digitalDIGITAL

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a STUDY incONTRASTS

Zuzana Licko Pablo Medina&

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Both typographers

have borrowed from

the centuries-old

traditions of handmade

letterforms, crafting

unique typefaces that

are fresh and current,

produced with the latest technologies

available. However, Licko’s work is heavily

influenced by the digital medium, which

she uses in her form making. She has a

mathematical, precise approach to her

artistic process that is characteristic of this

highly technological age. Medina, on the

other hand, crafts typefaces which are deeply

humanistic in character and are informed

by the vernacular of his ethnic heritage and

personal experience, with an organic, hand-

styled approach to his work. He derives his

inspiration from the culture around him,

renewing traditional handmade faces for

digital use.

Both Licko and Medina are current

typographers who are actively designing

typefaces today. They are approximately a

decade apart in age, Licko having been born

in 1961 and Medina nine years later.

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Zuzana Licko and Pablo Medina are two

dramatically different postmodern t

ype

designers whose careers

were establishe

d

after the digital revo

lution.

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dig•i•tal (dj-tl)

1a. Relating to, or resembling a digit, especially a finger. 1b. Operated or done with the fingers. 2a. Expressed in discrete numerical form, especially for use by a computer or other electronic device.

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They both began their careers as typographers after obtaining undergraduate degrees in design. Though ten years is a relatively brief period of time in general history, in the age of digital typography, a decade is a considerable span. The technological advancements from Licko’s first years as a type designer to Medina’s emergence are staggering. Despite this, of the two designers, it is Licko who seems more apparently modern in her approach to design.

Licko’s professional career began in the early 1980s when she was studying graphic design at U.C. Berkeley, California. It was there that she met the photographer and designer, Rudy VanderLans. They bonded over their mutual interests and eventually married. Shortly after graduation, they established their arts magazine, Émigré,

“Their pride for their country grows so much more by being here, because they don’t have what they used to have, so there’s this amplification of their culture.” - Pablo Medina

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a modest but intrepid publication intended to showcase the poetry and artwork of European expatriates such as themselves. Shortly thereafter in 1984, Apple released the Macintosh computer, the first true desktop publishing computer. Embracing this new tool with eagerness, Licko and her husband moved away from relying on photocopiers to vary their type and layouts. Licko set out to design typefaces for their magazine using the rudimentary software available to her at the time, finding motivation in this challenging and esoteric medium. On this aspect of working with such limited technology, Licko has expressed that she “enjoys things that are like puzzles; anything that is tremendously restrictive, where there are very few choices but you have

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“I still get most of

my creative energy

out of solving these

puzzles. When

nobody is able to

make something work,

I get inspired to find

out what I might do

with it.”

- Zuzana LickoL

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to make it work. If I get too many choices I

become overwhelmed. … Although today

I can more easily design a typeface like

Triplex, which is a bit more traditional and

less modular …. I still get most of my creative

energy out of solving these puzzles. When

nobody is able to make something work, I get

inspired to find out what I might do with it.”1

It was through this accident of necessity that

Émigré established the first independent

digital font foundry. As word spread in the

design community about the work Licko

was doing with her experimental bitmap

typefaces, requests were made for Émigré

to share their exciting innovations. In time

improved“Much of the skepticism and disfavor currently attached to digital images will

disappear as a new generation of designers enters the profession. As it penetrates

everyday practices with computers, designers will be able to personally control their

work to an unprecedented degree.” - Zuzana Licko

new

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their magazine would shift focus into a publication about showcasing and discussing ground-breaking design ideas and implementation, with Licko’s typefaces lending their distinctly digital aspect to the look and feel of the publication. Their business flourished with each new development in digital

technology, Licko continuing to lead the way with confidence in her chosen medium. In a prescient statement on the future of design made early in her career that demonstrated her faith in this still nascent technology, Licko noted that “much of the skepticism and disfavor currently attached to digital images will disappear as a new generation of designers enters the profession, having grown up with computers at home and school. These designers will assimilate computer technology into the visual communication process. As it penetrates everyday practices with computers, designers will be able to

