Picture report of ATypI 2004: Jewels from the East

From September 30-October 3, we attended the 48th ATypI meeting in Prague. The pictures below are really pathetic, so please give this amateur a break. Also, I am only reporting on the talks that had a Central or East European component. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I have no pictures for the absolutely fantastic talks on diacritics by Petra Cerna Oven (who covered Croatian and Slovene, and many other things) and Victor Gaultney and Adam Twardoch (who explained the diacritical challenges ahead of us).

Prague!

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The participants

Huge Medium Small	Anna Versotskaya at the e-a-t exhibition.
Huge Medium Small	Jef Tombeur at the e-a-t. The artwork is by Radana Lencova.
Huge Medium Small	Lucas Nijs finds it odd that his talk his scheduled in the toilet.
Huge Medium Small	Viktor Kharyk, the main type designer in Ukraine.
Huge Medium Small	Huda Smitshuijzen-AbiFares and Jef at the Cafe Imperial.
Huge Medium Small	The new president of the ATypI getting ready in the main auditorium.
Huge Medium Small	Allan Haley.
Huge Medium Small	Rick Poynor.
Huge Medium Small	Hail to the chief. Outgoing president Mark Batty.
Huge Medium Small	And here he is again with Cynthia, who worked harder than anyone else.
Huge Medium Small	Adam Twardoch at the banquet in the Breznov Monastery.
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Huge Medium Small	Frederik De Bleser and Tom De Smedt, the first half of the Belgian delegation.
Huge Medium Small	The second half: Peter Van Lancker and Lucas Nijs.
Huge Medium Small	Veronika Burian.
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Polish posters

Huge Medium Small	Andrea Marks presened a 20-minute rough cut of her documentary "Freedom on the fence". The glory days of Polish posters (1955-1965) were recalled, as well as the days of the solidarity movement (1980s). Posters had to be approved by the censors, so one can find all sorts of hidden messages in them. Most of the movie was about the sorry state of the art nowadays, with big commercial interests ruining the cityscapes. Well done!
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Vladimir Favorsky

Huge Medium Small	Yuri Gherchuk, an art historian from Moscow, spoke about the lettering in the oeuvre of Vladimir Favorsky (1886-1964), a graphic artist, book designer, philosopher, painter, and universal artist who remained almost unknown in the West.
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Huge Medium Small	Look atthe lettering: all letters have a certain individuality, yet they fit carefully together.
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Huge Medium Small	From the "Book of Ruth" (1924), maybe his most important work. The text is brimming with symbolism, like the cross in this figure, which is a combination of the greek Theta and the greek Phi.
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Huge Medium Small	More pretty book designs.
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Huge Medium Small	He published his "Alphabet" in 1948. Gherchuk explained that Favorsky had his own type classification: Substantial volumetric (3d) letters that rise above the surface. They have rounded serifs and little contrast. Black is seen as depth, thin strokes as spatial. Flat (2d) letters, or "poster letters", as if cut out from a flat surface. They have constructivist serifs and lack depth and relief. Skeleton letters: simplified constructions, with often thin serifs.

