Speaker Irmi Wachendorff

Irmi Wachendorff is an Associate Professor in Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. She has a double qualification as a graphic designer and a design historian specializing in typography, visual communication, and sociolinguistics. She is passionate about design education, letterforms in public space and the relationship between linguistics and typography.

Irmi’s PhD research at the University of Duisburg-Essen explored the multilingual typographic landscapes of the Ruhr area in Germany and was funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Prior to this, Irmi was an associate lecturer in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, a lecturer at the Folkwang University of the Arts as well as a research assistant in the transdisciplinary research project »Signs of Metropolises – Visual multilingualism in the Ruhr area« at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She graduated from the University of Art and Design Offenbach and the University of the Arts Zurich, completed an internship in Paris (Studio Philippe Apeloig), and worked as a graphic designer in Sydney (Frost*Design) and Zurich (G+A).