TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Nov 20 12:00:34 EST 2024
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Walter Battiss
Walter Battiss (1906-1982) was a South African abstract painter well-known for his Fook Island concept. Wikipedia writes: This "island of the imagination" was a materialization of Battiss' philosophy for which he created a map, imaginary people, plants, animals, a history as well as a set of postage stamps, currency, passports and driver's licences. He created a Fookian language with a full alphabet as well. This utopian island was a composite of the many islands he visited which included Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Madagascar, Fiji, Hawaii, Samoa, the Greek Isles and the Comores, blended together in his customary imaginative fashion. In Battiss's words, "It is something that does not exist. I thought that I would take an island - the island that is inside all of us. I would turn this island into a real thing---I would give it a name". Fook was a result of his fertile imagination as well as his opposition to the Conceptualist Art movement of the 1960s and 70s, in Europe and America. The movement espoused that the construction of art was confined to the 'moment' in which it was created. He believed to the contrary that all art exists in the now and this he argued to represent with Fook Island, which was always in the now and always an essential part of reality. He conceived his Fook Island Script between 1965 and 1967 and continued using it in his work and correspondence until his death in 1982. Sarah Shorten was briefed to develop the script into a digital font, for its 50th anniversary on the occasion of the exhibition Walter Battiss: "I invented myself" at Wits Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg, 2016. The font, Fook Regular, was applied to a broadside or type specimen poster and featured in an essay of Battiss's manuscript lettering. |
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file name: Sarah Shorten Fook Regular 2016 after Walter Battiss Fook Island Script 1965
file name: Sarah Shorten Fook Regular 2016 after Walter Battiss Fook Island Script 1965b
file name: Sarah Shorten Fook Regular 2016 after Walter Battiss Fook Island Script 1965d
file name: Sarah Shorten Fook Regular 2016 after Walter Battiss Fook Island Script 1965e
file name: Walter Battiss Matopo Hills Illustration
file name: Walter Battiss Portrait
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |