Representatives of Letter Forms

Here, I will be discussing three of some of the most important "representatives of letter forms".  

Zuzana Licko

Zuzana Licko is a female Czechoslovakian designer, born in 1961. Despite having  practically no formal training in typography, Zuzana Licko went on to invent some very important typefaces today.  She became famous through Emigre magazine, which she founded with her husband.  Emigre was originally intended as cultural journal to showcase artists, photographers, poets, and architects. The first issue was put together in 1984 by VanderLans and two other Dutch immigrants.  She designed the typefaces for this magazine using a bitmap format.  Licko would reference old fonts and produce her new interpretation of them.  She invented the text Mrs Eaves which is based on Baskerville and Filosofia which is based on Bodoni.  Other fonts invented by her to name a few include Solex from 2000, Matrix from 2007, Fairplex from 2002, and Dogma from 1994.  She had her big break around the same time as the introduction of the Macintosh computer in 1984, when her husband released Emigre magazine.  She used the new technology of the Macintosh to digitally design her fonts.  Eye Magazine describes her success by stating, "As one of the first type designers to exploit the potential of the Apple Macintosh in its pre-designer days, Zuzana Licko transformed the pixel from low-resolution imitation to high-style-original". She designed the typefaces of the magazine, and went on to develop a diverse family of different fonts as technology improved.  

http://www.emigre.com/Bios.php?d=10

House Industries

• Neutraface Slab
• Neutraface
• Neutraface No. 2
• Studio Lettering
• Girard
• Showcard Stunt
• Blaktur
• Burbank
• United
• Luxury
• Ed Benguiat
• Paperback
• Chalet
• Las Vegas
• Holiday
• Movements
• Simian
• House Gothic 23
• Shag
• Bad Hood
• House-a-rama
• Sign Painter
• Tiki Type
• Rat Fink
• Coop

Andy Cruz and Rich Roat start house Industries in 1993 in Wilmington Delaware.  Allen Mercer also helped jumpstart the career of this company.  They started the company by producing a mailer announcing the release of ten typefaces. They delivered these typefaces via floppy disks.  These fonts were very quirky and appeared scribbly, squiggle, jagged, and blobby. These typefaces were constructed for a specific culture that is revitalized through their work.  House Industries was inspired by the past decades of sub-culture and the music scenes from these decades. They used their inspiration from Ed Roth, Chris Cooper, J.J. Abrams, Sven Kirsten, and Ed Benguiat to name just a few.  The company grew and added new designers such as Ken Barber, Tal Leming, and Christian Schwartz. The company has designed many important fonts including Neutraface, Blaktur, Chalet, Girard, Movements, Simian, and Paperback, to name just a few out of the many typefaces they have produced. The company today provides illustration and design services, as well as selling a series of idiosyncratic display typefaces collections, packaging, clip-art, clothing, pillows, and accessories. House Industries has grown into an incredibly large institution and its marks are left anywhere from billboards to greeting cards, and reaches out to a broad audience with its wide variety of style.

http://www.houseind.com/  

Oded Ezer

Oded Ezer is a typographic artist, and a logo and type designer born in 1972 from Israel.  He does a lot of experimental art with typography.  He graduated from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem with a bachelors degree in visual communication.  Most of his work is in Hebrew, although he also experiments with Latin-based projects.  He has designed about twenty typeface families.  I had a difficult time finding the the names of his typefaces, and only managed to find one called Beit Hillel.  He is most proud of the art he produces, rather than the types.  I stumbled upon a new project in which he incorporates multiple typeface.  He uses Zapfino, Goudy Old Style, Shoken, Caslon, and his own typeface Beit Hillel.  The work is called Ketubah, which is a predominant form of Jewish art.  HE uses different typefaces for each language and the languages used include Yiddish, Hebrew, English, French, and Spanish.  

He also uses experimental typography in a "Biotypography" series in which he refers to any typographical application that uses biological systems to creat  a typographic image.  

Oded Ezer has won a number of awards including the Gold Prize at the international design ceompetition of the Nagoya Design Center in Japan, Certificate of Excellence the the New York Type Directors Club and the Israeli Exucation Ministry Prize for Design. He founded Ha'Gilda, which is the first cooperative type foundry of Israeli designers.  

www.ezerdesign.com/