Zuzana Licko

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Zuzana Licko ( Czech Zuzana Ličko [ lɪtʃkoː ] *  1961 in Bratislava , Czechoslovakia ) is an American graphic designer , typographer and co-founder of Emigre Inc. , one of the first Independent - font foundries . Along with Neville Brody and David Carson, Licko is one of the pioneers of progressive desktop publishing and digital typography .

Life

Born in Czechoslovakia, she came to the United States as a child in 1968. The daughter of a biomathematist had access to computers early on and taught herself the basics of programming . Then she began to design her first fonts, her first alphabet based on the Greek alphabet . She first studied architecture , computer science and photography and earned a diploma in visual communication from the University of California, Berkeley , and then worked in the graphics department of Adobe Inc. on the development of PostScript technology.

Emigre

In the early 1980s, Zuzana Licko met the Dutch graphic designer and photographer Rudy VanderLans and together with him founded the experimental font publisher Emigre and the eponymous magazine Emigre Magazine ; the title arose from the fact that both were so-called émigrés , i.e. emigrants in the USA. The founding of Emigre in 1984 is closely linked to the “birth” of the Apple Macintosh in the same year (see History of Typography: The DTP Era ). In an interview with the British design magazine Eye, Licko described her encounter with VanderLans, to whom she is now married:

“I met Rudy at Berkeley University , where I was studying environmental design and he was studying photography. That was 1982-83; after college, we did various low-paying design jobs with no real purpose. Then in 1984 the Macintosh came out and we bought one. Suddenly everything got a meaning: We both, each in our own way, enjoyed this computer. The device suddenly challenged everything we'd learned about design; we both liked this pushing the limits of how far you can go. Rudy was more intuitive while I was methodical. Yin and yang . It 'clicked' and it still does that today ... "

While VanderLans the role of the publisher took over, Licko brought as a creative mind their programming skills, they had expanded at Adobe in the signature area, with one and now developed on their own PostScript-enabled WYSIWYG - fonts . The Emigre Magazine was supposed to become a catalog and application example for Licko's font designs as well as a forum for experimental design, and the publisher, which had meanwhile become an insider tip, offered fonts, font software and other graphic accessories for sale, thereby banking on the boom in new digital font developers and publishers such as B. Fontshop in Germany. In 1985 Emigre Fonts was founded. Along with David Carson , Neville Brody and April Greiman, Licko is one of the best-known representatives of digital typography and the progressive use of new DTP programs. Characterized by the flyer design of techno culture , Licko initially relied on experimental, fast-moving designs and, also for technical reasons, on pixel fonts .

In the mid-1990s it became more “classic”, abandoning the grotesque fonts of the 1980s , which were mostly based on a matrix (one of Licko's fonts is called the matrix ), and concentrated on the development of modern bastard fonts ; She designed two of her most important serif fonts : Mrs Eaves , named after Baskerville's wife , based on a Baskerville and Filosofia , based on a Bodoni . Both typefaces are considered to be a reminiscence of Licko's traditional European typeface design because of their unusual merging and unusually high number of ligatures . In her article Discovery by Design , published in Emigre, she clearly describes her position vis-à-vis the contemporary transfer of classic fonts into digital form .

The couple won the Chrysler Award in 1994 , the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) gold medal in 1997, and the Charles Nypels Prize for Innovative Type Design in 1998.

The Emigre Magazine was discontinued with issue no. 69 in 2005, the foundry Emigre Inc. still exists.

Font drafts (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 , five of Zuzana Licko's fonts are in the ranking of the 100 best fonts of all time. (FontShop ed., 2007.)

literature

  • Rudi VanderLans, Zuzana Licko and Mary E. Grant: Emigre - Graphic Design Into the Digital Realm , John Wiley & Sons Inc (1993), ISBN 978-0-471-28547-2 (English).
  • Zuzana Licko: Discovery by design. In: Emigre , No. 43, 1995.
  • Breuer, Gerda, Meer, Julia (eds.): Women in Graphic Design , Jovis / Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86859-153-8 , pp. 197, 501, 502.

Individual references and sources

  1. ↑ a b Feature and interview with Zuzana Licko in Eye Magazine , No. 43, spring 2002, accessed on June 25, 2017
  2. ↑ Zuzana Licko: Discovery by design. In: Emigre , No. 43, 1995.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Licko, Zuzana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ličko, Zuzana
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American graphic designer and typographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Bratislava , Czechoslovakia