Young Czech and Slovak type designers

Huge Medium Small	Johanna Balusikova (a Slovak type designer who studied in France and lives in The Netherlands) and Alan Zaruba (a Czech type designer who studied in London) presented the e-a-t (Experiment and Typography) exhibition, and took the opportunity to update us on the state of the art of Czech and Slovak type design.
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Huge Medium Small	The School of Arts and Crafts (est. 1928, Bratislava) was the Slovak equivalent of the Bauhaus, but it closed in 1938. In those early days, painter Martin Benka (1888-1971) produced many ornamental compositions, and lots of important Slovak folk art.
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Huge Medium Small	In the post-war period, Oldrich Hlavsa (author of "A Book of Type and Design," New York: Tudor Publishing, 1960, and of "Typographia," three volumes, Prague Publishing House for Technical Literature, 1976/1981/1986) became the dominant person on the type scene in Czechoslovakia. This book cover is by him. At the same time, Josef Týfa became important (see below).
Huge Medium Small	The Academy of Art and Design in Prague produced many famous artists, including Ales Najbrt (shown in the picture) and Jan Solpera.
Huge Medium Small	Najbrt was interested in calligraphy early on in his career, and evolved into the main graphic design personality in Prague today. Shown here is his "Typeface 5" (1989).
Huge Medium Small	Neat wooden plank letters in the typeface Prkno (1992-1993) made by Petr Babak.
Huge Medium Small	Ondrej Chory made Mongoloid (1992).
Huge Medium Small	In these heady days of the early 1990s, many things happened. For example, this design magazine, Tryskac, saw the light, but only one issue was ever printed.
Huge Medium Small	Pavel Jedlicka created the typeface Error (1997).
Huge Medium Small	Woodbox (2003) is a neat stencil face, but I missed the author's name. Perhaps it was also by Jedlicka.
Huge Medium Small	Moving on to contemporary Czech type designer Marek Pistora.
Huge Medium Small	He created "Plastic"---look at those ornaments, freshly picked from a junkyard.
Huge Medium Small	The Zivel magazine (1995, poster by Klara Kvizova) had a great influence on the young generation. Invariably, each issue had several experimental typefaces, and Marek Pistora was one of the main type designers involved in them.
Huge Medium Small	Radim Pesko created Boijmans (2004) for the new identity of the Museum Van Boijmans in Rotterdam.
Huge Medium Small	Moving on to Frantisek Storm, founder of the Storm Type Foundry. Storm designed tens of interesting typefaces. Shown here is Sebastian (2003), but he also made Serapion and Solpera. The Solpera face was originally called Insignia and done by Storm's teacher, Jan Solpera, in the 70s. Storm later digitized and renamed it.
Huge Medium Small	And here is Metron, made by Jiri Rathousky in the early 70s for the subway in Prague. It was later replaced by Helvetica, but with the help of Pistora, Storm digitized it in 2004, a year after the death of Rathousky, who had asked Storm for a digitized version.
Huge Medium Small	Slovakian designer Andrej Krátky graduated from Prague, where just as many others, he studied with Jan Solpera. He made the type family Adriq in metafont in 1991.
Huge Medium Small	He also made Bradlo Slab and Bradlo Sans (FontShop, 1994-1995).
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Huge Medium Small	This happy fellow is Peter Bilak, the Slovakian designer of Eureka (1992), Atlanta (1994), Champollion, Fedra Sans (2001), and Fedra Serif, the editor of dot dot dot, and the founder of Typotheque in The Netherlands.
Huge Medium Small	This is a Slovakian professor called Lubomir Longauer, who is curating an exhibition called "20th century Slovak typography, part 1: 1918-1970" from October 8th 2004 until January 2nd 2005, in Bratislava's Mirbachov Palace. Quoting Balusikova, he has done a pioneering job on historical research of typographical work done by Slovak artists since the beginning of the Czechoslovak state in 1918.
Huge Medium Small	Emil Drliciak, the Slovak designer of the logotype face Hexagon (1997).
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Huge Medium Small	Look at the exquisite geometric constructions!
Huge Medium Small	Close-up of the typeface Hrana (1997) by Daniel Markovic, another Slovak. He was clearly influenced by Vojtech Preissig.
Huge Medium Small	This is his Globus text face, done in 1999.
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Huge Medium Small	Babyfaced Slovakian designer Michal Tornyai.
Huge Medium Small	He created this experimental face, Threefont (2002).
Huge Medium Small	Martin Bajanik is the Slovak designer of the experimental face Benka (2001) and of the pictogram face Via Dolorosa (2002). Benka, of course, is named after the Slovak pioneer, Martin Benka.
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Vojtech Preissig

