A panel discussion about collaboration, authorship, and contribution from the type designer’s perspective within the design world. Collaboration has become an intrinsic part of the type design process, taking place in many different ways. It happens in the design process itself, in the production/engineering part of a typeface, and in anything in-between until the type product reaches its final market. We would like to talk about these various forms of collaboration and how they differ from the past, also asking how the old mechanical production process influenced the way people worked together. Related to this, authorship has changed too in type design, facing new challenges. We will discuss the artistic authorship and the role of the designer in type production, the present and future of our discipline. We will look at the subject from both the type designer’s and the independent foundry’s point of view, as owners of small businesses.
Collaboration, authorship and contribution
Joana Correia
Joana Correia graduated from the MA Typeface Design program at Reading in 2011. Since then, she has worked as a freelance type designer in collaboration with other type designers. In 2018, Correia founded her own type foundry, Nova Type. She has taught type design at ESAD, and at Matosinhos from 2011–2017. Correia has given lectures and workshops around Europe, such as at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw as a visiting teacher, and at FEED, organized by the Associación Galega de Diseño. Correia’s most recent work includes the typefaces Artigo, Laca, and Artigo Display, available at Nova Type.
Maria Ramos Silva
Veronika Burian
Veronika Burian studied Industrial Design in Munich and worked in that capacity in Vienna and Milan over a few years. Discovering her true passion for type, she graduated with distinction from the MA in Typeface Design in Reading, in 2003 and worked as a type designer at Dalton Maag in London for a few years. After staying for some time in Boulder, USA, and in her hometown Prague, she is now enjoying life in sunny Cataluña. Veronika is co-founder of the independent type foundry TypeTogether, publishing award-winning typefaces and collaborating on tailored projects for a variety of clients.