lundi 8 décembre 2008

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Women in Typography
Contributions of 4 Women to Our Understanding and Use of Type

Most classic typefaces bearing the names of their designers share one overwhelming characteristic -- they are named for men. While men lay claim to the faces of type, there are many notable, if sometimes overlooked, women of typography. Four of these women, covering everything from pioneering research and essays to bringing the world of type to the masses are Beatrice Ward, Carol Twombly, Kathleen Tinkel, and Robin Williams.

Beatrice Ward
During the 1920's Ward did research into typefaces and printing. She made her mark first in 1926 (writing under a penname) by tracing typefaces attributed to Claude Garamond back to Jean Jannon of Sedan. Later as a writer and typographer she worked alongside such significant contributors to typography as Stanley Morison and Eric Gill.

Content is more important than the container, and fine typography is transparent, allowing the message to show through. In other words, printing should be invisible. That was the thrust of Ward's most famous essay "The Crystal Goblet" which opens with an elaborate metaphor comparing good typography to drinking wine from a clear glass.

Carol Twombly
Intending to be a sculptor, Twombly switched to graphic design studies and soon became immersed in the world of type design. Working for Adobe since 1988 (recently retired), some of her best known faces include Trajan, Charlemagne, and Lithos. Among her many achievements and honors, Twombly was the first woman to receive the prestigious Charles Peignot award from the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) for outstanding contributions to type design.

In addition to adaptations of classic faces such as Trajan, she has many original designs to her credit including Viva, Nueva, Myriad (with Robert Slimbach), and Chapparal.

Kathleen Tinkel
I first encountered the typographic musings of Kathleen Tinkel many years ago on the CompuServe forums. I admit that much of what she had to say went right over my head — but by continuing to read and study it began to sink in. At the time I had no idea that she was a well-known and respected authority on type. She has written for Step by Step Electronic Design, Adobe Magazine, U&lc, MacWorld, and MacWeek, to name a few.

Tinkel writes about software, people, fonts, and the aesthetics of using type. She's the author of numerous tip lists and type basics articles including 10 Typographical Blunders, and 10 Menacing Font Foibles.

Robin Williams
A best-selling book author and profilic article writer, Robin Williams may be the most familiar woman of typography among non-designers. She has made the concepts of design and typography understandable and accessible to even the most non-artistic among us. Her Non-Designer's series for Peachpit Press includes The Non-Designer's Type Book.

How to Boss Your Fonts Around, The Mac is Not a Typewriter, and The PC is Not a Typewriter are just a few of her extremely popular books on type and design.

In addition to her books, Robin can be read on the Web. Her type columns for Eyewire Magazine expand on the use of type covering many nitty-gritty topics in easy-to-understand language. You can read excerpts of some of her books on the Peachpit Press site.

More
If you enjoyed this look at some of the women of typography, you may also enjoy these About features on two women inventors who, in their own way contributed to our world of computer design:

Bette Nesmith Graham - Besides being the mother of a Monkee she invented that wonderful stuff called Liquid Paper which I personally made great use of when 'publishing' my first (typewritten) newsletter

Grace Hopper - Computer pioneer and inventor whose work may have lead directly or indirectly to the desktop publishing programs that make our design lives easier

