Out of Print
Type designer and yoga teacher, Kara Gordon, talks about her work with Commercial Type and seeing art, design, and space everywhere, if you know where — or more importantly, how — to look.
Having been born in the U.S. in 1992, Gordon has had little by way of connecting with her Filipino roots, other than familial ties. “My parents came to the States in ‘84, pretty much a year to the day after Aquino was shot,” she says. “They came to Connecticut for grad school, and then they had me in ‘92, and then we moved to Michigan.” Currently, her father’s family is “kind of all over,” while her mother’s side is still in Manila. It wasn’t until recently that she sought out more about her heritage and the ways in which design works into that, after the passing of her grandmother.
It seems that, for Gordon, everything in the world is intertwined. One aspect informs another. This is evident in her life in and outside of work, often referring to these actions as a practice: something you work on and develop. Her approach to the things she does is deliberate and intentioned, from type design to yoga to reading and writing to building a home. Her jaunts to museums and galleries when they opened up in New York City, seemed to work like a practice, too. “And I could have spent more [time], but you know, people started to come in, and I was on a time crunch,” she says. “I was trying to get to this other show.”
Here, we speak with Gordon about her work with Commercial Type and how she ended up where she is, New York City during the pandemic, and seeing art, design, and space everywhere, if you know where — or more importantly, how — to look.
This interview was conducted online and edited for clarity and length.
Out of Print: I was wondering if you were in touch with the design movements in the Philippines?
Kara Gordon: It’s something that I’ve actually started pursuing more information on. My path to design was entirely outside of that. I came from a fine art background and my parents being the parents that they are were really worried about [me] making money, so my high school art teacher sat down with them and was like, “Here are career paths. She’s not going to live in a cardboard box. She’s gonna be okay.”
My lola passed last year; she was my last grandparent, and that kind of set me off on trying to get more back in touch with the culture, starting to learn Tagalog. I didn’t even grow up learning that, because my dad spoke Ilonggo and my mom spoke Tagalog. And then, my parents were like, “We need a language we can talk about you behind your back.” [Laughs] And I have other family members who are in the industry, and I’ve just started to connect with other Filipino designers and watching that movement from there, like Clara [Cayosa] or Jo Malinis, just getting in touch with some of the people over there. It’s such a rich visual cultural history, like sign painting and lettering. It’s something I’m really interested in.
Do you remember what the first work you’d say that you were like, “Oh!”?
So, I visited a couple of years ago, and I had gotten into lettering and type design before all of this, but seeing all the jeepney signs… I mean, it’s just so much beautiful handcrafted letters, and it’s everywhere. And so, seeing all of that, it was like something clicked. It’s so vibrant, and it felt familiar in its own way.
You mentioned you came from a fine arts background. Did you take your undergrad in something more traditional, then?
In high school, I came from a fine arts background, and so I went to Washington University in St. Louis, the Sam Fox School of Design and Art. I double majored in Commercial Design and English. So, I also come from an editorial background. After school, I went to The Atlantic. I mean, for me, it was always about the marriage of word and image, and also I do have my grandfather on my mother’s side, who was a journalist in Manila. There’s just like a lot of that family history.
Kara Gordon: It’s something that I’ve actually started pursuing more information on. My path to design was entirely outside of that. I came from a fine art background and my parents being the parents that they are were really worried about [me] making money, so my high school art teacher sat down with them and was like, “Here are career paths. She’s not going to live in a cardboard box. She’s gonna be okay.”
My lola passed last year; she was my last grandparent, and that kind of set me off on trying to get more back in touch with the culture, starting to learn Tagalog. I didn’t even grow up learning that, because my dad spoke Ilonggo and my mom spoke Tagalog. And then, my parents were like, “We need a language we can talk about you behind your back.” [Laughs] And I have other family members who are in the industry, and I’ve just started to connect with other Filipino designers and watching that movement from there, like Clara [Cayosa] or Jo Malinis, just getting in touch with some of the people over there. It’s such a rich visual cultural history, like sign painting and lettering. It’s something I’m really interested in.
Do you remember what the first work you’d say that you were like, “Oh!”?
