses me off."
Best known for computer-generated effects in advertisements and feature films (R/GA created the effects for the opening credits in Seven - remember Kevin Spacey's penchant for typography and Exacto blades?), R/GA might surprise you with its font obsession. But when Robert Greenberg started the company in 1977, his aim was to mix designers and producers from different disciplines, including more traditional graphic arts.
Now with more than 100 employees, R/GA Digital Studios falls into two basic divisions - R/GA Interactive and the broadcast group called R/Greenberg Associates. But Sasha is in the graphic-design department - these eight designers are in charge of the visual impact of work of across the whole company.
"I'd rather our designers understand typography and color composition than post-production software," says John DiRe, who heads the graphic-design department with Jakob Trollbeck. John often recruits from design schools - such as RISD, Yale, and California Institute of the Arts - but he says anyone with the right skills and portfolio could potentially get a job with his group.
Right now, John says they're looking for "a couple of designers" to round out the staff. Specific requirements for the job are vague, but a degree in graphic arts is standard. And while some background in design for broadcast and interactive media is also useful, a list of URLs in your portfolio might be less important than you think. Sasha had been building CD-ROMs for what she calls a "sweat shop," but John called her based on a résumé she sent almost a year earlier when she'd just graduated from school.
Sasha seems happy with her lot. "They asked what I needed in terms of salary," she says, "then they didn't bargain when I named it." The only down side so far is that her work often goes unseen. Companies sometimes kill sites midway, based on business decisions, not artistic merit. "I've been mired in things that never see the light of day," she says, referring to a Web site R/GA made for Nynex, which never went live because the company merged with Bell Atlantic. But that's also common in print and in TV commercials. And, after all, according to Sasha, designing for the Web is not essentially different from designing for print. The key is looking closely at the typeface. "Once you understand language and how to communicate words on the screen," she says, "then all the rest comes easy."
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
