Bestie, a book devoted to women in type

A book by Gaia Argentino

Undergraduate in Graphic Design at IED Thesis supervisor Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini 2022

I decided to design and write this book because sadly, nothing similar to this exists. In a patriarchal world the type design industry isn’t spared, just like any other industry. We have the power to make a difference, to bring information to the surface. Researching for this book I discovered so many stories and women that I’ve never heard about. Women that should be taught in school, women that matter and that no one knows about. They’re just a small part of the people, minorities that were forgotten. Let’s change that.

This book has research, data, history, biographies, visuals, typefaces, stories, projects, interviews and so much more content that deserves to be spread.

Good reading bestie, Gaia

Illustration by Nhung Lê

Introduction on gender disparity

The current situation, publications, awareness around the world and Italy’s issue

The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.

At the current rate of progress the overall global gender gap will take a hundred years to close, while the gap in the workplace will now not be closed for 217 years.

Looking at the Global Gender Gap Report of 2022 by the World Economy Forum the most equal country is Iceland, in opposition to Afghanistan being the last. Italy has the 63rd place, after Zambia.

In Europe we have EIGE which is the European Institute for Gender Equality and it has the aim of spreading awareness on gender gap through statistics, platforms, events, publications, a library and a glossary on their website.

Their 2022 equality index reveals that progress continues “at snail’s pace” with a mere 0.6 point increase since last year.

While this number of women in leadership positions is certainly not the end goal, it indicates a positive momentum and genuine sense of progress and that’s thanks to platforms like Alphabettes that display data and showcase the issue. With more than half of the industry being women, the chance to effect change is even more significant. But it’s not enough.

“Where

Verena Gerlach on Typographica’s article

“I didn’t see the gender difference in a school setting, it’s only in the professional world that you start to see leadership roles mostly represented by men”

Are the Women in Type Design?”

Quoting Verena Gerlach, this words were food for my brain since I never thought about a difference of gender gap in the school/work settings. From personal experience I can say I had plenty of women as professors, I won’t say as many as men and none of them were coordinators, and many female collegues, way more than men, but will I find as many women in my future work office? Will my boss be a woman? I hope so.

Women need to reach leadership roles fighting tooth and nail to climb to the top of the ladder and extending a rung to young up-andcomers and that’s not right when men have easy access to recognition and leadership roles.

Also UNESCO has a gender equality commitment and paired agenda for sustainable development of 2030, with 17 sustainable development goals. Their message is that women and men must enjoy equal opportunities, choices, capabilities, power and knowledge as equal citizens. They even created a virtual career fair for women in their senior roles to support their dedication.

For instance, the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) published a report called Bridging the Digital Gender Divide where they analyzed the gender gap between genders using the internet, formal financial activities, computer or paper reading, collaborative problem solving, collaboration in general, education… The mere fact that a study on gender gap in these domains exists is alarming.

To me, the most interesting result of OECD’s research is that boys are more likely to value teamwork, girls value relationships instead. It also says that women perform better in all countries and economies but there’s way more male-led businesses. That confirms that women are purely excluded from leadership roles, as stated above.

The economist Iris Bohnet, professor and co-director of the Women and Public Policy program at Harvard, wrote a book called What Works where she draws on data collected by companies, universities, and governments in Australia, India, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zambia, and other countries, often in randomized controlled trials.

It points out dozens of evidence-based interventions that could be adopted right now and demonstrates how research is addressing gender bias, improving lives and performance. Her book shows what more can be done to smooth gender gap, also at shockingly low cost and surprisingly high speed.

The London based designer and creative director Valentina D’Efilippo created a diagram showing how much less women earn than men in different countries, taking data from the OECD Employment Outlook of 2011. Her artwork was included in The Infographic History of the World by Harper Collins in 2013.