Huge Medium Small	Richard Kegler (P22) spoke about Preissig's life and typography. Preissig was a Bohemian (b. 1873) who studied at the academy of Applied Art in Prague. We moved to Paris where he worked briefly in Alphonse Mucha's studio. In 1910, he moved to the USA to join his brother, and lived there for about twenty years.
Huge Medium Small	1899: Preissig was 26 years old.
Huge Medium Small	He did this ex Libris in 1905, the year in which he established Szeska Grafika, a graphic studio in Prague.
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Huge Medium Small	A few years later, he Czechified the Arlington typeface so that it could be used in Czech books.
Huge Medium Small	Close-up of Cloister. Look at the round diacritics with the open circles. That is Preissig's trademark---not a bad idea to leave a footprint in one's typefaces.
Huge Medium Small	Preissig's 1919 adaptation of Goudy Old Style (1916).
Huge Medium Small	His first original type design, based on linoleum block carving. Preissig wanted to rebel against clean machines, and was actively seeking the irregular forms.
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Huge Medium Small	This sans design, genetically linked to the previous ones, dates from 1913-1914.
Huge Medium Small	Admire the pages of the books he designed. He did everything, the ex libris, the ornaments, the type, the typography.
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Huge Medium Small	Quote from this slide: "The Bohemians (Czechs) are deserving of your sympathy. They are the Belgians of Austria, and pro-allies."
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Huge Medium Small	Preissig was politically active, and hated the occupation of his country by the Austrians during world war I and by the Germans in world war II. From the safety of the Wentworth Institute in New York, where he started teaching in 1912, he printed many political posters.
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Huge Medium Small	The Preissig Roman typeface is used for the 1928 book "D'Aucassin et Nicolete".
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Huge Medium Small	Preissig made over 60 exlibris, but he was foremost a book designer.
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Huge Medium Small	Kegler showing us a comparison of several digital versions of Preissig's Antikva, done by Storm, P22, PsyOps and White, respectively.
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Huge Medium Small	Citizen and Journal are related digital typefaces.
Huge Medium Small	Preissig joined the resistance in Czechia in 1939, was arrested in 1940, and died in 1944 in the concentration camp in Dachau. Kegler concluded: "His work was passionate, visionary, and deserves more study."

Oldrich Menhart

Huge Medium Small	Veronika Burian presented the work of Oldrich Menhart (1897-1962), a famous Czech Calligrapher, type designer and craftsman. Unlike Preissig, who was involved in all aspects of book design, Menhart was the prototypical type technician.
Huge Medium Small	The Czech Republic was founded in 1918, time for a new identity! But sadly, there were almost no appropriate typefaces and no independent type industry. This example shows how not to use diacritics.
Huge Medium Small	V.H. Brunner (1886-1928) tried to make original Czech type.
Huge Medium Small	Karel Svolinsky (1896-1986) cast this wonderful Svolinsky Antiqua in 1925 for Prumyslova Tiskarna in Prague.
Huge Medium Small	Jaroslav Benda (1881-1970) made this alphabet in 1923.
Huge Medium Small	This Tusar Antiqua (1925, Prumyslova Tiskarna) was made by Slavoboj Tusar (1883-1950).
Huge Medium Small	Tusar Antiqua in Monotype's 1936 version.
Huge Medium Small	And Karel Dyrynk (1876-1959) showed that he had mastered the art of good diacritics in his Malostranska Antiqua (1927, Statni Tiskarna, Prague).
Huge Medium Small	Vojtech Preissig (1873-1944) was obsessed with diacritics. In any case, Burian made the point that the post-war period was very productive in Czechoslovakia, and that the diacritics problem was being solved.
Huge Medium Small	She placed Menhart just right: he was a calligrapher, a technician, a man who had a feeling for his letterforms.
Huge Medium Small	In this and the next figure, Menhart only did the type. He considered calligraphy as the cradle of type design, according to Burian.
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Huge Medium Small	Here is Manuscript (1943-1945, Statni Tiskarna, Prague), which by virtue of its originality and Slavonic feel, tended to be overused. Used sparingly, it can be elegant and poetic. Paul Standard says that it is "seemingly written with molten metal".
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Huge Medium Small	Manuscript Kursiva (1946) is quite calligraphic.
Huge Medium Small	A great comparison by Burian of Preissig's Antiqua, and Menhart's Manuscript and Figural typefaces. She circled the places of obvious influence.
Huge Medium Small	Burian reminds us that Menhart had a positive attitude towards new technologies.
Huge Medium Small	Menhart was one of the rare Czech type designers at the time who actively looked to publish his work internationally. Here is Menhart Antiqua (1931, Bauer), his first commercial face. Blow it up to check that the serifs point to the right in a wedge shape, to guide the reader's eye.
Huge Medium Small	The semiserifed Menhart Roman followed in 1933 (published by Monotype in 1936).
Huge Medium Small	And here is Menhart Italic (1933, published by Monotype in 1936). His motto was that type should not disturb or shock.
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Huge Medium Small	Figural Antikva (1940, published by Statni Tiskarna, 1949) is an elegant and generous text face.
Huge Medium Small	It is hard to believe, but both this Figural Kursiva (1948, published by Statni Tiskarna, 1949) and Figural Antikva were derived directly from Oldrich's own handwriting. He was very adept at taking drawings directly to typefaces.
Huge Medium Small	Ceska Unciala (1944, published in 1948 by Statni Tiskarna).
Huge Medium Small	Menhart had his own views on the Czech character. For example, he does not want the many diacritics to disturb the reader. Shown here are Codex Antiqua and Kursiva (1930) and Ministr.
Huge Medium Small	His typefaces were designed from his gut. They had to be functional, and were derived from scratch from his own handwriting. He rejected type revivals.
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Huge Medium Small	His letters had calligraphic origins and were thus irregular from birth.
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Huge Medium Small	According to Burian, his work degenerated after 1948. It lost a bit of its elegance. Coincidentally, in 1948, the communist regime took over, and Menhart was elevated to the status of national hero, bestowing many awards on him. Burian does not believe that he was a card carrying communist though, because he did not care about various ideologies. It is true, though, that he did several posters for the communists.
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Huge Medium Small	Parlament (1962) was created in this last period of his life.
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Huge Medium Small	Vajgar (1961, Tiskarna Straz) looks to me like it is a throwback to the Czechoslovakia of his youth, inconsistent with the times. Menhart died in 1962. Veronika, if you are reading this summary of your talk: I was fascinated by your analysis and insight, and the way you dissected Menhart's life. Thanks.

