Three Type Designers

Christian Schwartz

Christian Schwartz is a type designer and a type consultant from New York City. He first worked at Meta Design Berlin, where he created typefaces for Volkswagen and also created many logos. In 2000, he was a full time employee with Font Bureau and a year later he left to work independently in New York. Schwartz designed the greatly used family, Neutraface. 

www.christianschwartz.com/bioshtml

Neutraface Condensed

Bruno Maag

Bruno Maag went to Basel School of Design in Switzerland where he got a degree in Typographic Design and Visual Communications. He worked for Monotype in England but then transferred to Chicago where he was responsible for their custom typeface department. During this period, he recut all of the typefaces then in use by the New Yorker magazine for use on the Macintosh computer. Bruno Maag was a designer that absolutely hated the Helvetica font. He thought that it was not only horrendous, but that it was poorly crafted and very american. 

www. identifont.com/show?3WF

Sumner Stone

Sumner Stone is a type designer, a type founder, and an author. In 1984-1989 he was the director of Typography for Adobe. A year later he founded Stone Type Foundry Inc., in California. The Foundry has produced a variety of prize winning typefaces and custom designs. Stone fell in love with type through calligraphy and was greatly influenced by Hermann Zapf. His biggest challenges when creating type are getting proportions correct. Most of his refinement comes from pencil drawings. Several of his typeface names are from the meaning of his last name, Stone. 

www.linotype.com/562/sumnerstone.html

Emigre Fonts

Modula

• Designer: Zuzana Licko
• What is different about the font: It has a geometric element to it yet has very subtle curves.
• How is it constructed: Designed with Macintosh computer and used proportions earlier Emperor 15 bitmap design and applied the computers geometric elements. 
• What letters stand out: The lowercase v is an awkward shape because of how it has a point to the left side. The h and y are similar. The lowercase x is very interesting considering its not 2 simple straight lines crossing but more zigzag. -- The uppercase M is awkward as well because it looks kind of like an owl with the little "ears" that point at the top and the "v" shape connecting it a fourth of the way down. The A is interesting because of how round and skinny it is. Unlike quite a few of the other letters. 
• 5 words: Awkward, Geometric, Thick, Straight, Arched.

Cholla

• Designer: Sibylle Hagmann
• What is different: The curves on the b, d, and so on. The curve is very thin on the edges on top and bottom.
• How is it constructed: Made sure it had great variety and the variety was needed to echo the schools nine different departments. Tried to get a unified feel to the type. It was also set out to make them feel comfortable making, and would serve a purpose and have a clear idea. 
• What letters stand out: The uppercase J is very awkward because instead of the hook being round, it is a diagonal straight line attached to a vertical line. Not a big fan of that. The Q is interesting considering it is all curved with a subtle straight line on the bottom right edge. It doesn't go through the Q but is just attached at the edge. I like how the lowercase has thin points in the arches. It really brings out the curves in the type. 
• 5 words: Curvy, Variation, Pointy, Simple, Thin.

Priori

• Designer: Jonathan Barnbrook
• What is different: Very pointy and thin horizontal lines on the edges with a few curvy edges as well. The dots on the i and j are diamonds, which is a very nice design element. 
• How is it constructed: Prioti is a logical progression from Mason and is taken from British typography from the early 20th century.
• What letters stand out: The lowercase a is extremely awkward. Very straight, horizontal top, while the rest is curvy. Very unappealing. The j is different than most j's I see in font. it is very similar to the lowercase i. Hard to tell a different other than the j is longer. The uppercase J is still almost a straight line which makes for a more awkward uppercase J. The letter Q is interesting, it almost looks like a french horn how the line sticks out at the bottom.
• 5 words: Wide, Old-fashioned, Unappealing, Hectic, Confusing.

Who Is Wim Crouwel?

Wim Crouwel is a dutch graphic designer that was born in the Netherlands. In 1963, he founded the studio Total Design, which is now called Total Identity. Crouwel would plan out his typography extremely well based on precise grids. He published two typefaces Fodor and Gridmik and later got drafted into the army. After his completion of his service, he became an abstract painter. In 1954, he quit painting to become a freelance designer that was inspired by swiss design. Some of the awards Crouwel won in his lifetime included, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Honorary Royal Designer for Industry, and Honorary Member of the Deutsche Werkbund.

Letter Fountain Reading Summary

        The Letter Fountain reading started out with learning about Small Capitals. Small Capitals is a 

smaller version of capital letters, not reduced capitals. They are wider and make a block of text look 

less busy. The reading also informed me and Ligatures and logotypes which are combinations of 

characters and a less clearly visible combinations of characters like the “&” symbol. The reading was 

also informative on lowercase lettering and how there was none in Roman times and spacing between 

letters and how what you measure isn’t what you see. Type was influenced by Roman lettering, other 

historical attributes, and even punk and graffiti. This is where type became a little less perfect and a 

little more unclean. The reading talked about many different type and graphic designers and their 

process, techniques, and business structure. The reading gave an overview of the progress of type 

design after the introduction of the computer and how much the industry is expanding worldwide. 