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VERONIKA BURIAN
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	Maiola is the result of one year of hard work and study at the University of Reading that brought me new knowledge, experience and a lot of fun. It received the Type Directors Club-Award, Maiola is currently part of the exhibition e-a-t. It toured already Prague, Bratislava, TheHague and is supposed to travel next to Barcelona, Poland, London and who knows ...? The family contains Regular, Italic, Bold and Bolditalic with Small Caps, ligatures, lining and old-style figures. It also includes Cyrillic and monotonic Greek. The polytonic version should follow soon. Maiola is available through Fontshop International. If you wish to have a look at some screen specimen, please click. Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in 2004. It was also chosen by Veronika Elsner from Elsner&Flake as her personal 'Judge's Choice'. The exhibition travelled to various cities all over the world.
	Ronnia is a friendly humanist Sans Serif that I started to work on several years ago. With the help of Jose Scaglione, my partner at TypeTogether, we have released a family of twenty members, weights ranging from Light to Heavy with accompayning Italics and a condensed version. Ronnia can speak over 40 languages using the Latin script and Opentype features include Lining and Old-style figures, fractions, superiors and inferiors, ligatures and symbols. Please click to see more or go to my font label TypeTogether.
	Karmina is the first joint project that is coming out of TypeTogether. Jose and me worked pretty hard in the last few months to finish this type-family. It is available at our font label TypeTogether and a few other font vendors. Karmina is a text typeface developed mainly for pocket books and budget editions. It was built to withstand the worst printing conditions: low quality papers, high printing speed with web presses and variations in the ink level of the printing press. It features four weights and 800 characters per weight, including small caps, discretionary ligatures, fractions and a complete range of numerals for every use. It also supports over 40 languages that use the latin extended alphabet.
	Crete is essentially a display typeface, orginally inspired by a wall lettering in a small chapel on Crete, Greece. Despite it's experimental character though it works nicely in a text environment. Unlike other Regular/Bold relationships, Crete differs in the thickness of the Serifs rather than the stem-width. Therefore it remains equal metrics and can be interchanged without reflow of the text. It features our Basic character set including two sets of numerals, ligatures and language support for over 40 languages that use the Latin script.
	Bree is based on the logotype of my font label TypeTogether. In the last year, Jose and I have worked on publishing 5 weights, ranging from Thin to Extrabold. It is a sleek sans serif with some rather unusal design treatment on letters, such as g y k v w z. Clearly influenced by handwriting, Bree shows a pleasant mixture of rather unobtrusive capitals and the more vivid lowercase letters, that give the text a spirited and lively appearance.Ê It is definitely a memorable upright italic! There also alternate letters available when a more classical look is desired.
	Gitter started with a few letters as logotype for a friend, but she preferred another solution. At the moment I have done only the lowercase, click it and you will see.
	Tondo is a project that I developed while working at Daltonmaag in London. It originated from a custom project and the terms allowed us to publlish it via Daltonmaag's website. Tondo is a take on the popularity of rounded fonts at the time, but the rounded ends are not circles. Instead they are slightly squashed in order to take it away from a childish look and to give it a "grown-up" feel. The Typeface is available in 3 weights plus a cut for signage purpose which is narrower and has a slightly raised x-height. All weights also include Cyrillic.
	Foco is also a project developed at Daltonmaag. The typeface was started by Brazilian designer Fabio Haag, who met Bruno Maag at a workshop in Sao Paulo. Bruno agreed to publish his design and so we redrew and refined Fabio's initial sketches and created 4 weights in total. Foco is available in Daltonmaag's standard opentype edition that includes two sets of numerals, fractions, inferiors/superiors, ligatures and supports more than 40 languages of the latin alphabet.

Veronika Burian copyright © 2004

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ROSMARY SASSOONN

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Information about the font designer Rosemary Sassoon and her typefaces.

Rosemary Sassoon has been involved in letterforms all her life. She trained and worked as a scribe and designer, before investigating methods of teaching calligraphy and using it as a decorative art to help bring it back to public notice in the 60s and 70s. She has specialised in the educational and medical aspects of handwriting since 1980. The University of Reading awarded her a Ph.D. for her work on the Effects of Models and Teaching Methods on Joining Strokes in Children's Handwriting.

Research with children led to the design of the Sassoon Primary typeface which was intended for reading. She discovered that no one had previously consulted and tested children for their preferences. To date there are over a dozen typefaces in the family for different educational purposes - for teaching handwriting as well as reading. Her interests have extended to the design of educational software and how typographical design factors can influence the assimilation of knowledge from the screen.

Recent publications reflect her wide interests. They include: The Acquisition of a Second Writing System, which deals with many of her multicultural concerns in education in particular, The Art and Science of Handwriting which ranges from the therapeutic aspects to advice for curriculum planners, Handwriting of the Twentieth Century, an historical study, Signs Symbols and Icons, and Computers and Typography, and the Designer 50 Years of Change - in Image, Training and Techniques. All published by Intellect Books.