Header
font: FF
Nexus Italic Swash
posted Thursday, May 3, 2012
‘lapikon’:
Type design workshop and book
In 2011 the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice organized a long
typography workshop called ‘Ala
ma font(a)’ – Typefaces for kids! Starting point was to
design a typeface for children’s books. The workshop was spread over a
period of 9 months with 6 sessions of 2 days.
One of the basic tools the students used in creating ones own typeface was a self-made broad-nibbed ‘pen’. This tool is a system of two pencils and an eraser, held together by two elastic bands. When writing characters with these two pencils, a sort of outline character appears, which is filled in with black, thus creating a beginning of a typeface design. It is also known as the ‘double pencil method’.
Although all 15 students in the end had designed a typeface, only a few of them had sticked to the children’s theme. The amazing results were published in the book lapikon (designed by Zosia Oslislo, see image above). All students wrote a short text about their type design and each font is presented in a two page type specimen. There were five teachers involved and they all wrote a text about their input into the workshop: ‘Research in typography (Anne Bessemans), ‘The basics of creating smart fonts’ (Filip Blažek), ‘How to start designing a typeface’ (Martin Majoor), ‘Why it is worth to be friends with the curves’ (Marian Misiak) and ‘Designing fonts for screens’ (Eben Sorkin).
You can have a look at the book online here: lapikon – Typefaces for kids!
At the moment a second workshop is taking place, called ‘Ala has a pen’. The stress is even more on writing and calligraphy. Teachers are Filip Blažek, Verena Gerlach, Sarah Lazarevic, Radana Lencova, Martin Majoor and Marian Misiak.
posted Thursday, February 9, 2012
Questa @ ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’
Jos Buivenga and I were very proud our Questa
typeface was choosen to take part in the major international
exhibition ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’, the largest American
museum exhibition of its kind since 1996. Ellen Lupton, one of the
lead curators of the exhibition, invited us to show the Questa family,
a perfect subject since we are still working on it.
The exhibition and the catalogue explore
“how
graphic design has broadened its reach dramatically over the past
decade, expanding from a specialized profession to a widely deployed
tool. Featuring work produced since 2000 in the most vital sectors of
communication design, ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’ showcases a
series of developments over the past decade, including the renaissance
in digital typeface design”.
Questa is shown on a wall installation (see the image above)
featuring 25 typefaces from different designers, including Zuzana
Licko, Matthew Carter, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Laura Meseguer,
Peter Bilak and Underware. The show’s exhibition dates and venues
are:
The
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (Oct 22, 2011 – Jan 22, 2012)
The
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York (May 26 – Sept 3,
2012)
The Hammer Museum,
Los Angeles (Sept 30, 2012 – Jan 3, 2013)
Contemporary Arts
Museum Houston, Texas (July 19 – Sept 29, 2013)
Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem
(Oct 2013 – Jan 2014)
posted Wednesday, February 1, 2012
FF Nexus Web and revised Open Type Swashes
In October 2011 the FF Nexus family was made available as Webfont.
Webfonts are compatible with Typekit,
a service that has a partnership with FontShop.
Essentially Typekit
is an easy way to use high-quality Open Type fonts (like the Nexus
family) on the web.
For this occasion FF Nexus has been revised, mainly for the italic swashes in the Stylistic Sets. The overview above illustrates what the different Stylistic Sets will do (there are two different Swash capitals and there is a short and a long lowercase end character). FontFont technician Christoph Koeberlin made this instructive video of how to get access to the swashes. There is now also a special Stylistic Set for the Jan van Krimpen comma (SS09).
A nice example of FF Nexus Swashes can be found here: Das Magazin L ...Leben.Liebe.Laster
posted Monday, October 8, 2011
Design for Music
Hans
Lijklema,
my dutch colleague and friend in Warsaw, has again compiled, written
and designed a great book on graphic design. This time it is the
second book in the series ‘Pictographic Index’ (published by The Pepin
Press in Amsterdam). He is also responsible for the highly successful
series ‘Free
Font Index’, of which the second volume was published in 2010.
Lijklema did not forget to include a few designs for classical music, one of them being my work for the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the oldest European contemporary classical music festival. I was the festival’s graphic designer for 11 years, up until 2010.
‘Pictographic Index 2: Design for Music’, 320 pp, softcover, CD, ISBN
9789057681578
Edited and designed by Hans Lijklema, Written and compiled by Karolina
& Hans Lijklema.
‘Pictographic Index 2’ – The Pepin Press
posted Monday, June 1, 2011
Lettermix / Which character do you see?