Frantisek Storm

Huge Medium Small	On to the presentation by Frantisek Storm and his two assistants, Ottokar Karlas and Marek Pistora, of his Czech type project: Storm wants to digitize, extend, and publicize all the major historical Czech typefaces. They can be bought at the Storm Type Foundry. The list of faces done thus far is shown in the picture.
Huge Medium Small	An original drawing of Preissig, ca. 1914, shown to us by Ottokar.
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Huge Medium Small	The next few slides show the linoleum cut for "The House", a small booklet, as well as some leaves from that publication. Recall that typesetting and book design was all done by Preissig himself.
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Huge Medium Small	It is difficult to see, but Preissig often drew on square-grid paper. Maybe this explained his hookish letters (probably not). He was notorious for starting projects, nad not finishing them.
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Huge Medium Small	Ink on paper drawing, ca. 1915. These and the following pictures of Preissig's work were taken from "Czech Typefaces" by Karl Dyrynk (1935).
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Huge Medium Small	Preissig's proportions are influenced by the art nouveau: big ascenders, short descenders, reduced size in the capitals.
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Huge Medium Small	The following figures all refer to the digital versions of Preissig's typefaces, as done by Storm. The first line is Preissig's original Antikva (1925, State Printing Factory, Prague). The second line is Storm's Preissig Antikva, still with the same characteristic half open diacritics. Storm thought that the italic was flawed, so he corrected and redrew it.
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Huge Medium Small	The Storm Type Foundry offers Preissig Anitkva, Preissig 1918 8a linoleum cut), and Preissig Ozdoby (the original Preissig).
Huge Medium Small	On to Slavoboj Tusar, the brother of the Czech Prime Minister in the 1920s. He studied painting and decoration, and knew a lot about European graphic design and advertising.
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Huge Medium Small	Tusar's first typeface, used in Svolinsky's book, was destroyed, in part to keep the book unique, and in part because Tusar was not satisfied with the cut.
Huge Medium Small	Tusar's typeface from 1925-1926 (Lanston Monotype), digitized by Storm in 2004.
Huge Medium Small	The same typeface. Brömse was Tusar's teacher, by the way. Anyway, Storm mentioned that he thought that Tusar got a lot of inspiration from Cyrillic letters. He did also many posters and was heavily involved in graphic design.
Huge Medium Small	Jan Solpera was Storm's teacher. He had made Insignia in 1982 (shown here), which was made into a digital type by Storm in 1999 and renamed Solpera because Insignia was already used elsewhere. Interesting detail: Solpera/Insignia is used on Czech bank notes.
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Huge Medium Small	Solpera was a precise and patient man, who insisted on full character sets: "Solpera always plays with the alternates", proclaimed Storm.
Huge Medium Small	Finally, on to the story of Metron, a typeface designed by Jiri Rathousky for the Prague metro in 1973. Rathousky was only one out of the original design team. Metron was extremely readable from far away, and thus ideal for this situation: the endings of rounded stems had to be rectangular, for example. The typeface was replaced by Helvetica in 1986. Marek Pistora corresponded with Rathousky, who just before his death in 2003 agreed to have the typeface digitized, which Pistora and storm did, based on a sample found in Hlavsa's book.
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Huge Medium Small	Metron shown next to Digita, a typeface designed by Marek Pistora for train clocks.
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Huge Medium Small	At the end of the Metron story, someone in the audience asked if there is any chance that Metron could be revived in the metro system. Storm said that it was hopeless: they are still using Helvetica, and "things are getting worse".
Huge Medium Small	They ended the presentation by showing these letters, dated 1591, the oldest Czech typeface, found in small Czech village. It is known as the Libceves gravestone, and was digitized by Storm as Libcziowes.