So, I visited a couple of years ago, and I had gotten into lettering and type design before all of this, but seeing all the jeepney signs… I mean, it’s just so much beautiful handcrafted letters, and it’s everywhere. And so, seeing all of that, it was like something clicked. It’s so vibrant, and it felt familiar in its own way.
You mentioned you came from a fine arts background. Did you take your undergrad in something more traditional, then?
In high school, I came from a fine arts background, and so I went to Washington University in St. Louis, the Sam Fox School of Design and Art. I double majored in Commercial Design and English. So, I also come from an editorial background. After school, I went to The Atlantic. I mean, for me, it was always about the marriage of word and image, and also I do have my grandfather on my mother’s side, who was a journalist in Manila. There’s just like a lot of that family history.
Brunel (Shaded) by Kara Gordon for Commercial Classics.
Could you tell me more about how you got started at Commercial Type?
In high school, I had what they called a commercial art class and we had a typography unit and I fell in love with it, and that kind of set me on a “Oh, I want to design type. I want to design the literal letters that people read.” And no undergrad program really offers that.
So I went to school at a program that really emphasized bookmaking and book design, and that was what I kind of thought I was going to get into. Then I got an internship at Seventeen Magazine between my junior and senior year. And, I told one of the design directors at the time, about wanting to make this handwriting font, and knew my interest in type, and included me in it. So that was kind of the first time I started dabbling with font software and programs. In school, I had a teacher that really encouraged me. And then, because of my experience in magazines, I ended up at The Atlantic with Darhil Crooks who was a really good friend of Christian Schwartz.
After The Atlantic — that’s in D.C. — I wanted to move to New York, so I got in touch with the design director at Seventeen, and he put me in touch with a studio called Point Five, and then once I had moved to New York, I had met with Christian and he said, “Let me know when you want to switch over from magazines to type.” And in the middle of all of that, I also went to Type@Paris, and I was in the inaugural class of that.
It all connects, and it’s a lot. But I share all of that, because I do think it’s all quite linear. And it’s all a crucial part of the story. But yeah, I’ve been at Commercial Type for two years now.
How do you like it?
I love it! Christian and Paul [Barnes] are really incredible mentors. They’re really wonderful designers and they’re also really great bosses. And I feel like it’s so rare to have someone who’s incredibly… I mean, they’re some of the best at the craft in the world, and then they’re also really incredible managers. I feel very fortunate. Because I feel like you either have a manager who doesn’t really know what they’re doing. Like, they’re only good at managing. Or you have someone who is so great but sucks at managing. Somehow, I’ve managed to get this really wonderful pair.
Do you have a favorite typeface?
I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but I do have typefaces that are, to me, really influential. Umbra, the shadow typeface, I’ve really had a soft spot for. I would say Bembo, as a text face, and then a lot of the stuff that Commercial put out before I was working there. I mean, honestly, I looked up to Commercial for a long time and then to land here as my first type design job was like… “Oh! Okay.” I really look up to all of my co-workers.
“Design is a wonderful thing. It’s a wonderful tool, but God, we have so much bigger fish to fry right now.”
Are you back at the office now?
No, we are still working from home, and we probably will be for the foreseeable future. The thing that works out really nicely about this is that, obviously, Paul’s also in London. Miguel Reyes is in Mexico, and we also have a couple of other people who are in various parts of [the world]. So it is a global office, and type design and graphic design does lend itself well to working remotely.
Are you working on anything new that you’re excited about for the moment? Actually, could you run me through what happens in the day, usually.
It can become different every day. It depends on what projects you have on deck, but where you are in those projects. So, you start out sketching. You start with a limited character set just to get a sense of proportions and thickness and all that stuff. And then you expand that character set a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more.
We are spacing and drawing at the same time; those two things go hand in hand. And pulling proofs, and seeing all these things in context, because you know, that’s what kind of makes this type design and not lettering. These things have to work in so many different contexts and they have to work together, so that’s part of it.
