Teaching typography is one of the basic pillars of graphic design studies at our school, at the Tomáš Bata University, Faculty of Multimedia Communications in Zlín, Students learn to be able to select and use the right typeface at the right time for a specific task. Whether it is a publishing, corporate, or even navigation design. During their studies, they can try out the role of not only a font user but also its designer.
Lyubov Popova – the well-known avant-garde artist – created the typeface for her constructivist costume designs for Meyerhold’s theater (1921), she nimbly traced a ruble or kopeyka with a pencil to form the perfect circle of the letter O. Can this uncompromising on-the-ball approach to typography be taught? Students are given a generous six semesters of lettering and typography, covering the basics of the craft and free experimentation. Yet for some, type design or its appropriate use in graphic design remains a mysterious discipline. However, the actual grasp of all the aspects and parameters of the seemingly transparent system of Latin script embodied in the contours of individual graphic characters or glyphs is and will continue to be a mystery of alternating empty space and black on the surface of paper and display, even for long-time and seasoned grinders of typographic shapes and counter-shapes, digital vectors and analog hand-born outlines. The skeleton construction, the degree of contrast of strokes, the rhythm regular or chaotic, the pedigree of written, and drawn lettering, and typographic type. Someone has calculated - with great attention to detail - 152 different font parameters, or was it 154?
Ultimately, the only defining parameter is the care, attention, energy, and even empathy put into the graphic signs and their smoothly functioning system and into the many layers of the artistic and mathematical symbiosis of type creation or application. This, after all, is what makes typography dead or alive. “Tote oder Lebende Schrift?”, Paul Renner asked.
Ondřej CHORÝ
A Nemzeti Kulturális Alap Iparművészet Kollégiuma által támogatott 104106/03085 azonosító számú A TIPOZONA 5. című csoportos kiállítás megrendezése