Gender gap being a popular matter in each field (business, government, design, etc.) shows how important and never ending the subject and actions are. It is a gap the world can’t afford to ignore, even in type design. In the last 10 years the gender disparity at festivals and conferences was so obvious that it generated plenty of discussion. For example, back in 2015 at TypeCon, there were 52 men speaking and 15 women, at Typo Berlin 2015 there were 61 men and 15 women, and at Typographics 2015 there were 18 men and 8 women.

AIGA magazine in 2018 published an article called “Women Make Up Over Half the Design Industry - So Why Are There So Few at the Top?” and I think this matter is so contemporary even if the gender gap in design conferences and festivals got better in the last few years. According to the 2019 AIGA Design Census, 61% of designers working today are women. The rate of female creative directors across the industry rose from 3% in 2008 to 29% today.

Adelista Ilissa Widjaya made a project called Little Galore: The Story of Pussy Galore in the Typeface World for the Ask Me Anything project for Communication Design Studies course in RMIT University.

It basically counts and displays a fairy tale version of what happened in 1994 when design historians and educators Teal Triggs, Sian Cook and Liz McQuiston set up the WD+RU to highlight the role of women in design during a period when the industry was rapidly changing.

The group’s aim was to question and subvert traditional male power structures within the overwhelmingly new and transitional context of technological innovation; it was a bold and necessary motivation, one inspired by the birth of Pussy Galore typeface.

The founders attended the Fuse typography conference in 1994. Teal Triggs recalls that at the end of the day, all the speakers were invited onstage for the last round of applause. It was at that point, when they were all visible in front of them, that they noticed the line-up was all white, middle-class men, many with glasses. She raised by hand and asked a question about the selection process:

“Where are all the women?”

Poster by Raissa Pardini for her exhibit “My Type of Revolution”

The response of the oblivious bespectacled jury was of genuine shock; they hadn’t noticed any imbalance.

Shortly afterwards, one of the conference’s organizers, graphic designer Neville Brody, asked the WD+RU to contribute a typeface to Fuse magazine that in someway articulated Triggs’ pressing question.

That’s how the Pussy Galore typeface was born, a font named after Honor Blackman’s uncompromising character in James Bond film Goldfinger. It’s a rich and conceptual approach to typefaces, directly addressing gender stereotypes using dingbats of feminine archetypes. Its letters include pouting lips, Eve’s snake, and a floppy Monroe “dumb blonde” hairdo.

My personal overlook on the matter is that there was an important change in 2018, when projects like Women In Type were born. Women in Type is a three-year research project undertaken at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading was born between March 2018 and November 2021, exactly when the magic happened.

There’s still a lot of work to get gender gap to 0% and to put more women in leadership roles in the typography field, but we’re finally getting somewhere. Women that work with type kind of fought for their place, they had to inevitably network and found themselves searching for a female led office to feel more comfortable and at ease, but there’s a progression. It might be a slow process, but the 2017 situation is incomparable to the 2022 one and I think it’s mainly thanks to Women in Type, Alphabettes, Kern The Gap, and Femme Type.

House/hold by Csilla Klenyanszki is part of a research project on women’s position in the western society that examines the evolution of gender equality in various subjects.

Femme Type, which is a platform founded by Amber Weaver in 2019, under the umbrella of creative media company TYPE01 Ltd, was created with a purpose of celebrating the work of type designers and type-focused creatives who are women.

They aim to encourage women to pursue careers in the field of font design, typography/graphic design, motion, 3D and technology. Recently Femme Type gave birth to ALT.tf, a type foundry that specifically partners with designers from under-represented backgrounds to create unique, forward-thinking typefaces fit for purpose.

On the other hand, there’s also Alphabettes.org which is a showcase for work, commentary, and research on lettering, typography, and type design. Their network supports and promotes the work of all women and nonbinary people in our fields. The blog was originally assembled on a whim in August 2015 by Amy Papaelias and Indra Kupferschmid.

Kerning the Gap too, as a community that Nat Maher started in 2015, aimed at getting more women into leadership roles within the design industry. For several years she had been noticing less and less women at the tables she sat at and asking herself the same question “where have all the women gone…?”.