And then, sometimes, even before the entire character set is finished, we might start adding some weights, we might start experimenting with italics. It depends on if it’s for a client project or if it’s for our library. And then, after all of that, you’re making sure that all the outlines for the different weights are able to interpolate, So you can get intermediary weights. And then your kerning.And then you’re actually interpolating and you’re creating the design space to do that. It really varies in the day what you’re doing.
So, I’m working on stuff for our library right now. Last year was mostly client projects. One of them I’m mostly finalizing a lot of things, so it’s a lot of double-checking and making sure diacritics are in the right place and that the kerning is shipshape.
The other one is for our Commercial Classics library, which is all stuff inspired or really based off historical specimens, and that’s a little bit more display-ish, and so I’m really working with a limited character set right now, and kind of making sure that everything is right before I go too far. So, one’s very minute details and the other project is very big picture, so I toggle between that. At Commercial Type, I also do some copyediting for the website and occasionally, just to flex my design muscles, I’ll put together images for the website or for social, because that’s something I enjoy doing. Or, I’ll do writing for the website as well. So being able to flex all these different…
No, we are still working from home, and we probably will be for the foreseeable future. The thing that works out really nicely about this is that, obviously, Paul’s also in London. Miguel Reyes is in Mexico, and we also have a couple of other people who are in various parts of [the world]. So it is a global office, and type design and graphic design does lend itself well to working remotely.
Are you working on anything new that you’re excited about for the moment? Actually, could you run me through what happens in the day, usually.
It can become different every day. It depends on what projects you have on deck, but where you are in those projects. So, you start out sketching. You start with a limited character set just to get a sense of proportions and thickness and all that stuff. And then you expand that character set a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more.
We are spacing and drawing at the same time; those two things go hand in hand. And pulling proofs, and seeing all these things in context, because you know, that’s what kind of makes this type design and not lettering. These things have to work in so many different contexts and they have to work together, so that’s part of it.
And then, sometimes, even before the entire character set is finished, we might start adding some weights, we might start experimenting with italics. It depends on if it’s for a client project or if it’s for our library. And then, after all of that, you’re making sure that all the outlines for the different weights are able to interpolate, So you can get intermediary weights. And then your kerning.And then you’re actually interpolating and you’re creating the design space to do that. It really varies in the day what you’re doing.
So, I’m working on stuff for our library right now. Last year was mostly client projects. One of them I’m mostly finalizing a lot of things, so it’s a lot of double-checking and making sure diacritics are in the right place and that the kerning is shipshape.
The other one is for our Commercial Classics library, which is all stuff inspired or really based off historical specimens, and that’s a little bit more display-ish, and so I’m really working with a limited character set right now, and kind of making sure that everything is right before I go too far. So, one’s very minute details and the other project is very big picture, so I toggle between that. At Commercial Type, I also do some copyediting for the website and occasionally, just to flex my design muscles, I’ll put together images for the website or for social, because that’s something I enjoy doing. Or, I’ll do writing for the website as well. So being able to flex all these different…
That’s so good!
It’s really nice, and I’m really lucky that Christian and Paul recognize that I have these other skills outside of just type design, and they know that I want to do it, so they let me. They want to make sure that I’m not doing something [or] that they’re not just putting it on me for the sake of putting it on me, and that it’s something that I actually want to do, and it’s just another way that I personally can contribute and a way that maybe the other designers might not.
It’s really nice, and I’m really lucky that Christian and Paul recognize that I have these other skills outside of just type design, and they know that I want to do it, so they let me. They want to make sure that I’m not doing something [or] that they’re not just putting it on me for the sake of putting it on me, and that it’s something that I actually want to do, and it’s just another way that I personally can contribute and a way that maybe the other designers might not.
Is there any typeface we could reference as something you worked on?
So, here’s the thing about type design: it takes years to get it out. I mean, I have projects that are out the door but that haven’t been used. I did some work for Google, Yahoo!, Sunday Riley, the Whitney [Museum]. The Whitney was my very first project and it’s a small little thing. It was for one exhibit, a modification of Neue Haas Grotesk that ended up… like, that was actually something that I got to see in person.
How do you think design functions now, given the current state of things? Do you feel like there has been a shift in its role?