Josef Týfa

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Sorry, no pictures for the talk by Frantisek Storm and Pavel Zelenka on the contributions of Josef Týfa (b. 1913), who could not attend the talk because of his health. (The pictures on the left refer to Storm's web site.) Týfa was described as a modest man who lives in rural central Bohemia now. His early work was in advertising and logo and book design. It was later that he started doing type design, for which he received several prizes from the State Department of Culture and other institutions. In the mid 50s, he regularly won type contests that were organized by the state-owned Grafotechna foundry. In fact, he replaced Hlavsa as the doyen of Czech typography. That ATypI had allocated a special session for Týfa, and had invited him to attend, shows the respect he still commands in his country. His typefaces include Amos (1983, never digitized), Antikva (1959-1960, aka ITC Tyfa), Juvenis (1964), an untitled Italian (1978, a Western poster face) and H-lahol.

Storm said that "Týfa is one of the most significant persons in type design in Czechia in the 20th century." He summarized his main contributions as follows:

Antikva (1960), his most famous alphabet (also called ITC Tyfa) has romantic serifs, and italic f and an ampersand that is Týfa's signature. This face was extended by Storm to Tyfa Text (1996). Storm kept in mind that Týfa always preferred legibility over aesthetics.
Juvenis (1964) is Týfa's most experimental typeface. It was designed for large sizes for use in children's books. It is slightly serifed, and has the curiosity of having both serifed letters (b, l) and non-serifed ones (d). Storm redrew it, and made such substantial changes that it is almost a new typeface. It is still called Juvenis at the Storm Type Foundry.
Academia (1968) was made by Týfa at Grafotechna for a Linotype machine as a text face for scientific books. Storm showed us an unpublished digital version of this face, TyfaAcademia (2004). The italics are not ready yet.

Vladimir Yefimov on Cyrillic letters

Huge Medium Small	Vladimir Yefimov (ParaType, Moscow) spoke about Cyrillic letters: their origin, history and evolution.
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Martin Majoor