After reaching her first MD role, she finally having the confidence to say she was a bone fide ‘woman in leadership’ and felt both a need and a responsibilityto do something to unite the agencies in our sector, to come together to start challenging the issues that are leading to such a lack of diversity at the top of our field.

I think that what these projects did is on the same level as Teal Triggs asking where all the women were at the Fuse Typography conference in 1994, sparking ideas in women that work in typography in order to make a change.

Historic overview on women’s role in the type industry

from printing to type design, in Italy and abroad

The first women in the typography world were the nuns of medieval monasteries dedicated to copying and decorating manuscripts. The advent of the press was then to widen the dissemination of the book and women enjoyed its greater availability and fruition, also entering into the new entrepreneurship that was created. So in the 15th century there were monasteries that passed from the work of the nuns copyists and illuminators to that of the printing nuns.

Very important were, in Italy, the Dominican nuns of the Florentine convent of S. Jacopo of Ripoli who, between 1476 and 1484, set up a printing house, managed by the friars Domenico from Pistoia and Pietro from Pisa, producing at least a hundred works.

Although it was women who were typographers, their name did not appear or never appeared alone, but associated with that of their husband or children. It happened then, at times, that the husband died prematurely, leaving the wife with the minor children, not yet able to take responsibility for the management of the paternal enterprise; then the widow was about to continue the family work alone, at least until the age of majority of the children or the new marriage. In the typographical notes of the books there are therefore names of widow as “the widow of...”; this is both to remain in the shadow of a male name, indispensable at the time, and to give continuity to the company, obviously known by the name of her husband.

These women were in all respects real businesswomen who had to carry on a company taking care of the various aspects: contacts with customers, suppliers, accounting management and at the same time being typographers in first person.

To this must be added the fact that a good basic culture was needed, including knowledge of Latin. Last but not least, we must not forget that these women also had to face the difficulties of being a woman on a daily basis. Their presence in publishing was not accepted painlessly by their male colleagues, who in many cases did not consider them colleagues at all, but “the shame of this art”, as the Parisian printer Henry II Astienne wrote in 1569 in his book.

From the general repertoire concerning publishers it appears that women were particularly active in continental Europe: France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands are the nations with the highest number of printers, nominated mainly as widows. In England, women were quite numerous and frequently presented themselves with their own names, while in Mediterranean countries, such as Spain and Italy, printers were less widespread, apart from the presence of some figures of particular interest.

Even in the New Continent women worked in printing and indeed it is reported that the first newspaper published in the American colonies was printed by a woman, Elizabeth Glover, in 1638, Massachusetts Bay, and that many newspapers were produced by women in America between 1650 and 1820.

In particular, in the second half of the nineteenth century in Italy there were many printed periodicals that were often weekly, monthly and bimonthly, packaged for the educated noble and bourgeois ladies. This model of women’s printing existed both nationally and regionally, and often the magazines were born in the main Italian cultural centers such as Turin, Milan, Venice, Parma, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Palermo, with examples dating back to the late 18th century.

The objectives of these works were multiple: not only the desire to favor a female intellectual class and emancipate women from cultural prohibitions imposed on them, but these works contributed, especially in the 60s and 70s of the 1800s, to build Italy as a nation, circulating news, stimulating mutual knowledge of the regions and especially stimulating the dissemination and exercise of the common language, Italian. This last point takes on a particularly sensitive dimension in time: the living language, spoken, was above all that of the local dialects, but when people from different Italian localities met, especially in the salons the language used was French, language that any businessman and elegant lady had to necessarily know.

An exquisite singularity that was found in women’s magazines is the “facade” built around the contents: first for title and first page. In fact, the names of magazines, many of them at least, recall neutral words associated with the traditional values or women environments, or stereotypes associated with them.

