It is easy to take the tools at one’s disposal for granted, and it is easy to get trapped into thinking that the fonts you can make with a Bézier editor are all the fonts you can make, period. Is that the reason that all typefaces look the same? To arrive at new shapes, we first must design new tools.
This presentation presents ECAL MATD’s pursuit in creating new shapes through pushing the boundaries of what is possible with Bézier curves, and to discover what lies beyond: From a first-semester class, to a case study of graduation work, to the announcement of a new multi-year research project.
These speakers appear and offer this presentation due to the support of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) / “ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO).
Speaker
Kai Bernau
My name is Kai and I write my bio in the first person. In 2005, my wife Susana and I founded Atelier Carvalho Bernau in The Hague. We design reading experiences, from typeface to interface. We are, incredibly, still in business. In 2014, we also co-founded the collective Open Work, where we explored the subversion of design patterns, and participatory design. After 18 years in The Hague, we moved to Porto in 2021. I graduated from KABK‘s Type & Media before it was cool, and have designed a few typefaces since: for our own use, for clients, and for you! Since 2011, I have taught type design at ÉCAL’s MA Type Design.
Instagram @carvalho_bernau
Twitter @at_cb
Speaker
Matthieu Cortat-Roller
Matthieu Cortat is a type designer, creating custom fonts (with clients such as Caran d’Ache, Lausanne City Council, Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Eurovision TV channel) and retail typefaces, distributed from Lyon by 205TF. Since 2016, he is Head of the Master in Type Design at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO), where he teaches his students how to create typographic shapes from non-typographic references, such as musical pieces. Interested in the history and present of type design, he co-edited a publication about rationalist lettering in fascist Italy (Archigraphiæ, 2019) and a publication on Syriac, an endangered script (Aram, 2021). He participated in “AIZI, Artificial-intelligence type design for Chinese script”, a Research project during which he developed a teaching “method” inspired by the pedagogy of the Swiss sinologist Jean-François Billeter.
Instagram @ecalmatd
Speaker
Raphaela Häfliger
Raphaela Haefliger is a Swiss graphic designer focusing on typography and type design. After completing her BA in Visual Communication at the University of Lucerne, she worked for Ludovic Balland as an editorial designer. Since then, typography has become a faithful companion in her life. She went on to establish an independent practice by working on commissioned and self-initiated projects, still with a strong focus on typography.
The Master's degree in Type Design completed in 2020 at the ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne signifies for Raphaela a specialization within her core discipline of graphic design, which in turn enables her to develop her own tools for her typographic repertoire. Since graduating, she has been working as a teaching assistant at ECAL.
Kai Bernau 
Matthieu Cortat-Roller 
Raphaela Häfliger