A Font For Their City
By JP Chirdon
A group of designers and strategists in Chattanooga, TN have embarked on a project to translate their city’s artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a typeface called Chatype. They’ve just hit their $10,000 Kickstarter goal, with 8 days to go. If all goes as planned, Chattanoogans will soon start seeing Chatype on signs, business cards, emails, and city websites.
D.J. Trischler, a brand consultant in Chattanooga, and Jeremy Dooley, a type designer, told GOOD magazine that they dreamt the idea up when they first met each other at their local coffee shop. They connected with another local designer, Robbie de Villiers, and the group got to making. Wolff Olins was intrigued, so we got in touch with de Villiers for a quick Q & A to learn more about their vision and process.
WO: What’s been the most striking difference between this project (municipality as “client”) and your previous work?
Robbie de Villiers: Our objective was to create something useful and beautiful for the city and its people. Our previous projects were more general and market-driven. Both Jeremy and I loved the “restriction” of creating a font for our city. It added an accountability aspect to the project. Chattanooga is in many ways a small town. If we got it wrong, we would have felt it.
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WO: How did the balance of Chattanooga’s past and future enter into your design process? How do you decide how much of the historical to celebrate v. how much of the future to project?
de Villiers: We initially consulted a local historian and were excited about trying incorporate some hints of the Cherokee syllabary into the font, since it was developed about 20 miles south of Chattanooga by Sequoya. But at some point during our process, however, Chattanooga made an official announcement of it’s new status as “Gigcity,” because it has the fastest Internet speed in the US at 1 gigabyte per second. I started thinking about what Chatype would look like spelling out “Gigcity” and realized that we were off track with our historic approach. Thus, a radical, more contemporary approach was developed. Jeremy took the initiative to meld the two versions into one. Miraculously this blend proved to be a happy one. The version you see now has the right balance between the city’s history and future. We decided to incorporate several alternate characters that have more historic components and added more styles for maximum flexibility.
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WO: Chatype will be a symbol to the community, in the same way that a flag instills pride in the people it belongs to or a strong brand evokes loyalty in its customers. How do you see it clarifying to the community what your city is all about?
de Villiers: Chatype is a visual reminder for the people that they are united and genuinely proud of who they are. With the large arts and design community here, this visual unifier is fitting. Chatype is also an entrepreneurial venture in itself, a reflection of the can-do spirit of the local culture. Instead of lobbying for a mandate from on high to do the project, we began working on it of our own initiative, and looking for ways to fund the project outside traditional channels. Certainly, it is a different model than the European one, which has traditionally funded custom typefaces for their cities.
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WO: How do you envision your typeface as part of a larger process of rebranding Chattanooga. What’s your vision for how it will unfold?
de Villiers: Our intention from the start was to create the typeface for Chattanooga and freely give it to local designers as a tool to enhance and embrace the city’s identity. There is no directive from on high to use it. We have been overwhelmed by the response we received from the city as well as from outside well-wishers cheering us on. The citizens and local firms will be the ones choosing what to do with it. There will be no brand manual from us. We’re simply making it available and beautiful.
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WO: Chattanooga is evolving and your typeface expresses that. What does everybody else in your city need to do to take this typeface and carry it into a great new city brand? How should they make it operational, be inspired by it?
de Villiers: Chattanooga has already embraced Chatype in many ways. We have been approached by various groups in the city to incorporate Chatype in some very public initiatives. They are extremely excited and want to proudly display Chattanooga’s own typeface for all to embrace and enjoy. It will be a low-key “glue” that residents and visitors will see and feel. You may never even know you’re looking at Chatype when you read a Chattanooga sign or see it on a website, but because of the subliminal personality and tone of something like a typeface, you will feel and understand the Chattanooga connection.
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WO: What has it been like getting the city to embrace the idea of its own municipal font? Who are your allies? What are your obstacles?
de Villiers: The biggest obstacle is the lack of understanding of the value of type in design and branding, and perhaps anyone who assumes the city is being charged for this— they aren’t. Our allies are the designers and creative firms who put the word out and are making plans to utilize Chatype on awesome projects.
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WO: Has this project stirred new ideas in you? Has it already inspired rethinking and redesigning from others in your city?
de Villiers: Interesting question! On a personal level, during our research phase, we found some very interesting design approaches that will probably see the light of day some time in the future. There was a tweet from someone who said “that’s it, I’m moving to Chattanooga.” That pretty much sums it up.
Learn more about Chatype at http://chatype.com/