Books “for women”: covers in history

Consigli Alle Fanciulle Da Marito, Arcangelo Gozzini Data, 01/01/1856, Livorno; La Missione Della Donna, V. Veritas Data, 01/01/1884, Firenze; Eleganza Femminile, Giovanni Bertinetti (Donna Clara), 01/01/1907, Torino; Come Si Diventa Belle e Forti, Cesare Tifi, 01/01/1926, Roma; Il Libro Della Signora, Ines e Mimì, Bergamo, 01/01/1935, Milano; Donne È Bello, Gruppo Anabasi, 01/01/1972, Milano.

La Donna, 1909; Almanacco Della Donna Italiana, 1925; Moda, 1931; Cornelia, 1933; Giornale Delle Donne 1934; La Donna Fascista, 1949; La Donna, La Casa, Il Bambino, 1957; Luna e l’Altro, 1981; Reti, 1987.

The Victoria Press

Influenced by the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women founded in 1859, for which she served as Secretary, in 1860 English women’s rights activist Emily Faithfull founded the Victoria Press in London.

The Victoria Press was a radical commercial venture that provided new avenues for women’s work in the printing industry. Faithfull and a group of activists set up a printing shop where women worked as compositors (setting type). They printed anthologies, tracts, and feminist periodicals, including the monthly English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), which published mainly contributions by women. Articles in the EWJ advocated for female employment in different fields like clock-making, hairdressing and engraving, as well as other contemporary feminist causes.

La Fronde

Marguerite Durand (1864-1936) was the editor of France’s first feminist daily newspaper. She set out to show, in no uncertain terms, that the Belle Epoque was only ‘belle’ for the male portion of the population, by founding on 9 December 1897 a four-page broadsheet daily newspaper called La Fronde, staffed and written entirely by women.

The third issue declared its intentions with brilliant clarity:

“La Fronde. A major daily newspaper. Political and literary. Managed, administrated and compiled exclusively by women. In the French population women are in the majority…Women pay taxes which they have no say in approving; their manual labour and intellectual work contribute to the wealth of the nation and they claim the right to be allowed to voice their opinion on all questions affecting society and humanity, of which they are members on a par with men.”

La Fronde, meaning ‘the catapult’, was a clever choice of title. In nineteenth-century France it also referred to a period of revolt against Anne of Austria’s regency in the seventeenth century, during the minority of her son, Louis XIV. The verb fronder now means ‘to critique.’

In fin-de-siècle France, fronder had more subversive undertones, implying attack on the establishment through mockery or satire. Durand’s title and editorial content therefore took aim at the patriarchy, using newspaper columns in place of stones to undermine its authority. La Fronde was one in the eye for the male establishments that routinely excluded women.

Marguerite Durand’s radical ideas and actions have frequently been underplayed by writers who focus on her beauty and charisma, attributes she later admitted she used to oil the wheels of the feminist cause, and which prompted commentators to call La Fronde ‘The Times in petticoats.’

During an interview, when asked by the journalist what prompted her to found the newspaper, Durand replied, “the strike of the match girls!” She said that she was “pained and grieved to see how the claims of these unfortunate girls who make matches were supported by the ‘masculine press.’ I made up my mind that a journal was absolutely necessary.”

So what did La Fronde discuss in its pages? One edition, from January 1, 1898 covered the issue of working conditions for women in sewing workshops, and demanded their right to equal pay. The front page included Notes from a Frondeuse, by regular contributor Séverine, the pen name of socialist journalist Caroline Rémy. Séverine published her column Notes from a Frondeuse in an attempt to bridge the gap between Durand’s high-society lifestyle and the social depravation and gender inequality experienced by the majority of women in France at that time.

Despite being criticised for living the high life, Durand was a principled activist who got things done. With her own workforce she set up a women’s typesetter’s union, as women were excluded from the existing (male) one, and paid her staff the same wage as men.

Durand’s trailblazing was not rewarded with financial success and La Fronde ceased daily publication in 1903 due to cash flow problems. La Fronde had ruffled male feathers for six years, and in that time gave a platform to a generation of women hellbent on fighting for equality.