Huge Medium Small	Martin Majoor got married to a Polish composer in 1997, and spends his time in his two homes, one in Arnhem in The Netherlands, and the oter in Warsaw.
Huge Medium Small	He drew the first sketches for Seria in 1996 in the train to Warsaw.
Huge Medium Small	HIs hero is Jan Van Krimpen. Martin said that he did not like his typefaces, but he agreed with Van Krimpen's ideas. You see, Van Krimpen designed the serif face Romulus in 1930, and then made Romulus Sans from the same skeleton. This is shown in the next two figures.
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Huge Medium Small	Scala started out in 1988, and these are the first drawings, the serif version.
Huge Medium Small	Then, using a lot of whitex to remove things and black marker to add body, the sans was cloned out of the serif.
Huge Medium Small	And here are the Scala families. Majoor said he was motivated because "in 1988, we had Bookman and Helvetica, the most horrible typefaces you can imagine". Later, he mentioned "... like Univers and Helvetica and all the other ugly typefaces".
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Huge Medium Small	The sketch of the "a" for Seria was to Majoor like a "2d sculpture, adding white and black" in layers.
Huge Medium Small	And here are Seria and Seria Sans. Majoor is still working on a Cursive.
Huge Medium Small	But more to the point, Majoor's work in Poland. He was asked to design posters and advertising for the Warsaw Autumn Festival, and has done it every year since 1999. This is his first logo, a kind of puzzle. It surprised the Poles, who were used to more handlettering on posters.
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Huge Medium Small	Of course, his text needed accents and diacritics. This turned him off: "I really don't care about accents".
Huge Medium Small	Then he showed the errors he found in many places, like on this Polish postage stamp, in which FF Trixie (another Dutch typeface) uses a full slash through the lower case "l".
Huge Medium Small	The mistake here is that the stabbed L was missing from the font palette, and so the typographer replaced it by the pound sign.
Huge Medium Small	On his favorite bottle of vodka, called Gorzka, we find an O with a dot on top, a diacritic that does not exist in Polish.
Huge Medium Small	The design of FF Nexus according to the same skeletal cloning rules. This typeface was made in Warsaw, because he has no time in Arnhem. for Nexus, he took Seria as a basis and reduced descenders and ascenders.
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Huge Medium Small	FF Nexus is used in the Collins logo and inside the Collins dictionary.
Huge Medium Small	There are a myriad of weights now, including Swash, Typewriter, Serif, and Sans. In any case, in all the development, the serif comes first, then the sans, and then the slabs and other things, after the skeleton has been established. Note the crazy "m" in Nexus Typewriter!
Huge Medium Small	Martin Majoor in Warsaw.

Jovica Veljovic

Huge Medium Small	Jovica Veljovic is a calligrapher and type designer who relocated from his native Serbia to Hamburg, where he is a professor of lettering and typography. He is best known for his work at Adobe, such as ExPonto MM (1995), Sara Pro, Silentium Pro (2000), and soon Veljovic Script Pro. He also made ITC Esprit and ITC Veljovic. He let us peek into his own world for 50 enjoyable minutes.
Huge Medium Small	Jovica's study of Carlongian scripts to be used as a model for Silentium Pro.
Huge Medium Small	A woodcut, also part of the development of Silentium. He wanted to keep this typeface rough.
Huge Medium Small	Silentium has no Cyrillic counterpart. Carolingian script belongs to another culture, so it does not make sense to Cyrillicize. In fact, Jovica thinks that there is too much Cyrillization going on anyway.
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Huge Medium Small	Silentium Pro.
Huge Medium Small	This is the birth of Sava Pro, for which Jovica wanted Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters. These sketches are for a book called "Signature", in which a group of Montenegrans sits around drinking beer and entertains itself with competitions for the best signature.
Huge Medium Small	Sava Pro is a display face that can be used at small sizes. The lowercase was hard to find. Look at the ornaments, which have Byzantine influences--they can be seen even today in many monasteries in Greece and the Balkan.
Huge Medium Small	The name Sava was chosen to honor an archbishop of Serbia, who lived around 1300 and who was known for his ability to work with people from many nationalities. A reformer of the Serbian church, he was well-educated and appreciated by the people. Of course, there is also the Sava river which runs from Slovenia through Croatia to Belgrade, and thus symbolizes multiculturalism.
Huge Medium Small	This is a script face on which Jovica is working presently, named Veljovic Script Pro. He started his development in the early 90s, and stressed that he cannot finish typerfaces quickly. He wanted a typeface close to his own handwriting.
Huge Medium Small	He stated that "I am not interested in the Ikea philosophy" (meaning the rapid production of typefaces, often by creating glyphs by compositions of similar components).
Huge Medium Small	Not bad. He made he bold weight here even though he said that he does not like bold type in general. Also, the typeface will have many alternates, such as a choice between straight and curled d's.
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Huge Medium Small	Jovica discussed at length which one of the forms of this Cyrillic letter he likes best. The question should be asked to the Russians, Bulgarians, Serbians and Montenegrans, really, to see what they prefer.
Huge Medium Small	Whatever happens, there will be many alternates.
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Huge Medium Small	So, there you have Veljovic Script Pro. Jovica is working on several text faces, but Adobe keeps him too busy, he says, with display faces.