Transparency and Density of Letters

A way of letter creation, movement or stability, halftones or the solid black, and many other distinct characteristics of typographic and calligraphic letters is a fruitful field for exploration and insights.
Vera Evstafieva will speak about the properties of letterforms in type and calligraphy that she experiences in her projects.

The different natures, similarities, and opposites of these forms provoke new ideas to evolve in both fields. How far can the letterform change in transformation from calligraphic to typographic? How different is the black of the typographic letter, how different is the flesh of letters? Does the digitization of calligraphy or drawn lettering stop the hand from developing the style and kill the freedom of writing?

Personal interpretation and transformation of written shapes into a font that is not an imitation of writing and working from the basis of historical examples, both printed and written, are a part of Evstafieva’s experience as a type designer.

"Vera Evstafieva is a type designer, calligrapher, and Cyrillic consultant based in Cambridge, UK. A graduate of the Moscow University of Printing Arts, she was the first Russian student at the Type and Media course at KABK in The Hague (2003–2004). Evstafieva’s type designs include Amalta, winner of TDC²2011; ALS Direct typeface for wayfinding, now the primary face for street navigation in Moscow; Cyrillic text styles for Literata, designed in collaboration with TypeTogether, commissioned for Google Play Books, and honored at Modern Cyrillic 2021; Lambic, for the Birra Flight project for Darden Studio, which took honors in the “Communication Arts” competition 2022; Rossica, Apriori, and others.

Evstafieva is passionate about exploring historical sources, both written and printed. In calligraphy and type design, she enjoys the properties of each media, experimenting with transparency, color, and intersections in the letters created with a flat brush, making an advantage of the one and only optimal shape of a letter in type, thoroughly balancing black and white. Evstafieva is the author of the articles for the TypeJournal, Forum journal, “Metamorphoses of Perception of Pre-Petrine Cyrillic” research for the Serebro Nabora conference. She has been a member of the juries for the Granshan, Typomania, and other contests."