On Tuesday 02 May I had a rendezvous with renowned type designer Jean François Porchez at the Porchez Typofonderie studio in Sèvres just outside Paris.

The studio space had all the requisite technology one would expect in any design studio with the electronic drawing tablets being the only obvious indication that it was a specialised workspace. Jean François works exclusively on type design projects and the Porchez Typofonderie was founded as an independent digital type foundry to design and manufacture high quality typefaces.

One of the most public projects that Jean François has been involved with was the design of a custom typeface for the Paris Métro. The typeface, Parisine, appears almost exclusively throughout the Paris Métro. What is involved in the design development of a new typeface?

Unlike many of his contemporaries Jean François rarely begins designing his letterforms with hand sketching or drafting techniques. He was hard pressed to find any hand sketches at all and the few samples he did locate were certainly not the exhaustive exercises one might expect – a few jottings made during telephone conversations.