Zurich Type Design

There is a wide spectrum of brand-new creations for display, graphic and title fonts – a terrain which decorative graphic artists are increasingly taking over. A second group digs out old fonts, redraws them and launches them digitally. Docents and students of Type Design study programmes in Zurich have been working on new text fonts. These post-diploma courses have focused on text fonts for printing, screens and wayfinding since they began. They are suitable for reading longer texts. Texts without extravagant and obtrusive typefaces foster a person’s capacity to imagine and think about what he or she has read. All graduates realised a text font, and this publication shows their approved results. Some 70 font designs are presented as specimen pages. Besides that, the docents shed light on individual disciplines and reflect on important aspects of their work: André Baldinger comments on teaching methods, attitudes and zeitgeist in type design, while Anton Studer contemplates on seeing and perceiving. Katharine Wolff emphasises “the importance of calligraphy in the digital age”. Georg Salden insists that font design is a physical process. Walter Haettenschweiler tells us about his career as one of the world’s most illustrious designers for title and display typefaces. Robin Kinross (E) uses monotype as an example to explain economic, social and technical correlations.

Further contributions by Rudolf Barmettler, Remo Caminada, Christian Flepp (E), Hans-Jürg Hunziker, Bruno Margreth, Fiona Ross (E), Mischa Senn.