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ABOUT

Maria Selezeneva [Maria Kharlamova]

Moscow-based type designer, known first as Maria Selezeneva, and then as Maria Kharlamova. In 2014, she cooperated with Alexandra Korolkova on a revamped Journal Sans typeface at Paratype, called Journal Sans New (Latin and Cyrillic). This is a major extension as explained by Paratype:

The Journal Sans typeface was developed in the Type Design Department of SPA of Printing Machinery in Moscow in 1940-1956 by the group of designers under Anatoly Shchukin. It was based on Erbar Grotesk by Jacob Erbar and Metro Sans by William A. Dwiggins, the geometric sans-serifs of the 1920s with the pronounced industrial spirit. Journal Sans, Rublenaya (Sans-Serif), and Textbook typefaces were the main Soviet sans-serifs. So no wonder that it was digitized quite early, in the first half of 1990s. Until recently, Journal Sans consisted of three typefaces and retained all the problems of early digitization, such as inaccurate curves or side-bearings copied straight from metal-type version. The years of 2013 and 2014 made "irregular" geometric sans-serifs trendy, and that fact affected Journal Sans. In the old version curves were corrected and the character set was expanded by Olexa Volochay. In the new release, besides minor improvements, a substantial work has been carried out to make the old typeface work better in digital typography and contemporary design practice. Maria Selezeneva significantly worked over the design of some glyphs, expanded the character set, added some alternatives, completely changed the side-bearings and kerning. Also, the Journal Sans New has several new typefaces, such as true italic (the older font had slanted version for the italic), an Inline typeface based on the Bold, and the Display typeface with proportions close to the original Erbar Grotesk. The new version of Journal Sans, while keeping all peculiarities and the industrial spirit of 1920s-1950s, is indeed fully adapted to the modern digital reality. It can be useful either for bringing historical spirit into design or for modern and trendy typography, both in print and on screen.

Her second project from 2014 was Stem, a geometric large x-height Latin / Cyrillic sans serif with optical sizing co-designed with Alexandra Korolkova and Isabella Chaeva at Paratype. This was followed in 2015 by Stem Text.

Still in 2014, she designed Yefimov Serif: Yefimov Serif is a contemporary serif face, with low contrast, squarish shapes of round glyphs and emphasized businesslike nature. It is one of the last original typefaces by Vladimir Yefimov. Yefimov Serif will suit perfectly for business texts, periodicals and corporate identity.

In 2017, she designed a very heavy (Latin) octagonal typeface, and the utilitarian sans typeface family Ida (2017, Paratype). Behance link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Maria Selezeneva
 [Designer info]
Behance page
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Russia ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