Marguerite Durand, 1910

Type Drawing Offices

Type drawing offices can broadly be identified as internal departments that operated within type foundries or type manufacturing companies. Their main role was to produce the letter drawings and related data necessary to manufacture typefaces, either in metal, phototypesetting or digital format. A number of type manufacturers in Europe (such as Deberny & Peignot in France, Simoncini in Italy, Monotype and Linotype in the United Kingdom, Berthold in Germany), and in all likelihood in the USA, employed women who actively contributed to the design, development, and production of many typefaces throughout the twentieth century. Such contributions have proved difficult to document, as many of these workers would typically be recruited as school-leavers and work for a small number of years before leaving to start a family.

At Monotype and Linotype, type drawing office staff would adapt a designer’s original drawings to a format suitable for the industrial production of matrices, or would convert existing typefaces to either hot metal or, by the second half of the twentieth century, phototypesetting or digital type technologies. Employees also expanded character sets (to include punctuation, accented characters, small caps, etc.) and extended the design of typefaces to include variants (such as bold, italic, condensed, etc.) as well as additional point sizes. The core of the work carried out by these departments thus involved turning an original type design idea into a fully working typeface, often in a range of styles and sizes, through an essentially iterative process.

These tasks were not confined to Latin script, as Monotype and Linotype produced a number of prominent typefaces for the West Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian markets.

For most of the twentieth century the Type Drawing Office of the Monotype Corporation was part of the Monotype Works, a large industrial plant based in Salfords, Surrey (UK). Its role was to make all the letter-drawings used in the production of hot-metal typefaces for the Monotype composing system. As such, it sat alongside a number of other departments such as the matrix factory and the machine-making department, and played an essential role in supplying typefaces for the Monotype system.

Monotype started outputting typefaces in the late 1890s, and its type drawing office was formally setup in 1910. Until the late 1930s, the drawing office staff essentially worked under the guidance of Frank Hinman Pierpont, Manager of the Monotype Works, and Fritz Max Steltzer who headed the drawing office. Both men were decisive in establishing the working methods used by the drawing office for most of the twentieth century, as well as the department’s culture.

By 1950 the Monotype the drawing office was divided into four sections: the order & matrix-case-arrangement section, the drawing section, the charting section, and the wax-cutting section. Each of these were responsible for handling specific tasks related to the production of Monotype faces, from receiving customer orders to cutting the wax patterns used for producing letter punches. All four ‘Heads of section’ were long-standing the drawing office female staff: Beryl Morris, Dora Laing, Emily MacMurray (née Payne) and Winifred Pooley.

Monotype employees checking the copper patterns used for cutting punches, 1956

A

view of the Monotype Type Drawing Office in Salfords, UK, 1928

WHY WOMEN WERE HIRED

The decision to hire female drawing clerks to work in typographic drawing offices was often driven by financial motives, as women could be paid lower wages than men. Precise data on salary discrepancies between male and female staff at Monotype and Linotype is lacking, but archival material reveals that in 1919 average wages at the Monotype Works were significantly higher for men than for women.

The high turnover of female staff within the type drawing office at Monotype underpinned the maintenance of low wages, as most young women worked for a few years after leaving school and before marrying and raising children. Turnover was high, however some women did occasionally pursue long careers at Monotype, and were appointed to supervisory roles.

While wages seem to have been below average for most women working at Monotype compared to men in the 1920s and 1930s, it was still perceived as a company that took good care of its employees, regardless of their gender. Company records reveal that the Monotype Works employed a mix of unionised and non-unionised male and female staff, and regularly reviewed individual wages based on performance.

UNDERTAKEN TASKS

At Monotype, the type drawing office was responsible for adapting a designer’s original artwork to the requirements of the Monotype system.

