In a retrospective view of Swiss graphic designer Karl Gerstner, it’s clear that his systematic and programmatic approach is frequently associated with contemporary digital design methods. In 2012, the Federal Office of Culture in Bern, Switzerland (Schweizer Bundesamt für Kultur), awarded Gerstner the Swiss Grand Prix for Design. The agency lauded Gerstner’s ability to seemingly… Continue reading Karl Gerstner—A precursor of digital graphics?
Hanwen zhengkai is a famous regular type font born in Shanghai during the 1930s that consists of 11 sizes and styles, and is the first set of full type from the Republic of China era. Hanwen zhengkai was warmly received after its birth and was soon purchased by the Japanese Ashizawa Printing Shop and Kaneda… Continue reading The Spread, Influence, and Redesign of Hanwen Zhengkai. China
A lifetime of type design tools, formats and projects The history of outline font editors spans some 40+ years, or the total of this speaker’s life. Ikarus, Pika, Fontographer, RoboFog, Type Art, FontStudio, TypeDesigner, FontLab, RoboFab, FontMaster, RoboFont, Glyphs, FontCreator – since the inception of outline-based font creation, type designers have employed a flurry of… Continue reading Digital legacies
Having attacked documents that threatened to topple a president and prop up a prime minister, Thomas Phinney is no stranger to high stakes. But, this was his first case involving an art object he saw at a famous museum. A unique certificate under glass was evidence that the provenance was one one of the world’s… Continue reading Font Detective: The Secret of the Certificate
Script typefaces of the 20th century are often overlooked in the history of Latin typography. Yet, they have lended a hand in visually shaping the popular culture of their time. From social stationary to advertising, they had the ambitious task of turning handwriting and lettering into type. This presented fascinating challenges to designers and foundries,… Continue reading The Dawn of Modern Script Typefaces: The 1930s
This presentation focuses on the analysis of letterings found in architectural drawings from a corpus of 170 design plans from seven major architects based in São Paulo, Brazil between 1925 and 1955. It takes into account the letters used to convey information, and also those designed to be part of the buildings. The letters and… Continue reading Art Déco Letterings in Architectural Drawings from São Paulo, Brazil
The Turkish alphabet reform is considered to be one of the most prominent alphabet shifts due to the pace of its introduction and implementation. Turkish was used in the Arabic script for over a thousand years until the reform in 1928 as part of Atatürk’s modernization program. During the four-month transition period, newspapers played a… Continue reading How Newspapers Familiarized Readers with the Latin Script during the Turkish Alphabet Reform
With a focus on Francesco Griffo’s first work, this presentation shows the development of a typeface that contemplates three variables: roman, italic, and an italic with connections. With this typeface, it is possible to make a comparison between the simple italic and de-connected italic in order to understand it. The loss of connections between letters… Continue reading Rescate de las itálicas de Griffo: Un estudio de la puesta en página de poesías
In 2018, the ATypI Board commissioned John D. Berry to begin researching and writing the first of a series of publications on the history of the organization. The Association was launched in 1957, but there was very little in the archives about the first ten years or so of ATypI’s existence. And there are vanishingly… Continue reading In Search of ATypI
In this presentation, Jo De Baerdemaeker & Rainer Scheichelbauer explain the way traditional Mongolian and Balinese scripts work and which technical challenges they pose. The presentation explains the way traditional Mongolian and Balinese scripts work and which technical challenges they pose. It goes on to show the status quo of digital Mongolian and Balinese, from… Continue reading Making Mongolian & Balinese work in digital type