personally control their work to an unprecedented degree.”2

Pablo Medina experimented with graphic design as a young man, purchasing Letraset type from art supply stores for use in promotional flyers for his punk band. However, by the time he would reach the point of formally designing his own typefaces, digital type technology was well-established. Medina published his first typefaces in 1996 as part of his masters’ thesis at New York City’s Pratt Institute. His set of three fonts, North Bergen, Vitrina, and Cuba, were inspired by vintage signage in the Latin American community of New Jersey where he grew up. This early work would typify Medina’s oeuvre as a type designer. Medina’s aesthetic continues to be deeply informed by the pre-digital

improvednew

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Base Mono Regular 9pt

AA BB Cc Dd EeFf Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

Filosofia Regular 9pt

A A BB Cc Dd EeFf Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

Matrix Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

Modula Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

Triplex Bold 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

VARIEX Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

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MRS. Eaves

VARIEXbase monotr

iple

x

modula filosophia

matrix

senator

CITIZEN

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CUBAcalaveras

north bergen1s

t Ave

Vitrina

dia

bli

tos

marquee

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1ST AVE Regular 9ptAA BB Cc Dd EeFf Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+|:”<>?[]\;’,./

CUBA 9 PTt

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Zt

1234567890 ! :”? ;’,.t

CALAVERAS Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

DIABLITOS Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?[]\;’,./

NORTH BERGEN Regular 9pt


1234567890 !@#$%&*()+:”?[]\;’,./

VITRINA Regular Nine pt

AA BB Cc Dd EeFf Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz !:?;,.

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fALicko’s Citizen is

modeled after the

technical advances

in laser printers.

age, within the realm of the vernacular; all of his typefaces reference a time when computers did not play a dominant role in typography, and reference signage in cities of personal significance to him. One influence of this artistic path may be Medina’s formative years as a designer during the 1990s, which was a period of heavy experimentation and rule-breaking in the world of typography and design. Like other designers of his generation, Medina reacted against the precision and minimalism in Bauhaus and Swiss design ideologies in favor of the anarcho-punk ethos of the 90’s NYC arts and music scene. As Medina noted when I interviewed him, to him the modernist ideal “seemed very neutral and very bland. That was part of the rebellion against what I was

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being taught. I wanted my work to breathe of humanity. I wanted my work to breathe of the hand — of the handmade. And I wasn’t seeing that; I was seeing machines in Helvetica. I was seeing machines in modernist design. I wasn’t seeing humans.”3

After his graduation, Medina worked as a designer for various clients including major advertising agencies, and has since become an established typographer and designer. He has run his own design firm, Cubanica, since 2000. He continues to create typefaces, most recently designing a custom family of faces for ESPN that evokes the lettering of classic baseball cards.

Zuzana Licko’s fondness for and comfort with implementing new technology isn’t all too surprising considering her background. Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Licko spent the first seven years of her life in a Communist nation, which she says imbued her with a tendency to challenge and question everything.4 The rest of her years were spent growing up in California, where her mathematician father played a significant role in the shaping of her intellect. With his influence, Licko became familiar with computers at a very young age, playing with

LA MANO

3

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Cubaolombia

to his father’s literary talents might have informed his own artistic sensibilities. Medina uses snippets of poetic language to showcase his fonts on his website which, if not the words of his father, certainly evince similar moods. In doing so, Medina invites us, intentionally or not, to make parallels between the work of father and son.