Design is always part of the fabric of the culture, right? I don’t think that’s ever going to change. I think a lot of designers need to remember their place, especially with Black Lives Matter, the pandemic, all these huge social movements that are happening… The U.S. [just had] an election that’s a pretty big deal, but you know, it’s just design. It’s just design. And it’s important, but it’s not saving lives. It’s not gonna save the world, and you know, there’s bigger things than just design. I wish I was more articulate. I’m struggling to put it into words right now, but design is a wonderful thing. It’s a wonderful tool, but God, we have so much bigger fish to fry right now.
“Design can be really insular, and it’s really important to find inspiration elsewhere.”
What’s it like in New York now?
Things were getting better for a while, and then our case rate has apparently just tripled. It’s like up 3%, so it’s you know, it’s up and down. People need to be really careful. The museums have started opening up, which has been really nice. I had been really starved for art this summer, so we went gallery-hopping a couple of weeks ago, which was really lovely.
Did you see anything good?
There was Harold Ancart… His Traveling Light series, we saw at the David Zwirner Gallery. We spent an hour in that gallery space, and I could have spent more [time], but you know, people started to come in, and I was on a time crunch. I was trying to get to this other show. The Toyin Ojih Odutola at the Jack Shainman Gallery, we went to. The Whitney had this really beautiful… Vida Americana, Mexican Muralists and all the movements behind that art, and those artistic movements was really fantastic. I learned so much. And then we also went up to... [Laughs] Yeah, when the museums opened, I was just like “give me everything!” Over Labour Day, we went up to Dia Beacon and Storm King.
You know how it is. Design can be really insular, and it’s really important to find inspiration elsewhere. And, granted, art and design are very closely related and I think it’s good to explore music and literature and all those other stuff, and those things are also very influential to me as well, but there’s something about fine art… I just love painting and drawing.
What are you primarily doing now?
To be honest, I’ve been knitting.
I love it! I’ve been buying flowers.
You teach yoga, right?
[Laughs] You saw my Instagram!
Yeah! Is it something you can treat as separate things, or do you find that they’re actually more connected to each other?
The answer is yes and and no. I think before COVID, it was a lot easier and a lot more helpful to compartmentalize, because I would go to the office and work. I would go to the yoga studio to practice or teach. I would come home and do whatever I do at home. But now, my day to day is all in this apartment. It’s all here! Everything takes place in the home now.
I will say also the more I teach yoga, the more appreciation I have for type design and vice versa. Specifically teaching yoga, you have to learn how to see and you have to learn how to see those really small, minute muscle movements that your students are making and how it’s affecting the big picture and that’s part design.
So, being a type designer has definitely made me into a better yoga teacher. It’s made me very observant and able to pick up on the small things, and vice versa. Both of them come down to communication, and what your body is saying, or what the letters are saying. It’s not as different as I once thought it was. That being said, there have to be boundaries, but also I think I’ve always been cross-disciplinary, which is why I went to the school I went to. It kind of allowed me to do that. And I’m not one of those designers that wakes up and designs, then eats lunch and designs, then eats dinner and designs and designs and designs… I’m not that at all. I think it’s very, very important to have a life.
Things were getting better for a while, and then our case rate has apparently just tripled. It’s like up 3%, so it’s you know, it’s up and down. People need to be really careful. The museums have started opening up, which has been really nice. I had been really starved for art this summer, so we went gallery-hopping a couple of weeks ago, which was really lovely.
Did you see anything good?
There was Harold Ancart… His Traveling Light series, we saw at the David Zwirner Gallery. We spent an hour in that gallery space, and I could have spent more [time], but you know, people started to come in, and I was on a time crunch. I was trying to get to this other show. The Toyin Ojih Odutola at the Jack Shainman Gallery, we went to. The Whitney had this really beautiful… Vida Americana, Mexican Muralists and all the movements behind that art, and those artistic movements was really fantastic. I learned so much. And then we also went up to... [Laughs] Yeah, when the museums opened, I was just like “give me everything!” Over Labour Day, we went up to Dia Beacon and Storm King.
You know how it is. Design can be really insular, and it’s really important to find inspiration elsewhere. And, granted, art and design are very closely related and I think it’s good to explore music and literature and all those other stuff, and those things are also very influential to me as well, but there’s something about fine art… I just love painting and drawing.
