Sometimes I am offered other assignments connected to my profession – writing an article, giving a lecture, teaching. I usually accept because their purpose is the same as my work: to visually improve our environment. They all involve rearranging information in a form that is more logical, more interesting, and easier to absorb. They include selecting the most illustrative examples and removing imprecise expressions. There is and will be an inexhaustible demand for that.

In 2013 the Päivälehti Museum inquired about my interest in designing and producing an exhibition on typography. The Museum was to host the exhibition for six months in 2014, after which it would go on tour in two other museums elsewhere in Finland, the Pukstaavi Museum in Sastamala and the Vapriikki Museum Centre in Tampere. It was a big project and also a first for me. Of course I was interested and I started on it right away.

The exhibition was eventually named “Tunnetko tyypin?” ('Do you recognise the type?'). Its logo is the silhouette of a man carrying a briefcase of fonts; the briefcase is a 90s vintage computer icon for Adobe’s font files folder.

The exhibition featured various perspectives on typefaces and their use. My principle was that everyone should find something familiar and also something new. My cameraman Pekka Luukkola and I also created a short video clip on the creation of a new typeface. The example we used was Saku Heinänen’s “YLE” font family – familiar to every Finn who watches TV.