.From
25th untill 28th of May 2011 the Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA) in
Toruń, Poland, for the second time organized PLASTER
– International Festival of Typography and Poster Design.
It was a four-day event with lectures, 3 workshops, and exhibitions of
Ed Fella, Władysław Pluta and myself.
Have a look at some pictures of the exhibition here.
posted Thursday, March 31, 2011
FF Scala acquired by MoA (Seoul)
In October 2010 the MoA (Museum of Art Seoul National University) in
Korea acquired FF Scala for its permanent collection, the ‘Design and
Crafts’ collection. It was the first time the museum made an
aquisition of a typeface.
Shortly after my lecture in Seoul last October (read this post) I officially handed over FF Scala to Haeng-Ji Kim, the curator of the museum (see left image). The exhibition ‘MoA Invites 2011’ (see the poster on the right) took place from 19 January 2011 untill 2 February 2011, showing all new aquisitions of last year, including FF Scala. One of the nice things is that the museum actually uses FF Scala in its printed matter: the english text in the catalogue is set in it.
See some pictures of the beautiful catalogue here.
posted Monday, January 10, 2011
My steel pen collection
In 1980 Fred Smeijers and I started our studies Graphic Design at the at the School of Fine Arts in Arnhem. During the writing lessons we used broad nibbed pens, but our typography teacher – the late Alexander Verberne (1924-2009) – also showed us sharp pointed steel dip pens. Most of these pens had been manufactured since about 1800 in Birmingham (then the world centre for steel pens) by John Mitchell, A. Sommerville & Cº and Perry & Cº. In Germany manufacturers like Heintze & Blanckertz, F.Soennecken and Brause & Cº dominated the market of ‘Stahlfedern’. In Holland there was Gebr.Rikkers who had their pens manufactured in Birmingham (“where steel is king”).
Fred and I used the pointed pens for transitional lettering à la George Bickham (the universal penman), and especially Fred was quite skillful in this. But in the 1980s these pointed steel pens – or ‘Schelvispennen’ as we call them in Dutch – were hard to find because most of them were not manufactured anymore. We went to about every office supply shop we came across, also in London and in Berlin. It almost became an obsession but in the end we had collected hundreds of steel pens in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
Some pens can still be bought, but I thought it would be nice to share some pictures of the most interesting pens I have. I took the opportunity to change the header of this type blog, using an index nib, the funniest steel pen I posses.
Have a look at more pictures of pens and boxes here.
posted Thursday, December 23, 2010
Interview in ‘8 faces’ #2
Last week I received my copy of the second issue of 8 faces, the new succesful magazine of Elliot Jay Stocks. When he interviewed me for this issue one of the things I said was that “I am still always excited by books — real books, not iPads. The iPad is nice, but I like the three- dimensional thing that a book is. To me, a book is like a sculpture: you can hold in your hands.”
Exactely that is what 8 faces is: a real magazine, printed on heavy paper and smelling of intoxicating ink. You don't have to start it up, you just take it in your hands and immediately you can flip through the pages. No need to recharge it after reading the great content. Just put it aside, touch it once in a while, show it to other people or put it vertically on the bookshelf.
“If you could use just eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”. That‘s the core questions posed to eight leading designers from the fields of web design, print design, illustration, and of type design. From the eight typefaces I choose, six of them are hot metal typefaces, just because I think its quality is still superior to its digital counterparts. But I also just love the imprint of metal typefaces on paper, it ads yet another dimension to a book.
But even without using metal type, 8 faces is a lovely magazine. You will also find interviews with Ale Paul, Stephen Coles, Tim Brown, Nick Sherman, Rich Rutter, Veronika Burian, and José Scaglione.
Read all about the magazine here.
posted Wednesday, November 17, 2010
A week of type design in Korea
.
From 17 to 25 October 2010 I was invited to Seoul for a series of
workshops/lectures on typeface design. Highlight of the week was the Type
& Design Forum 2010 which took place at the Museum of Art
(MoA) of the Seoul National University. My work as type designer was
the main focus of the event.
Many renowned graphic designers and typographers like Karel Martens, Neville Brody and Armand Mevis had been invited in previous years, but it was the first time a typeface designer was invited.
It was my first visit to Asia and it made a big impression on me. continue reading >>
posted Monday, November 8, 2010
‘158 Answers’
About 9 months ago I was asked by Tânia Raposo – then student at the Type
& Media postgraduate course of the Royal Academy of Arts in
The Hague (KABK) – to give an interview.
