Zuzana Licko
Zuzana Licko ( Czech Zuzana Lika [ lɪtʃko ː ]; * 1961 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia) is an American graphic designer, typographer and co-founder of Emigre Inc., one of the first independent font foundries. Licko counts with Neville Brody and David Carson of the pioneers of progressive desktop publishing and digital typography.
Life
Born in Czechoslovakia, she came in 1968 as a child in the United States. The daughter of a Biomathematikers had early access to computers and taught himself the basics of programming in. Then she began to design first writings, their first alphabet based on the Greek alphabet. She studied architecture, computer science and photography, and made a Diploma in Visual Communication at the University of California, Berkeley, then she worked in the graphics department by Adobe Systems in the development of PostScript technology.
Emigre
Early 1980s Zuzana Licko met on the Dutch graphic designer and photographer Rudy VanderLans and founded with him the experimental Emigre magazine publisher and magazine of the same Emigre Magazine; The title derives from the fact that both so-called émigrés, so emigrants in the United States were. The establishment of Emigre in 1984 is closely associated with the "birth" of the Apple Macintosh in the same year (see History of Typography: The DTP era ). Licko described in an interview with the British design magazine Eye her encounter with VanderLans, with whom she is now married:
"I met Rudy at the University of Berkeley, where I was studying environmental design and he photography. That was 1982-83; after college, we made several low-paying jobs without proper design goal. Then, in 1984, the Macintosh came on the market and we bought one. Suddenly everything made sense: Both of us, each in his own way, took a liking to this computer. The device turned on once everything into question what we had learned about design; We both liked this testing the limits of how far one can go. Rudy was there more intuitive, while I was passing methodically. Yin and Yang. It made, click ' and doing it until now ... "
While VanderLans took over the role of the publisher brought Licko as the creative head of their programming knowledge, they had expanded at Adobe in the signature area, with a developed and now on their own PostScript -enabled WYSIWYG fonts. The Emigre Magazine should catalog and at the same time Example for Lickos font designs are as well as provide a forum for experimental design, also offered the meantime the insider became publisher fonts, font software and other graphic accessories up for sale, thus continuing the boom of the new digital writing Developer and trade publishers such as FontShop in Germany. Guided by the Flyers technoculture, Licko sat initially on experimental fast- Designs, and also for technical reasons, to pixel fonts. Mid-1990s it was a "classic ", left the mostly on a matrix (one of Lickos fonts is called matrix ) oriented grotesque fonts in the 1980s and focused on the development of modern bastard writings; while she designed two of its key serif: Mrs Eaves, based on a Baskerville and Filosofia, based on a Bodoni. Both documents are valid if their failed merging ligatures as reminiscent Lickos to the traditional European type design.
The Emigre Magazine was closed in 2005 with the issue # 69, the Foundry Emigre Inc. persists.
Font designs (selection)
- Lo - Res, 1985/2001
- Modula, 1985
- Citizen, 1986
- Matrix, 1986
- Lunatix, 1988
- Oblong, 1988
- Senator, 1988
- Variex, 1988
- ELEKTRIX, 1989.
- Triplex, 1989
- Tall Pack 1990
- Totally Gothic, 1990
- Matrix Script, 1992
- Filosofia, 1996.
- Mrs Eaves, 1996
- Mrs Eaves Ligatures, 1996
- Base Monospace, 1997.
- Hypnomedia, 1997.
- Tarzana, 1998
- Solex, 2000
- Puzzler, 2005
With Mrs. Eaves, matrix, Triplex, Filosofia and base are equal to five writings by Zuzana Licko in the ranking of the 100 best fonts of all time. ( Ed. FontShop, 2007. )