Designed by Barbara Bigosińska Distributed by Blast Font family: 8 weights, 2 styles, and 2 sub-families. 32 static fonts + 2 variable fonts
This font review was originally written in Galician, the official language of Galicia, which has been spoken for over 2000 years and is now used by more than 2 million people.English translation below.
Sharf ve a luz en 2021 dende a incubadora de Future Fonts. Aquela versión 0.1 contaba xa con unha fonte variable, que permitía navegar o espazo de deseño entre os distintos pesos da tipografía. Nace con dous tamaños ópticos, cunha clara intencionalidade de uso en deseño editorial.
Same Bold Stories? Type Design by Women and Queers in the 20th and 21st Centuries Exhibition at the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach am Main, Germany July 19—November 24, 2024
A Quick Intro
In July, I had the chance to attend the opening of Same Bold Stories?, an exhibition that explores the question: Where are women’s voices in type design that complement the existing history?
While conversations about women in type design are becoming more common, exhibitions on this topic are still pretty rare. That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge and appreciate this effort. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Klingspor Museum (Dr. Dorothee Ader, Valerij Ledenev, Tatjana Prenzel), design studio Turbo Type (Laura Brunner, Leonie Martin), and the feminist collective +FEM (Kristina Mukhacheva, Naomi Rado). The opening took place on July 19, and I was lucky to be there. The feedback has been very positive, with media describing it in fitting words like “Fat, brave, and cheeky!” (hr2-Kultur Review) and “Arial, Bold, Times New Roman – Queer and Feminine Font Design” (Deutschlandfunk Kultur Interview). The exhibition runs until November, with various events planned. You can check the details here.
I first heard of Elizabeth Friedländer in an article about early female typeface designers. Using some of the typefaces mentioned in the text I decided to prepare a few images for our Instagram account. That personal exercise opened the door to extra information about the names included in the article. There was an exhibition on Elizabeth’s work at the Ditchling Museum (England), and Katharine Meynell had released the film Elizabeth in 2016. While looking for more information about her I also found the book I am writing about today. This book, letterpress printed and bound by hand, was published as a limited edition of 325 copies. A couple of months ago—coinciding with the launch of Women in type—I finally found it online and was able to read it. The University of Victoria Library scanned the pages and made the book available for all.
The book is full of reproductions of her work, not only finished and published projects but also drawings and documentation of her design process. The author tells us about her life’s path, moving from one country to another, and finding ways to nurture her career as a designer. The text includes insightful quotes from personal documents and imagery from the material she carefully preserved, allowing us to know about her work and career through primary sources.
I pre-ordered Natural Enemies of Books: A Messy History of Women in Printing and Typographyimmediately when I stumbled upon on the ‘forthcoming titles’ page of publisher Occasional Papers’s website. I knew the the title was a reference to an essay in a book designed and printed by a number of women in 1937—Bookmaking on the Distaff Side. I had recently learned about it in my own research and had only just succeeded in getting my hands on a copy from the edition of 100 after many dead ends. Thank you, interlibrary loan, and thank you, UC Berkeley!
Bookmaking on the Distaff Side was a unique piece of collective work in which women printers were invited by a committee to submit signatures they’d printed to be bound into an edition, which contributor, Kathleen Walkup, refers to as a pot-luck format. This means each submission is printed on unique paper, with varied colors, type, and illustration styles. It’s diminutive size and deckled edges with unique papers (and colors) make it such a treat to hold and leaf through. Content focuses generally on printing and typography, whether it be type theory, history of women and printing, or humorous piss-takes about the famous typographic men of that era. Perhaps my own greatest surprise in reading the book was the shade thrown at male printers and typographers. Though it is often tempered with some clarifying diplomatic statement, it’s clear the women who put this volume together had opinions and knew humor was a clever way to couch their critical opinions.
Nestled behind a Romanesque-inspired Methodist Church on 59th St and Park Avenue, entering the Grolier Club conjures a spiritual experience. A private club for the most esteemed bibliophiles, many public exhibitions and lectures are offered in their first and second floor galleries. One day, you might even be granted access to the heavenly third floor, aka the Holy Grail of All Things Bookish: the Grolier Club Library (ok, ok, all you really have to do is ask).
Main exhibition hall at the Grolier Club / my preferred house of worship.
New & novice type designers rejoice! Tipo e has published an eagerly-awaited English translation of Cristóbal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer and José Scaglione’s wonderful 2012 guide, Cómo crear tipografias. Del boceto a la pantalla. This little tome combines just about everything a type designer needs to know into one invaluable, condensed resource.
If you were a part of this era, but especially if you weren’t, you must see Graphic Means.
These days, it is easier to find information regarding printing in 15th century Europe than graphic design processes in the United States during the 1970s and ’80s. The latter, the focus of Graphic Means, was a major transition for the design and printing industry as centuries old procedures and machinery made way for photographic processes and eventually digital technology. This dramatic shift has not been well-documented, perhaps due to the quick speed of the conversion or that it is still in recent memory.
The Grolier Club’s exhibition The Calligraphy Revival 1906–2016 (May 17 – July 29, 2017; 10am–5pm Mon–Sat; free admission) is a unique opportunity for anyone interested in applications of western letterforms to experience firsthand the breadth of calligraphy’s beauty as well as its utility. The exhibition, curated by Jerry Kelly, features works by a diverse range of calligraphers. It runs the gamut from art to design to handwriting and often defies categorization.
Perhaps it is because we live in an age where styling and self-promotion shape how and whether we revere design, that the austerity of this book, and indeed, Carol Twombly’s life and career, feel so other-worldly. Which is not to say that Twombly is somehow weird or that this book about her life and work is lacking. In fact, the book is very well-written and — dare I say it, (this is a type nerd book after all) — quite an engaging read. Continue reading →
Design conferences are everywhere. Our profession as type designers, typographers and graphic designers is moving fast and we are lucky to have these events where we can get together, learn from each other, gawk at some amazing portfolios and get inspired by the greats.
Perhaps a poignant talk with Jonathan Barnbrook in eggshell-treading-interview format, where intersections between politics and design come to light, together with gloriously great, and now absent, hair?
Or a warmly technical talk about the mechanics of reading and optical sizes with Tobias Frere-Jones, announcing Mallory MicroPlus, which addresses the challenges of small text and screen text simultaneously?
What about Nadine Chahine explaining how the way we read affects our daily life?