What are you primarily doing now?
To be honest, I’ve been knitting.
I love it! I’ve been buying flowers.
You teach yoga, right?
[Laughs] You saw my Instagram!
Yeah! Is it something you can treat as separate things, or do you find that they’re actually more connected to each other?
The answer is yes and and no. I think before COVID, it was a lot easier and a lot more helpful to compartmentalize, because I would go to the office and work. I would go to the yoga studio to practice or teach. I would come home and do whatever I do at home. But now, my day to day is all in this apartment. It’s all here! Everything takes place in the home now.
I will say also the more I teach yoga, the more appreciation I have for type design and vice versa. Specifically teaching yoga, you have to learn how to see and you have to learn how to see those really small, minute muscle movements that your students are making and how it’s affecting the big picture and that’s part design.
So, being a type designer has definitely made me into a better yoga teacher. It’s made me very observant and able to pick up on the small things, and vice versa. Both of them come down to communication, and what your body is saying, or what the letters are saying. It’s not as different as I once thought it was. That being said, there have to be boundaries, but also I think I’ve always been cross-disciplinary, which is why I went to the school I went to. It kind of allowed me to do that. And I’m not one of those designers that wakes up and designs, then eats lunch and designs, then eats dinner and designs and designs and designs… I’m not that at all. I think it’s very, very important to have a life.
Portrait by Matthew Smith.And the things that you do around the work you make really informs it, like the flowers, for example.
That’s a brand new one. That’s a COVID hobby. I would have never in my life guessed that I would be going to the flower shop and making arrangements because I have nothing better to do.
My partner and I also just moved into a new home in April, so making it our own and making it feel like home has been a part of it. The thing about flowers over plants, is [that] plants, you actually have to keep alive. And flowers eventually wither and die, and there’s like the expectation of ephemerality that I really appreciate. Flowers are so precious, but at the same time, they’re not.
I’ve been thinking a lot about color lately, which is so weird for a type designer, and that more informs my design practice more than my type design practice. Now I can only use Commercial fonts or I feel weird to not use Commercial fonts, so I just use Commercial fonts. That’s where the art and the flowers come in.
Aside from the flower arrangement, what are the things that have been making this time easier on you?
I’ll also mention painting my nails. [Laughs] Well, and also, a big thing has been creating a home. The practice of really taking the time to nest has been such a blessing. And buying furniture, and arranging the furniture, and cleaning and all that type of stuff. My partner and I have been cooking a lot more.
My reading practice has also flourished during this time, more so than my writing. I was journaling a bit at the beginning of the pandemic, and that’s kind of shifted to reading a lot of fiction and nonfiction. I have a nonfiction book club that revolves around writers of color and Black history of the United States. And then, to lighten the load, I suppose, my fiction practice is really important.
Have you read anything recently that has stood out?
Honestly, for the book club, it’s more about creating the space and community to talk about these things with my friends that might not have necessarily come up before or not necessarily talked about. I grew up in a really white community and I went to a really white school, so having this space to talk about race and what that means to me, with my friends, has been really enriching. I’ve been reading a lot of — and this is part of my yoga training as well — the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita. I also have an interest in theology and Catholicism, and how Catholicism in the Philippines is different from Catholicism in America. And I mean, that’s all just a part of my heritage. Both sides of my family are very religious, and so kind of diving into that and what Catholicism means to me today. Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot…
These are very heavy subjects to be tackling in…
At 11:30 in the morning? [Laughs]
Yeah. These are big questions. Quite different, probably, from how you used to spend your Friday evenings.
No, actually. Not really! I don’t really drink, and I don’t go out. Honestly, the pandemic has given me the space to do all these things. And I know I’m so lucky, and I know I’m in the minority in that, but it’s given me the space to not worry about my commute, and part of that is being employed. Again, thank you to my great partners at Commercial Type for keeping us employed. But not being stressed about housing, income, has really freed up a lot of mental space to really go deep these past couple of months, and it’s been really rewarding for me. ︎
Carina Santos is an artist, writer and designer.