It was part of a larger project in which 11 students were asked by their teacher Peter Biľak to conduct an interview with a respected professional whose work was relevant for their personal work, but who is not a teacher at the KABK. The list of the interviewees is quite divers, and the students used all sorts of methods to conduct the interviews: face to face, voice over ip, online chat and email conversation.
Ken Barber by Fritz
Grögel, Peter Bruhn
by Nils Thomsen,
Christopher Burke by Brigitte
Schuster, John Downer
by Frank Grießhammer,
René Knip by Jon Glarbo,
Radana Lencová by Slávka
Pauliková, Martin Majoor
by Tânia Raposo,
Jan Middendorp by Yohanna
Mỹ Nguyễn,
Alejandro Paul by Martina
Flor, Huda Smitshuijzen
AbiFarès by Kristyan
Sarkis,
František Štorm by Irina
Smirnova.
All interviews were brought together in a small book of 112 pages.
And although ‘158 Answers’ was produced by the students themselves
(using a 1200 dpi laserprinter), in all its aspects it has become a
nice little book: the choice and diversity of the interviewees, the
size, the weight, the paper, the binding with an open spine. The text
was set in Brioni
designed by Nikola Djurek, himself a postgraduate student at Type
& Media in 2005.
There is only one minor point of critic: there are only 50 copies...
A book like this deserves to be published in a limited edition, maybe
through Peter Biľak own small publishing house Typotheque.
>
More images of ‘158 Answers’ on
the website of Tânia Raposo.
>
Visit also the website with type designs by all 11 Type & Media
graduates of 2010.
Update 1.
10-11-2010: Peter Biľak has confirmed he will indeed publish ‘158
Answers’.
Update 2.
10-10-2011: In 2011 ‘158 Answers’ has been published by Typotheque.
posted Tuesday, September 21, 2010
ATypI
Dublin: four personal highlights
ATypI 2010 –
‘The Word’ – took place from 9 to 12 September 2010 in Dublin,
at the historic venue of Dublin Castle. It was my first visit to
Ireland and the days I spent at the conference were both interesting
and fun. There are four personal highlights I would like to share
here.
1. Our lecture about ‘The Questa Project’
The main reason for going to the ATypI conference was to lecture
together with Jos Buivenga about our typeface in progress ‘Questa’. We
showed the way we work together, developing the serif text version
first and using that as a basis for the sans version. We are about to
start working on the display version, which will also be based on the
text version. This was our second mutual lecture about The
Questa Project (the first
lecture was held in our home town Arnhem), and we got some nice
reactions:
“@martinmajoor has possibly the best theory on how to turn a serif face into a sans. And the end result looks fabulous.” (Yves Peters on Twitter)
Another event I was involved in was the panel discussion Managing
multiplicity - The Pitfalls and Pleasures of Collaborative Typeface
Design. The panel members were (from left to right) Hrant
Papazian (chair), André Baldinger, Erik Spiekermann, myself, David
Berlow and Nina Stössinger. For some type designers collaborating
means working together with technical people and clients, whereas I
think the real challenges of collaborating are on an artistic level.
Usually I don't collaborate in type design, but in the case of Questa
Jos and I found a true artistic collaboration.
3. Robert Bringhurst
During this ATypI conference I finally got to meet Robert Bringhurst
in person. His book ‘The
Elements of Typographic Style’ is among my favorite books on
typography (and not only because FF Scala Sans is used for the
captions throughout the book). In another book ‘Carving
the elements: A Companion to the Fragments of Parmenides’
(pictured above) Robert Bringhurst uses my FF Seria and FF Seria Sans
in a way I had in mind when I designed it back in 2000. Therefore I
consider him not only a great writer, but also a great typographer.
4. The ATypI program booklet
Last but not least: I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that this years ATypI program booklet was completely set in FF Scala. The design was done by Clare Bell and Brenda Dermody, cleverly using fluoriscentic red for the captions. I haven’t been to a lot of ATypI conferences, but I presume it is the first time the ATypI program booklet is set in FF Scala. For me it is great to see this, more than 20 years after Scala’s first appearance.
posted Monday, September 20, 2010
FF
Scala family now available as webfonts
.
Since the end of June, FF
Scala and FF
Scala Sans are available as Webfonts.
Scala Webfonts are compatible with Typekit,
a service that has a partnership with FontShop.
Essentially Typekit is an easy way to use high-quality Open Type fonts
(like the Scala family) on the web.
