8Minute Talk show — Reza Bakhtiarifard, Typographer
Afsaneh Salek: Hi, we are beside you with an Art 8minute Talk Show. We’re going to introduce Dear Reza Bakhtiarifard to you, who is a professional typographer. We are so glad you are here.
Reza Bakhtiarifard: Thanks, It is my honor to appear in this Talk Show.
Afsaneh Salek: I will appreciate it if you introduce yourself.
Reza Bakhtiarifard: I am Reza Bakhtiarifard, a typographer, I got my BA in EITTC university and, I am working as a typographer for some years such as; logotype, font designing or even drawing.
Afsaneh Salek: Why do you design fonts when there are many available?
Reza Bakhtiarifard: We don’t have enough high-quality fonts for the market’s vast need so, we need to design more fonts. Those outputs that are related to letters like a storybook have tunes. So we try to design letters in a way that expresses the right tune. We can’t express the meaning of every output like engineering, Art, children, and women with constant design. We couldn’t expect people to get the tune if we design the same.
Afsaneh Salek: What is the first font you designed?
Reza Bakhtiarifard: the first font that I designed was Ravi but, it was named Milad before. I designed it in Mr. Khanjanzade’s class, but the first font was, Leyla, which was my sister’s handwriting. I printed her notebooks and examine them but, as I wasn’t expert enough and had started my career earlier, It was mostly a game and error and I didn’t know what I’m doing.
Afsaneh Salek: The font project was successful as I see it’s being used in many billboards. What problems do you face in your projects? How do you solve them?
Reza Bakhtiarifard: One of the biggest problems which I faced during my career was teamwork. It is being thought that font designing or other typographies are individual works So, my friend ( Omid Emamian) and I tried to design a group of letters. The problem is that if we want to summarize font designing in A-Z which is not like this, We have numbers, letters and, symbols. Every font has 300–400 characters. If we want to work in a group we can’t divide letters for design. You can’t say I design A-I and Mr. X design I-Z because It’s not possible as everyone has his creativity and tune, So our challenge was how to do teamwork and make a coherent font design.
Afsaneh Salek: What was the most challenging project you’ve done?
Reza Bakhtiarifard: Vazeh font was one of the most challenging projects I’ve had. The problem was that we have some limitations, and there wasn’t any special font to print Quran in Iran and, in other countries, the fonts were Naskh and designed to type and print Quran. Usual fonts are easy to design as we want to type Persian or Arabic, but Quran is different as you should pay attention to every symbol and mark. So, our problem was how to design a standard font to solve these problems and print the whole Quran without even a mistake and, we get the result.
Afsaneh Salek: I know that you read books a lot hence I want to know which book impressed you more?
Reza Bakhtiarifard: If I want to introduce books to you, I will introduce these 3 books, The first is Letter design in Persian by Omid Hamouni (He is a very successful typographer). The second is Why fonts matter by Sarah Hyndman which is about how to transfer tunes and mood. The third is Reading letters by Sofie Beier and is a book for professionals.
Afsaneh Salek: I will appreciate it if you invite a friend to participate in this talk show.
Reza Bakhtiarifard: I will invite Sal Naghavi who is one of my old friends and is the product design lead at Snapp food.
Afsaneh Salek: we will invite him to participate in this talk show and, It is our honor to know him and utilize his experiences.
We talked to a professional designer and we will talk to others, too.
