Alumna creates a supermodel’s script

Advertising & Graphic Design alumna Krysti Kalkman (CCAD 2010) is passing out supermodel signatures at Victoria’s Secret, but not the kind you might think.

Kalkman is a full-time designer at Victoria’s Secret and was given the task of creating a new font for the store brand.

“When my creative director and art director came to ask if I could design the font I responded with ’Oh ya, sure! Why not?!’ But in my head it was more like ’I can totally do this … right?!’” Kalkman said.

She may have had doubts initially, but after seven months of research and development, the font was created and will be in stores and all marketing materials starting November 2011.

Kalkman started out using a program called FontLab. Throughout the process she said she had to constantly exercise both her analytical and creative minds.

The end result was inspired by the handwriting of people within the marketing department, which led to the the creation of glyphs.

“The idea was to make the font look like it was the supermodels' handwriting,” she said.

The glyphs are pieces of text or images that they may reuse. This includes each angel’s signature and kisses. Slogans like ”mix & match,” “very sexy,” and ”panty raid” are created into glyphs to reuse throughout the stores.

“The beauty of this is that it can just keep growing and developing in house.”

Kalkman created a font that can be reused and added to Victoria’s Secret’s future campaigns. She loves the idea that the font and branding idea can continue to grow in house instead of hiring outside and risk someone not understanding their mission.

“It is super exciting to see something you really coddled for seven months be ’born.’”