The various tasks undertaken by the drawing clerks usually involved:

• enlarging the letterforms to a standard size of ‘10-inch’, and producing reverse-reading drawings, in pencil outline, which were suitable for pattern and matrix production;

• expanding the character set to include punctuation, symbols, accented characters, etc.;

• extending the design to extra styles such as bold and italic;

• adapting the letter drawings from their originally intended point size to produce larger and smaller sizes (a process known as ‘optical scaling’);

• making wax patterns, which were used to produce copper patterns from which punches could be engraved.

Hence, the work undertaken by the the drawing office was vital to the quality of the typefaces distributed by Monotype. The company’s entire machine and type-making process, which was devised early in the twentieth century, was a fine example of engineering accomplishment, and the drawings produced by its drawing office were central to the high standards of its typographical output.

POWERPOWERPOWERPOWERPOWERPOWER

POWER POWER POWER P R

Anna Rugerin

died after 1484

The real first woman typographer was Anna Rügerin, from Augsburg, in the South of Germany, who took full control of the family print shop when her husband Thomas died and, more importantly, she managed to publish her name as a printer on two editions of a book of the time.

In 1484, almost six centuries ago, Rügerin printed two books in the in-folio format, in a press she owned in the city of Augsburg. Her work appeared less than twenty years after the arrival of the movable-type printing press in that city.

The first of Rügerin’s known books is an edition of Eike of Repgow’s compendium of customary law, the Sachsenspiegel, dated 22 June 1484.

The Sachsenspiegel, written in the 13th century, was the first major work of German prose. The catalogue Beschreibung derjenigen bücher welch von erfindung der buchdruckerkunst bis M.d.xx ... gedruckt worden sind by Georg Wolfgang Panzer details some of its characteristics.

The second book was an edition of the Formulare und deutsch rhetorica, a manual of instructions for the editing of official documents and of letters, printed on 29 July 1484.

These books were composed in the Gothic font 1:120G of Johann Schönsperger. Researcher Sheila Edmunds Schönsperger is the brother of Anna Rügerin, as his mother, Barbara Traut Schönsperger, married the printer Johann Bämler as her second husband (probably in 1467 or 1468).

This marriage, according to Edmunds, would have produced an extensive familial network devoted to the book trade in Augsburg. Anna Rügerin’s husband, Thomas Rüger, jointly published books with Schönsperger in 1481 and 1482. Johann Schönsperger could have helped Anna Rügerin, who had inherited Rüger’s press, to make her first printing, so it’s obvious that printing was a family affair for the first female typographer of our times.

Katharina Gerlach

Katharina Gerlach (also Gerlachin) was one of the first German women printers. She took over her husband’s major printing and publishing house in Nuremberg after his death, and printed hundreds of documents under her own name. Her printing house became especially well-known for its work on music and theology books. She became the first official printer for the University of Altdorf and was recognized as an official printer for the Nuremberg City Council.

Elizabeth Glover was one of the many immigrants who, together with their families, sought their luck in the New World. After her husband, who had planned to establish a printing business in New England, died in an Atlantic crossing,  Elizabeth came to be the first person in the US colonies to own a printing press. She established herself as a printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1638, and printed several documents, including Oath of a Freeman by John Winthrop and the Bay Psalm Book, of which 1700 copies were printed, but only 11 copies still exist. After her death, the press was eventually donated to Harvard University, and became one of the founding stones for the Harvard University Press, which still operates today as one of the largest academic publishing houses in the world.

Martha Gurney

1733 – 1816

During the height of the slave-trade controversy in the 1780s and 1790s, Martha Gurney was the only woman involved as a printer/bookseller in the campaign against slave trade. She played a crucial role in raising awareness against the slave trade in Britain, and published and sold 16 abolitionist pamphlets, of which An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum (1791), became the most widely distributed pamphlet of the 18th century, with more than 200,000 distributed, and 26 editions published in the first year alone.

