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ABOUT

Riccardo Olocco

Prior to a four-year stint as a lecturer in typography at the faculty of design and Art of the free University of Bolzano (2009-2013), Italian type designer Riccardo Olocco freelanced as a graphic designer in Milan and elsewhere in Italy. He graduated in 2014 from the MATD program at the University of Reading, UK. In 2019, he obtained his Ph.D. at Reading's Faculty of Typography and Graphic Design. In his thesis, A new method of analysing printed type: the case of 15th-century Venetian romans, he focuses on 15th-century Venetian roman types, combining the use of bibliographical knowledge and analysis of letterforms.

Riccardo writes on type design and type history. Besides his ongoing investigation into Francesco Griffo's roman types, his research with James Clough on Bodoni's types will be published by Codex. He is also a member of the Nebiolo History Project.

Designer, with Michele Patanè, of the commercial caps typefaces Cordial Bloom (2009) and Cordial Cherry (2009).

Together with Jonathan Pierini, Olocco reinterpreted Bodoni's work in 2014. Their Parmigiano Typographic System, which is named after Parma, the city where Giambattista Bodoni (d. 1813) established his printing house, attempts to revive, interpret and boldly extend Bodoni's work. There is not a single official original Bodoni---Bodoni's Manuale Tipografico contains many slightly different examples---, and so, the first challenge was to create coherent relationships between various optical sizes (Piccolo, Caption, Text, Headline) and weights. Besides the Parmigiano Serif family, Olocco and Pierini also developed the creative extension Parmigiano Sans. There are also Stencil, Typewriter, Egyptian styles, to name a few. The Parmigiano Typographic System was published in 2014 by Typotheque, but was developed a few years before that.

In 2014, he was a founding partner in the new CAST type foundry in Bolzano. His typefaces at CAST include

• Brevier (2014). This typeface was designed for setting long texts in small or very small type sizes---the name Breveir refers to 8 point size in ancient times.
• Gramma (2014). A compact temporary sans with large x-height.
• Zenon (2014, for Latin, Bengali, Greek and Cyrillic) and the sans version, Zenans. His graduation typeface in the MATD program at the University of Reading, UK. He writes: is a sum of different styles, from Francesco Griffo to Granjon, from modern typefaces to the first sketches of Times New Roman. Zenon is an apparently Renaissance revival with modernish proportions. A closer look reveals that it is a typographic potpourri. Zenon was published by CAST in 2015.
• Arzachel (2017, CAST). A flared terminal humanistic sans.
• In 2018, Luciano Perondi and Riccardo Olocco designed the newspaper and information design typeface Sole Sans. It was originally designed for the leading Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 ore.
• In 2021, Miles Newlyn, Riccardo Olocco and Krista Radoeva co-designed New Spirit, a 10-style typeface that revives the comfort food font Windsor.

Speaker at ATypI 2018 in Antwerp on the topic of Nicolas Jenson's roman type.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Riccardo Olocco
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Italy ⦿ Ornamental caps typefaces ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Typewriter fonts ⦿ Bengali fonts ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ School fonts ⦿