Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jens Gehlhaar is one of my absolute favorite graphic designers and type designers in the world. He creates stunning work that seethes with intense conceptual thinking and vibrant understanding of history, theory, and form-giving. We’ve only hung out once in person, at a mutual friend and collaborator’s wedding, but I was really pumped to become friends with him. Jens is the kind of graphic designer I *want* to be, but there’s no way I’ll ever catch up—he’s just too damn good at it.
Fuel TV 2010 Identity Montage Vol.2 from Jens Gehlhaar on Vimeo.
Jens Gehlhaar is a prolific creative director who specializes in holistic branding for broadcast networks, a thorough type designer, and a director of live action commercials and films. You should check out his bifurcate site—half is devoted to his work as a Film Director and the other half is dedicated to his decades of work as a Creative Director. Moreover, I recommend spending some time actually looking closely at his work and reading what is written about his projects—there is a ton to learn. Most notably, here, here and here. Jens designed the typefaces used throughout the Tom Cruise sci-fi film Oblivion and has an amazing new family of typefaces coming out soon called “Rover”.
– Ian Lynam
Toshiba “Nature’s Craftsmen” from Jens Gehlhaar on Vimeo.
I interviewed you eight years ago for Néojaponisme about your career-to-date at that time. What have you been up to since that time?
Jens Gehlhaar’s redesign of Fuel TV’s on-air identity package, completed while Creative Director at Brand New School.
I left Brand New School, had a couple of kids and took quite a bit of time off. Since then, I’ve been focusing on live action direction. Those jobs might include bits of writing, VFX, animation and music.
When I do graphic design now, it’s either purely type design or pro bono work. The last couple of weeks, I had a lot of fun designing my kid’s school yearbook. Right now, I’m doing something entirely different: Working in an in-house agency developing ads.
So, without further adieu, we interrupt this interview to bring you fourteen of Jens’ yearbook page designs for the Ivanhoe Elementary School in Los Angeles!
How is that you maintain a career that is divided between film and video direction and more graphically oriented creative direction? Is it an intentional split?
If anything, I would love if it could be more divided: Between film direction that is straightforward narrative, dramatic or comedic on one side; and typography or type design on the other side. I haven’t quite found a groove in live action that sustains a career, so that is why I occasionally go back to Creative Direction for commercials, networks and industrial videos. At the same time, I’d also love a job that is editorial print design, but I hear those are disappearing fast.
The typeface family in use in Oblivion.
The typeface family in use in Oblivion.
Jens Gehlhaar’s typeface family designed for the movie Oblivion. designed in collaboration with the amazing Dianne Chadwick!
I head that you have a checklist of “the secrets of motion graphics”. Could I bother you to share it?
It’s just a joke about how to animate type in motion graphics. Whenever clients come and want something radically new; or when junior creatives think they can reinvent the wheel, I say there are only 18 ways to animate type on. I haven’t actually ever made that list, but you know … there’s cutting, fading, racking, typing, masking, sliding, scaling, and each one of them can come from the left or the right or out of or into the Z axis etc and may ease or bounce or not. It may be more than 18, but it’s ridiculously easy to go through the entire list during an exploration phase.
Another way of saying it is that good typography in motion graphics is not good because the animation is awesome. It’s good because it’s well designed.
People come up with new ideas for type in motion all the time, but they mostly disrespect the process of reading or of writing, or they misrepresent individual letterforms, or they fail to understand that type is a grid.
Zune “Stacks” from Jens Gehlhaar on Vimeo.
How has becoming a father changed your approach to practice?
In two ways. First, I simply spend less time working. I’d love to say I’ve gotten more focused but unfortunately that’s not true: Craft still takes time and inspiration still doesn’t show up on command. Before I had kids, my most fruitful hours were early evenings. Now I spend those hours having dinner and tucking them in.
Fuel TV 2010 Identity Montage Vol.1 from Jens Gehlhaar on Vimeo.
The second way my work has changed is by being able to relate to kids. I’m not saying that only parents can be good at directing kids for film; but I don’t think I was very good at it before I had kids myself. When it comes to visual culture, my taste has always included childlike work, but my kids have introduced me to a world of children’s books illustration that’s incredible, as well as to their own little twisted universes of imagination.
Life Savers “Mouths Through The Years” from Jens Gehlhaar on Vimeo.
If you could go back in time and tell ‘the future you’ not to do something that was career-altering, what would it be?
I don’t really regret any move I’ve made career-wise. The only thing I’m trying to get better at is to make quicker moves rather than staying too long in a situation that is not entirely satisfying. I feel like I could have gone to grad school earlier; or I could have left my previous job earlier than I did. But it’s all good: Even those times taught me stuff, which is what it’s all about. Never stop learning.
Awesome. Thank you, Jens!
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