Digital typefaces designed by Licko and others were featured in Emigre, a magazine edited and art directed by Vanderlans. Emigre quickly became an international fan magazine devoted to experimental design and typography. Emigre Fonts successfully marketed typefaces for use on microcomputers and became a model for other independent font producers. Licko's typefaces often recall the 1920s fascination with geometrically constructed letterforms. At the Bauhaus, Herbert Bayer and Josef Albers had assembled letterforms out of restricted repertoires of geometric shapes; the design of these visionary alphabets emulated the methods of mass production. Many of Licko's first typefaces were designed to accommodate the coarse, low-resolution forms and reduced range of curves and angles permitted by early laser printers and video display terminals. Licko built the Variex family of typefaces (1988) around a simple geometric armature that systematically expands to produce bolder weights. Licko's typeface Journal (1990) turned toward a more narrative sensibility. The abrupt contours of Journal loosely suggest the battered forms of typewriter manuscripts and newsprint pages as well as the geometric outlines favored by digital printing. Whirligigs (1994) uses the principle of modular construction to generate dense ornamental patterns, while Soda (1995) is a set of script letterforms that couple with lyrical swashes. [back] © Copyright 1996 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Variex, typeface, 1988 Designers: Zuzana Licko (b. 1961) and Rudy Vanderlans (b. 1955) Courtesy Emigre Fonts, Sacramento Elektrix (1989), Whirligigs (1994), Soda Script (1995), and Journal (1990) Typefaces Designer: Zuzana Licko Courtesy Emigre Fonts, Sacramento Matrix Typeface, 1986 Designer: Zuzana Licko (b. 1961) Courtesy Emigre Fonts, Sacremento