Every Fall, the Newhouse VIS students have the opportunity to work with a professor and develop it based on their personality and experience. I had the honor of working with Professor Michael O. Snyder.
If you were to pick up a Kodak Brownie Target Six-20, you’d notice a sleek typeface that features crossbars traversing the stems of the A’s and E’s. Pick up an old map and you’ll notice serifs sticking out of each letter. Walk into Michael O. Snyder’s office and you’ll see Kodak Brownies cluttering his shelves and books full of maps.
Snyder Serif works to combine the contemporary design style of vintage film cameras with the distinctive serifs on the maps of old. A quick conversation with Mike and you’ll pick up on his kindness and enthusiasm to learn. He’s curious, yet grounded. While working on this project I continuously tried to draw aspects of the typeface back to these traits. The serifs ground the typeface, and the subtle angles on all the crossbars as well as the ends of the rounded characters are there to personify his curiosity.
A former geologist who studied internationally, Snyder is a well-traveled man who is passionate about photography, which he teaches at the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications. Snyder Serif strives to take his strongest traits and interests and embody them in a tangible typeface.
