In recent years the demands for typefaces covering multiple world languages and scripts have been rising dramatically. To provide designers with an opportunity to explore these unfamiliar territories, we conceived of a series of type workshops on a variety of world scripts.
This years workshop will be held between August 29 and September 1, 2018 in Bern, Switzerland and lead by type designers Irene Vlachou and Kostas Bartsokas. The workshop will be conducted in English and is intended for type designers wanting to add Greek to existing typefaces as well as those designing a Greek from scratch.
Irene Vlachou is a typeface designer working somewhere between Bristol and Athens. After trying life as an artist and a violinist, Irene found her vocation. Her terrible handwriting and horror of olives turned out to be no obstacles for her becoming a type designer specializing in Greek. In 2004 she gained her Masters in type design at the University of Reading and since then she has been collaborating with many international type foundries as a typeface designer and as a Greek type advisor. She designs original custom typefaces as well as extending typefaces to add the Greek character set and she is a senior designer and the variable font obsessive at TypeTogether.
Kostas Bartsokas is a Greek typeface designer and typographer. During his freelance career he focused and specialised in graphic design, illustration, web design, packaging, and animation until he finally chose to pursue his passion with typography. He hold an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading. He enjoys innovative explorations and is particularly interested in multi-script type design. He is currently working as a senior typeface designer at URW in Hamburg and also offers consultation in Greek script design for other foundries.
The participants will have the chance to explore and familiarise themselves with the design of the Greek script. They will have access to original material, resources and an introduction to contemporary approaches in today's Greek typeface design.
The participants will take part in sketching and writing exercises, and receive guidance and feedback on their own designs. We'll explore the extended Greek set and we'll talk about its role and its contemporary uses.
A main part of the workshop will also focus on how to choose a direction for our Greek design depending on the brief and how we could use the broad variation of the Greek letterforms as a source of inspiration even for the Latin script.
The workshop is aimed at designers (professionals, students, graphic designers, teachers or any other typographic enthusiasts) who already have some basic experience in type design. The number of participants is limited to 14.
Don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions.
Typeworks is a workshop series focused on foreign scripts organised by the Typeworks team. We hope to encourage typographic literacy in world’s scripts among European designers. Launched in 2016 in collaboration with Rosetta Type, the workshops will be periodically organised either in Switzerland or abroad. Our goal is to provide students, professionals and typographic enthusiasts with a peek into the world of global typeface design.
In 2017 we started with a Cyrillic workshop, in 2018 we continue with Greek. Stay tuned for news about our future plans:
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Typeworks Association
Malvina Lubec, Thomas Hirter, Matthias Pauwels &
Christoph Stähli Weisbrod
Wasserwerkgasse 6A, 3011 Bern
info@typeworks.ch
@typeworksbern
TypeworksBern
“I very much enjoyed the Cyrillic Workshop in Bern not only because Bern is a wonderful city and we were able to jump into the river after intense working, but also because of the friendly and open atmosphere of the workshop. It gave me the opportunity to intensely work on Cyrillic letters with the help and input of experts, to understand this to me foreign script better, and to meet new lovely people enthusiastic about type.”
– Lisa Fischbach
“Going down to Bern, Switzerland to improve my Cyrillic type design skills was one of the highlights last year. Great atmosphere, excellent teachers (Maria and Krista), friendly people and a beautiful city.”
– Göran Söderström
“The workshop has been an amazing blend of fun and intense learning experience with great tutors and experienced colleagues. It is in a comfortable space and there is enough time to discuss (or argue about) readability, consistency, or politics of type. Highly recommended! ps: Everyone should try swimming in the crystal-clear river Aare which runs through the beautiful city of Bern, it is something else!”
– David Březina