I am very proud that the website of
I Love
Typography was one of the first to use the Scala webfonts. In my
view this site, hosted by John Boardley, is todays best website on
typography, and I think the way Scala looks on the web is truly
amazing (see image below, or better visit the real site). The
technical staff at FontShop sure did a great job on hinting the Scala
webfonts. I hope to change my own website soon, and I am sure you can
guess which fonts I am going to use.
posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Interview in ‘Free Font Index 2’
Hans Lijklema is a Dutchman living in Poland, just like me. We
regularly meet in the Warsaw coffee shops (not comparable with the
Dutch ones) to have a ‘lekker bakkie’ (Dutch for a good cup of
coffee).
Hans, who is the author of ‘Free Font Index 1’ and ‘Pictographic Index 1’ (both published by The Pepin Press in Amsterdam), has just compiled the second volume of ‘Free Font Index’. It is a type specimen that contains over 500 fonts by different type foundries.
A good part of ‘Free Font Index 2’ (about 50 pages) consists of texts, images and interviews about free fonts, thus making this book much more than a simple collection of free fonts. There are interviews with Donald Beekman (DBXL), Jakob Fisher, Ray Larabie and Svetoslav Simov. Jos Buivenga (exljbris) talks about ‘Serendipity in type design’ and Max Kisman wrote a tutorial on how to design and produce your own font.
Ellen Lupton is also present in the book. Hans Lijklema arranged an interview/discussion about free fonts between Ellen Lupton, Caroline Hadilaksono/Micah Rich (The League of Moveable Type) and myself (see the spread on the image above).‘Free Font Index 2’ – The Pepin Press
posted Wednesday, May 26, 2010
PGR. Graphic Design in Poland
It is my conviction that you cannot be a good type designer if you are
not a book typographer.
Since 1999 I am the graphic designer for the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland, one of the oldest European music festival that is fully dedicated to contemporary classical music. I designed the inside typography of the programme books which was then a perfect opportunity to use and to test my newly designed Seria and Seria Sans.
I also designed colourfull covers for the books. The whole graphic design for the festival is purely typographic, maybe a reaction to the typical illustrative, handlettered Polish posters.
Jacek Mrowczyk and Michał Warda (from the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts) have published the book ‘PGR. Projektowanie graficzne w Polsce’ (PGR. Graphic Design in Poland). They present the most interesting examples of Polish graphic design of the last decade, and I am proud they also included the book covers I designed for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The book is in Polish only.
posted Wednesday, May 12, 2010
TypoBerlin, here we come!
On Friday, May 21, Sébastien Morlighem and I will present the book we
wrote about José Mendoza y Almeida (see the post below), during
TypoBerlin 2010.
José Mendoza y Almeida – the »Godfather« of French Type Design.
TypeBerlin 2010. Friday, May 21, 13:00, TypoStage
posted Friday, April 30, 2010
José Mendoza y Almeida (the book)
José Mendoza y Almeida (now 83 years old) designed typefaces like
Pascal, Photina and ITC Mendoza. He is considered the “godfather” of
french type design and he is still active today since he began working
with Roger Excoffon at the Fonderie Olive in 1954.
The first ever dedicated book to his work was published last March in Paris by french publisher YpsilonÉditeur, as part of the Bibliothèque typographique collection. It features several essays by Martin Majoor and Sébastien Morlighem, with an introduction by Jan Middendorp. Many unpublished documents are reproduced in the book.
YpsilonÉditeur | View some images of the book
posted Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Scala microsite
In 2009 FontShop announced a series of detailed microsites dedicated
to the most important FontFont originals: FF DIN, FF Meta Serif, FF
Trixie, FF Dingbats and FF Scala in all their full-featured glory.
Go to the Scala microsite here.
posted Tuesday, December 1, 2009
FF Scala Slab (in progress)
At the moment I am working on FF Scala Slab, a logical next member of
the Scala family. I am planning to release it in the second half of
2010, in the planned versions: light, regular, bold and black.
posted Friday, September 4, 2009
Working on Questa
The Questa project is a type project of Jos Buivenga and Martin
Majoor.
It all began in April 2009 after we had met at the 33pt. Symposium in
Dortmund, both giving a lecture. We knew each other from the Academy
of Fine Arts in Arnhem, but we had not seen each other for about 25
years. We renewed our contact and after a few meetings we decided that
we wanted to do a type design project together.
Questa in progress, a squarish Didot-like font that Jos originally had planned in one display style only, was a perfect basis to apply upon Martin’s typedesign philosophy about the form principle of serif and sans, as advanced in an article for Eye Magazine about the origin of the sans serif and Helvetica’s plagiarism.
More on the official site of The Questa Project.
