Jaroslav Benda

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Jaroslav Benda Czech painter, graphic artist, author, designer of postage stamps and posters, b. 1882, d. 1970, Prague. From 1920 onwards he was Professor of Applied Arts at the School of Applied Arts. Petra Docekalova, an expert on Benda, writes: Czech typography has been long influenced and deeply shaped by an incredibly hard-working figure---Jaroslav Benda. He was an important pillar who stood at the beginnings of contemporary Czech typography. He was an influencer who greatly inspired generations of type designers. Creator of a rather clumsy typeface in 1923 that exhibits quite a few irregularities (image below from Veronika Burian's thesis). Veronika writes in 2017: In the 1930s, Benda attempted to develop his first, typically Czech, typeface. He sent his drawings to the Monotype Corporation for casting, but the design never made it into production. As Benda believed the drawings had been destroyed, he continued revising his own version until the 1960s. In 1962, at the age of 80, he and his daughter Jarka Tupa published Betu (Benda-Tupa), an evolutionary conclusion of the designs supplied to Monotype. Donald Partyka believes that Betu was designed in 1952, but, as mentioned above, it has its roots in that original typeface from 1923. Revivals and reinterpretations of his work: In 2012, at Type@Cooper in New York, Donald Partyka revived Betu as Benda. In 2017, Tomas Brousil designed a retro script typeface in Benda's honor, simply called Jaroslav. Brousil followed that up in 2020 with Benda. In 2017, Slavka Jevcinova published Avory Latin at Rosetta Type Foundry. References: In 2014, Petra Docekalova wrote a thesis about Jaroslav Benda. This led to the book Jaroslav Benda 1882-1970 by Lucie Urbankova and Petra Docekalova (2017, in Czech). Kickstarter project in 2020 to extend and translate the text in English.	EXTERNAL LINKS Jaroslav Benda Behance page MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Czechia ⦿