Perhaps more significant to the shape of Medina’s aesthetic than his father’s profession is his ethnic background. As an American child born of immigrant parents, Medina longed for more exposure to the cultures of his Cuban father and Colombian mother, particularly as he matured:“My mother comes from Colombia and my father comes from Cuba. They came [to the United States] in the early 60s. There’s an inherent nostalgia to that sort of process; there’s a quality of looking back and learning about my culture; wondering about what could’ve been had as a culture, as a family, if we stayed. And so there’s a lot of that nostalgia. For better or for worse, part of my interests have been about rewinding time to see what I missed. Like, what is it that I missed by being born here and living here my whole life? I need to go back in time to relive all that stuff that my family and my parents lived that I didn’t. So that’s really where all that nostalgia comes from. I think it’s pretty typical of the family dynamics of immigrants; they get here and they miss their countries so much. Their pride

“I think that the one word that will connect all of my work is CULTURE, and my interest in just learning about people.” - Pablo Medina

mainframes and easily taking to complex programs such as Pascal. Her first typeface

design was a simple electronic Greek face for her father, for use in mathematical

calculations. This early introduction to designing with computers, particularly in

such an analytical milieu, likely shaped Licko’s approach to type design as she

grew older.

While Licko’s father puzzled over formulas and equations, Pablo Medina Sr. crafted

phrases. A successful poet, Medina’s father’s writing is rich in melancholy and nostalgia. It is easy to imagine how Medina’s exposure

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for their country grows so much more by being here, because they don’t have what they used to have, so there’s this amplification of their culture.”5

Medina’s parents divorced during his childhood and his mother subsequently returned to Colombia. Medina made his first trip to South America to visit her in the early 90s. On that trip he was exposed to typography he had not encountered in the United States. He felt particularly drawn to the hand-painted signage of local merchants and the dance-hall posters plastered on the streets of Cartagena. He became infatuated with the anachronistic and unaffected quality of what he saw, particularly as it satisfied that part of him that craved connections to his cultural roots. He took that inspiration with him when he returned to the States, and it appeared thereafter in much of his design work, most particularly in his typeface designs – something that continues twenty years after his initial visit; he recently released a pair of Latin-American inspired typefaces based on the signage of Buenos Aires:

Calaveras (skulls) and Diablitos (devils) named after a song by a punk band from that city, and inspired by a hand-painted calligraphic technique originating from that locale known as Fileteado.

While Licko and Medina both work in the digital medium, they have two radically different approaches to their craft. Licko’s affinity for digital technology allows her to feel most at home designing typefaces directly on the computer. She creates her letterforms with minimal handwork, mostly marking up printouts for minor refinements or corrections. Licko designs with and for her medium, shaping the way she approaches her character

orderly/mathematical/controlled

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ideations based on the inherent qualities of her chosen instrument: “Licko felt a need to redefine their ideologies. Instead of forcing established standards to fit the computer, Émigré decided to seek new standards derived from the computer itself.”6 Preferring to create within an intentionally restricted framework, her typefaces like Citizen, Matrix, and Modula were inspired and informed by the technology with which they were created.

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Licko’s approach to design is logical, orderly, mathematical, and controlled – very much how one would characterize a “left-brain” thinker. In fact, she is left-handed. This caused problems for her when she took her least favorite class in college: calligraphy.

Her lack of enthusiasm for the craft was in part because she was forced to use her

right hand to draw the letterforms. It is possibly this frustrating experience

that steered her even further away from considering a hand-formed

style of type design when she became a typographer. Yet in side-stepping those traditional techniques, she flourished as

a digital-typographer and her typefaces are uniquely her own, with

an individual character that sets them apart from the designs of her contemporaries — a kind of “outsider artist” in the type realm. Though innovations in digital technology have now made it possible to have endless variations in digital type design, Licko’s work has consistently retained a certain

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Licko described this effort as a

demonstration of her “personal

preference for a geometric Bodoni,”

and to some, Filosof ia seems an elegant

bridge between the centuries.

mathematical and restrained quality. Her sans-serif typeface, Solex, designed in 2000, has angular bowls and succinct brackets that are reminiscent of her earlier digital typefaces.

It is this character in her work that made her reinventions of popular classic typefaces so interesting. For her creation of Filosofia, Licko

worked from the centuries-old Bodoni. Licko described this effort as a demonstration of her “personal preference for a geometric Bodoni,”7

and to some, Filosofia seems an elegant bridge between the centuries.

