Announcing the 2024 intensive summer course in typeface design: one week of a multiscript masterclass, and one week of a research-focused working seminar. Read more…
Author: gerryleonidas
Toshi Omagari featured in special issue of IDEA magazine
The highly esteemed Japanese design magazine IDEA dedicated an issue to the career of Toshi Omagari with the theme “Typeface design for the voice of the world: The Works of Toshi Omagari”. Toshi graduated with Distinction from the MA Typeface Design in 2010–11, and went on to work for several years for Monotype. More recently he set up his own foundry, and is now also a visiting teacher in the Department.
Toshi’s work spans both original work and revivals, and extends to numerous scripts: he is particularly notable for his work in Asian scripts for which there has not been extensive coverage in digital typefaces. He is also the author of Arcade Game Typography, the definitive book on arcade game pixel fonts, as well as numerous plugins to support font development. His teaching in our Masters spans workflows, design feedback, and approaches to global script design.
2020 Postgraduate Open Day
The Department of Typography & Graphic Communication warmly invites prospective MA applicants and offer holders to visit us for our annual postgraduate open day. This will be held in the Department on Thursday 5 March 2020 from 11.00–15.00.
This is a fantastic opportunity to find out more about the specialist postgraduate study routes we offer. You will be able to talk to current students and academic leads for our Book Design, Creative Enterprise, Graphic Design, Information Design, Typeface Design, and Masters by Research options. View examples of student practical projects and dissertations, get a taste for our approach to collections-based teaching and research, and view highlights from our world-renowned Collections.
To register your interest and receive joining instructions, please email Victoria (typography@reading.ac.uk). We look forward to welcoming prospective MA students to the Department.
13 July: a celebration of letterforms and ephemera
Fiona Ross at Type Drives Culture
The NYC-based Type Directors Club will hold a one-day conference with the theme 'Type: More _ than Ever' to celebrate the importance of type and typography in global culture. The keynote speaker for the event will be Fiona Ross, who is also a TDC Medal recipient.
Facing the world
'Facing the World: Towards a Global History of Non-Latin Type Design' is a special issue of Philological Encounters, edited by Thomas S. Mullaney of Stanford University, and published by Brill.
Chinese publishing collaboration proceeds
The inaugural symposium of the Creative Chinese Character Industry took place at the Beijing Convention Center on 3 and 4 November. The symposium brought together speakers from different areas of research and professional practice relating to the Chinese script: linguistics, Sinology, typeface design, publishing, and calligraphy. The symposium concluded with the preparatory work for the founding of the Chinese Character League, an interdisciplinary body bringing together organisations and agencies, including the Chinese Character Museum in Anyang.
In addition to speaking at the Symposium and being invited to act as guide for the CCL, Gerry Leonidas had the opportunity to update plans for a project, supported by the University of Reading and ATypI, of publishing key typography texts in Chinese. The first title in the series, Jan Middendorp’s Shaping Text, is nearly out of print already; below, Gerry holds the proof edition of the second title, How to create typefaces by Cristobal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer, and José Scaglione. The series extends to twelve titles, with a schedule of publishing two titles per year.
Bauhaus typeface revived by MATD student
Adobe’s “Hidden Treasures” programme kicks off the typographic commemoration of the forthcoming centenary of the Bauhaus school by releasing four revivals based on lettering by Bauhaus staff. Drawing on original material in the archives of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, a group of current typeface design students were selected to work on digitising the original lettering, extrapolating the missing letterforms and characters to fill out the required character set, and adapt the designs for digital formats. The fast-paced project was led and supervised by Ferdinand Ulrich and Erik Spiekermann, and included in-person meetings in Berlin and Dessau, online collaboration, and a launch event in New York City.
Each of the four typefaces were revived by a student from a typeface design course: Hidetaka Yamasaki, a current MA Typeface Design student, worked on lettering by Carl Marx; Céline Hurka from the KABK on letters by Alfred Arndt; Luca Pellegrini from the ECAL on lettering by Xanti Schawinsky; Elia Preuss from HGB Leipzig worked on letters by Reinhold Rossig; and Flavia Zimbardi on letters by Joost Schmidt. The typefaces are released gradually through Typekit’s subscription service to professionals using Adobe’s dominant suite of applications, and are a superb example of archival material inspiring contemporary design.
Fiona Ross awarded the TDC Medal
The New York-based TDC announced that Professor Fiona Ross, a long-standing member of staff in the Department and Curator of the Non-Latin Collections, will be the thirty first person to receive the prestigious TDC Medal. Fiona joins an illustrious list of past recipients which include David Berlow, Colin Brignall, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Gerrit Noordzij, Paula Scher, Erik Spiekermann, and last year our colleague Gerard Unger.
Fiona began her career in type in 1978 working at Linotype, where she rose to lead the non-Latin department as the company’s first female manager. She has been responsible for the design of many typefaces for South Asian scripts that have become the standards for reading matter, and sources for numerous imitations. Her work began with typefaces for newspapers, and nowadays extends to the full range of font resources for text typography, from typefaces for online documents to user interfaces, to webfonts. Notable recent projects include her contribution to the typefaces for the Murty Classical Library of India series by Harvard University Press, the Bengali typefaces for the Anandabazar Patrika (ABP), and the Arabic Markazi Text.
Central to Fiona’s contribution is her ongoing research, and her engagement in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. Fiona is a key staff member for our MA Typeface Design programme and TDi summer course, a contributor to the MARes Typography & Graphic Communication and the MRes Typeface Design, and supervisor of many PhDs. She is a key proponent of Collections-based teaching, and in her role as Curator of the Department’s non-Latin Collections regularly leads sessions with archival material for students and researchers at all levels.
More details of the Medal ceremony can be found on the TDC site.
MA/MA Res Open Day: Thursday 9 March 2017
We will be holding a Postgraduate Open Day at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication on Thursday 9 March 2017. The day is primarily aimed at students who are interested in pursuing a Masters degree with us. See our Departmental pages for our portfolio of courses.
On the day we will assemble after 10:00, and follow this schedule:
• 10.00 Coffee and sign-in
• 10.30 Introduction to the Department
• 11.00 Information sessions on MA programmes
• 13:00 Opportunity to sit in on a postgraduate seminar
Please email us if you are interested in attending, directions, or if you have any questions.