There is not country-related styles, type is inspired by everything around the designers surroundings 

and taken from so many different materials and inspiration.

Living and Dead Designers

Living

Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart, born in 1941, is a German typographer and graphic designer. He studied at the Schule Für Gestaltung Basel and taught there as well as many other colleges. Weingart is well known for experimenting with type and also for challenging conventions of Modern Swiss Typography. He gained international recognition in the 1970s from his visual language that challenged conceptions of Swiss typography back then. Wolfgang Wiengart was also known as the father of the New Wave style.

Jessica Walsh

Jessica Walsh, an American designer, was born in 1986. Not only is one of the younger designers in the group, but one of the few female designers in this selection. Jessica is an art director and illustrator, and a partner at Sagmeister and Walsh. She started at a young age, coding and designer websites at the age of 11. Her signature style has been described as “bold and emotional, and provocative.” Her style also consists of the occasional surrealistic flourish, and looks handmade. Jessica and her designer friend Tim Goodman worked on a blog that ended up being very successful called “40 days of dating”. They dated for 40 days to see if they could overcome issues they had in their relationship and eventually fall in love. Jessica Walsh is one of the top designers I enjoyed learning about because of her unique creativity.

Bruno Monguzzi

Bruno Monguzzi was born in 1941 in Switzerland. His career begun at Studio Boggeri in Mulan in the early 1960s. He studied typography, photography, and psychology of perception in London and in 1963 he became a teacher for typographic design in Venice. From 1965 to 1968 he spend a few years in Montreal where he designed a total of 9 pavilions for the expo 1967 World Expedition. Throughout the entire 1960s it was one of his busiest years as a designer.  Monguzzi’s work has also been exhibited and published in Europe, South and North America, Australia, Japan, and China.

Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter was born in 1937 in London. At the young age of 24 he created his own version of semi bold typeface Dante. He studied in the Netherlands and when he returned to London and became a freelance type and lettering designer. He designed type for many well known magazines and newspapers including The Washington Post, Time, New York Times, and many others. In 1981 he became the cofounder of Bitstream inc where he worked for 10 years. Some of the awards Carter has won include the AIGA medal and the Type Directors Club Medal. In 2010 he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship and a year later the Lifetime Achievement Award.

April Grieman

April Grieman, like Jessica Walsh is American. She is a graphic designer and was a contributor to the development of the New Wave style in the U.S. One of her influential figures is Wolfgang Wiengart.  She appeared in one of Wiengart’s most infamous covers for Typographische Monatsblatter. Grieman combined typography, video, and digital media and created amazing graphics that are able to be situated with the avant-garde of the 1980s. Grieman produce many innovative artworks that are considered benchmarks in graphic design history.

Dead

Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli was an Italian Graphic Designer that designed book covers, shopping bags, furniture, corporate logos, and even a New York subway map. His work has been shown in North American and Europe and has a permanent collection in the MOMA. In New York, he taught at the institute design and Illinois institute of technology in Chicago for 3 years. In 2008 him and his wife, Lella, donated their entire archive of their design to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Vignelli later died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 83.

El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, typographer, photographer, and architect. He designed many exhibitions and propaganda for the Soviet Union. At the age of 15, Lissitzky had already began a teaching career inspiring young jewish artist. He used his art for social and political change and believed art and life could collide and the former could become the latter. He later died from Tuberculosis.

Max Huber

Max Huber was born in Switzerland and studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts and majored in Graphic Design and Photography. He combined images and typography in a unique way that was influenced by futurism. His portfolio highly insisted of Architecture and Design, Politics, sports, music, and a variety of other things. He also worked for DU magazine and joined the Modern Artist of the Alliance group led by Max Bill and later died in 1992.

F.H.K. Henrion

F.H.K. Henrion was born in Germany and was a graphic designer that trained s a textile designer in Paris. In 1951 he established his own consultant agency, Henrion Design Associates, that focused on corporate identity, poster exhibition, packaging, and book design. His posters won 5 major awards at the international poster exhibiton in Vienna and he even designed Top Graphic Design and Design Coordination and Corporate Image. Henrion later died in 1990.

Emil Ruder

Emil Ruder is a clear and concise Typographer and Graphic Designer that was born in Switzerland. He taught people that typographer’s purpose was to communicate ideas through writing and he placed a heavy importance on Sans-serif typefaces. Ruder favored the asymmetrical compositions in design and the use of his grids had a great influence on the development of web design. He died at an early age,55, in 1970.