Design hacks & font experiments: finding inspiration in unexpected places
The best design inspiration rarely comes from the same feeds everyone else is scrolling. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl shares what he’s been collecting for the swag at Parliament’s golf tournament, why digging through eBay surfaces classic imagery that has stood the test of time, and how a simple Illustrator plugin got him hooked on making quick sci-fi typefaces. He also explains why the graphic design and world building of the video game Marathon have him obsessed. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on beer brands, The Death of Boring Beer Brands.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl opens with Parliament news. The agency holds a big event every quarter, and this quarter it’s the Caddyshack Invitational, a golf tournament where his team usually finishes last but always gets to design swag. He shows the vintage golf boards he’s been collecting in Cosmos.
That leads to a piece of advice. Platforms like Cosmos, Savee, and Pinterest tend to feed everyone the same images, so Calvin digs on eBay for vintage gear and classic imagery that has stood the test of time.
He also shares a new hobby: designing quick, single-weight fonts with the Fontself plugin for Illustrator. The sci-fi look of those fonts comes from his obsession with the video game Marathon, whose distinct identity and type-heavy world building he calls some of the best he’s seen in games. A viewer names the habit perfectly: vibe fonting.
Highlights
Parliament designs swag for its Caddyshack Invitational golf tournament.
eBay is an underused source of classic design inspiration.
Fontself lets you turn Illustrator letterforms into a working font.
Marathon’s graphic design and world building are unusually distinct for a video game.
Key insights
Escape the shared feed
Inspiration platforms serve everyone similar images. Looking somewhere unexpected, like eBay listings for vintage gear, leads to references others aren’t using.
Old things carry proof of durability
Vintage material has already stood the test of time, which makes it a useful source for work meant to last.
Low-stakes tools invite play
Calvin is upfront that his fonts aren’t real type design, but making one in an hour is a fun way to explore an aesthetic.
Consistent world building pulls people in
Marathon drew Calvin in through its visual identity alone, even though he isn’t the hardcore gamer the game is built for.
Detailed analysis
The clip is a candid look at how a creative director feeds his own curiosity. Each example, from vintage golf ephemera to a game’s bright blue and green sci-fi type, shows inspiration arriving from outside the usual design channels and then turning into hands-on experiments.
The Marathon example also reinforces a recurring theme on the show: a fully realized world, where every aspect of the identity is nailed, can attract people who would never otherwise be the audience.
Conclusion
Calvin’s takeaway is simple: go looking where others don’t, and let your obsessions turn into side experiments, even if the result is just some hardcore vibe fonting.
Transcript
Let’s start with just some Parliament news, and some real fun news. We always try to do some kind of big event every quarter. This quarter is our Caddyshack Invitational, which is our golf tournament, where we end up embarrassing ourselves on a golf course, and my team usually comes in last place. But that’s fun, because then we just always end up designing swag for it. So I could actually show you. I started just collecting images for it this week as some inspiration.
So this is just some boards I’m collecting from everything. I love this old vintage golf look. I don’t know anything about golf, but it’s fun to do it with friends. And so I started just collecting a ton of this old vintage stuff. I’m using Cosmos, which is a great app for collecting images. Good for design stuff. If nobody knows Cosmos, that’s the one.
But I think here’s actually another obsession that’s worth noting in this. I feel like a lot of designers and brand folks spend a lot of time on things like Cosmos or Savee or Pinterest or any of those things, but you kind of get fed the same things. One of my big pieces of advice is go digging on eBay for design inspiration, because there you can find all kinds of great classic stuff. That’s where a ton of this imagery comes from. It’s all just digging on eBay for vintage golf gear. So that’s where you get to find the stuff that kind of stood the test of time. So, yeah. So, Caddyshack Invitational, that’s coming up next month for our employees and friends of Parliament.
What’s the other crazy—oh, another obsession that has recently started for me in some free time at work. I started just making some little fonts. I feel like it’s a stretch even calling them that, because I’m just testing it out. But I started using this plugin for Illustrator called Fontself, and it just allows you to design all your letters inside Illustrator and immediately turn them into a font. The real typographers out there are going to be really upset that I’m recommending Fontself, because it seems like it’s something that’s kind of for little amateurs like me when it comes to type design, but it’s very fun.
In fact, I’ll show you this. This was my font I did in, I don’t know, an hour the other day, and it’s just one single face. Really quickly. I’ve been obsessed with sci-fi stuff lately, so I wanted a little bit of a sci-fi look.
And actually, the other obsession I’ve been thinking about nonstop, speaking of sci-fi things, and part of the reason I’ve been thinking about type so much lately: I don’t know if anybody knows this or has been following, but I’m obsessed with a video game called Marathon, from the people who originally created Halo, Destiny, all of those types of games. But the graphic design, the world building, the whole identity is some of the most distinct I’ve ever seen in the video game world. They nail every aspect of it, and that’s what actually drew me in. It’s kind of a sweaty try-hard game, and I am not that kind of super intense, hardcore gamer, but this world is so good, and they really hit this kind of modern take on sci-fi that I love.
The agency [unclear] did it. They’re some big-timers. They did great work for them, and it’s just the craziest-looking stuff. It’s all this bright blue, bright green, and they use incredible type throughout it. And this is actually part of the reason I’ve been wanting to obsessively make little sci-fi-looking typefaces lately. So that’s my hobby on the side right now. But I’m very excited with how this game’s been going. So, hey, if anybody wants to play Marathon, it’s free week. It’s free to play, so you can join me. Oh, we’re going to talk about these guys in a second.
So, oh, Nick says, “I’ve been vibe fonting.” And that is actually the most accurate way of describing it. I’ve been hardcore vibe fonting. I think that’s probably the best way to say it, because the real typographers would be hating on me for calling it real type design.