Licko again approached a classic redesign when she created a revival of the well-known typeface, Baskerville. She named her typeface after

Baskerville’s wife and erstwhile mistress, Mrs. Eaves, in part because, as an innovative and thus somewhat controversial typographer, Licko had

sympathy for the aura of scandal around her typeface’s namesake. Indeed, Mrs. Eaves was received with a strong mixture of praise and criticism.

Many heralded her effort as a triumph, but others accused her of robbing the original letterforms of their humanistic grace. Regardless of its mixed

reception among her peers, Licko managed to create one of her most popular typefaces to date.

In contrast to Licko’s decidedly digital approach, Medina loves to draw and prefers this medium for type design as well. He does most of his type design

sketching and drafting by hand, with very little refinement to his designs by the time he is ready to work on the computer. His process is all about

the hand-made, not only in the way he conceives his letterforms, but in the inspiration for his concepts; most of his typefaces are derived from hand-made

signage – such as with the painted bull-ring signs of Spain for his typeface, Sombra and the hand-cut mosaic tiles of the NYC subway system that inspired

Union Square. Medina’s approach to design as a whole is far more organic and free form, with a deep emphasis on the imprint of humanness, and its

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inherent flaws and inconsistencies, in all aspects of his work. In one of his earlier

typefaces, First Ave, a homage to the aging neon signage of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the letterforms are high-

contrast and textured images based on photographs, full of little imperfections that well-reflect the characters they were

based upon. Medina underscored the clear importance of the human element of his

work when I spoke with him: “I think that the one word that will connect all of my work

is culture, and my interest in just learning about people; learning about people

through a specific activity like baseball or

sign painting. Whatever the culture may be, the great by-product of creating is the learning process; the learning about culture and people. And that really informs how all of my work gets connected.”8

Zuzana Licko and Pablo Medina are two exciting contemporary typographers who have availed themselves of the benefits of the digital age in which their careers began. They continue to expand their horizons, expressing their distinctive artistic characteristics in their typography. Both designers were strongly influenced by their upbringing, most notably, Licko through her father’s anyaltical profession, and Medina through his ethnic identity. While both designers have always used digital technology to produce their typefaces, their techniques and styles contrast strongly with one another. Whether she is redesigning a popular classic typeface or inventing a modern font of her own, Licko’s work is largely informed by the methodologies available within her preferred medium of the computer, and the technological nature of her personal taste. Medina’s work is conceptually as far removed from the digital medium as can be, revitalizing the down-to-earth, flavorful letterforms from the vernacular of his personal experiences and heritage. He uses the simplest of tools – pencil and paper – before translating his designs to a digital format. Though the finished products of both designers are generated using the same software, the results are completely different and speak to their creators’ unique design styles.

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Cited References

1. VanderLans, Licko, Gray, & Keedy. Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm. New York: Wiley, 1993. p18. 2. Vanderlans, Licko, Gray, and Keedy. p6.3. Medina, Pablo. Personal interview. Telephone. 22 October 2011.4. Reprinted from Pascal Béjean, Pascal. Étapes Magazine (France) on emigre.com. Web. 16 October 2011.5. Medina. 22 October 2011.6. Vanderlans, Licko, Gray, and Keedy. p5.7. Friedl, Cees. Creative Type: a Sourcebook of Classic and Contemporary Letterforms. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.8. Medina. 22 October 2011.

Typefaces Used

Medina: 1st Ave, Calaveras, Cuba, Diablitos, North Bergen, Vitrina Licko: Base Mono, Citizen, Filosofia, Mrs. Eaves, Modula, Senator, Triplex, Variex

Photograph & Illustration Credits

p8 Puzzler wrapping paper, p17 Matrix collageand self-portrait, Zuzana Licko.p18 (both images) self-portrait, Medina.

Designer: Lita LedesmaCourse: Typography 3Faculty: Francheska GuerreroNovember 2011 colophon

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