Month: April 2020

Born in 1961, Zuzana Licko is a Slovak-born American type designer who had her hand in the creation of numerous typefaces along with co-founding the graphic design magazine Emigre. This magazine is a product of the founding of the Emigre company, of which the magazine is named after. She had co-founded this alongside her husband, Rudy Vanderlans. While at this company, she had designed a majority of typefaces. Most notably Mrs. Eaves which is a variation on Baskerville.

From what I see of her work, she is mainly a typographer who sometimes does graphic design posters composed entirely of typography. Personally, I’m more of a visual graphic designer who uses type as a means to add to otherwise visual design so I can’t relate to her work. However, I do find it appealing and very fun to look at as there is just enough information to convey what she needs the viewer to see.

A Swiss-born graphic designer, Rosemarie Tissi was born in 1937 and had taken only a preliminary class at the Kunstgewebeschule Zürich (School of Arts and Crafts). Later on, she had taken a 4-year apprenticeship as a junior graphic designer with Siegried Odermatt who was a notable Swiss graphic designer. After a 10 year period of working with Odermatt, she had founded O&T (Odermatt & Tissi) with Siegried Odermatt where she continues to work to this day.

Her work follows the Bauhaus design methodology from what I see and presents a very modern, clean-looking design philosophy. Personally, I don’t really care for the Bauhaus method of design and as such don’t really care for her work. I don’t find the work revolting in any way, it just doesn’t appeal to my liking. But, I do find it to be very well done and executed phenomenally.

Born on March 4th, 1950, Gerald Giampa had gone on to become a printer, typographer, and author. He had been born in Duncan, British Columbia to a poor upbringing. As he grew up, he had developed an interest in printing books from his grandfather who had liked to read books. From then on, he had moved to Vancouver where he had begun his studies into the art of letterpress printing and typography under the tutelage of Wil Hudson and Nick Schwabe.

Over time, he had developed his own studio named Cobblestone Press and later renaming it to the Northland Letterpress Company. Lastly, he had run a company called Lanston Type Company along with a business partner Jim Rimmer.

He had died on the 20th of June in 2009 in Vancouver, leaving behind his most significant work to date. The development of the Bodoni 26 font.