Dora Pritchett

Dora Caroline Pritchett was born in 1879 in Folkestone, Kent, and joined Monotype in 1908, aged 22. Dora lived with her mother Jane Louisa Pritchett (widowed) and seems to have remained single and childless throughout her career. She registered as ‘Type Draughts Woman’ in the 1911 census. By 1922–23 she was recorded as living in one of the few houses supplied by Monotype to its employees on Dunraven Avenue (first at no.17, later at no.24), and she was still with the company in 1937, when she would have been in her late fifties. When Monotype celebrated its fortieth anniversary that year, Dora Pritchett was given a seat at the top table with the company’s most senior managers, indicating that she was a highly valued member of staff.

A 10-inch letter drawing for Monotype Times New Roman, made and signed by Dora Pritchett, 1931

Dora Laing

1906

As the head of the drawing section of the Monotype Type Drawing Office, Dora Laing left a lasting mark on the department, and on her colleagues. Born Dorothy Elizabeth Laing in London in 1906, she was the youngest of three daughters. She, like Dora Pritchett, lived with her widowed mother following the death of her father when she was only 11 years old. Laing joined Monotype in 1922, aged 16. By 1929 she lived with her mother in Reigate, near Salfords and she was recorded in the 1939 Register as a ‘Draughtwoman (Type Design)’. Dora remained single and childless throughout her career at Monotype, retiring around 1966, at the age of 60. According to colleagues who worked with her in the 1950s and 1960s, Dora could be a ‘martinet’ with younger recruits. But she was also fair to her colleagues and, according to David Saunders (who worked with her and later supervised the drawing office), Laing ‘handed on a knowledge and respect for the drawing work that became a lasting model’. By the end of her career she sat in a separate office from the main drawing office as part of a small team of senior staff who held key company knowledge, thus highlighting the breadth of her skills and her value to Monotype.

Monotype employee Dora Laing drawing an Arabic character, in reverse, at a size of 10-inch. The photograph was most likely taken in the late 1950s.

Beatrice Warde

1900 - 1969

Beatrice Warde was an American typographic expert who was the publicity manager for the Monotype Corporation and editor of the Monotype Recorder and Newsletter for most of her career. She spent time investigating the origins of the Garamond design of type, and published the results in The Fleuron in 1926 under the pen-name “Paul Beaujon”. Her conclusion that many typefaces previously attributed to Claude Garamont were in fact made ninety years later by Jean Jannon was a lasting contribution to scholarship. With the tenet of readability being a key benefit of good typography, Warde worked with Eric Gill to launch and promote Gill Sans. Warde penned her famous broadside “This is a Printing Office”, to show the Perpetua typeface off. Warde’s approach of connecting the craft of typography with the concerns of business through advertisingwere not always welcome, even within Monotype. She exchanged many heated letters with Eric Gill about the nature of this relationship, with Gill denigrating the use of promotional materials to sell his designs.

Nicolete Gray

1911 – 1997

Nicolete Gray (sometimes Nicolette Gray) (20 July 1911–8 June 1997) was a British scholar of art and calligraphy. She was the youngest daughter of the poet, dramatist and art scholar Laurence Binyon and his wife, writer, editor and translator Cicely Margaret Pryor Powell. In 1933, she married Basil Gray (1904–1989), with whom she had five children, two sons and three daughters, including Camilla Gray. She attended St Delilah’s School where she won a scholarship to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford to read History in 1929. In 1936 she curated the touring exhibition Abstract and Concrete, the first showing of abstract art, and of the work of Mondrian, in England. She taught at London’s Central School of Art and Design 1964–81, where, with Nicholas Biddulph, she created the Central Lettering Record, an archive of lettering in every medium. Her books include Nineteenth century ornamented types and title pages (Faber & Faber 1938; 2nd edition, as Nineteenth century ornamented typefaces, 1976), Lettering on Buildings (1960), Lettering as Drawing: The Moving Line and Lettering as Drawing: Contour and Silhouette (both 1970), and A History of Lettering (Phaidon, 1976).

Paula Scher

1948 – present

Paula Scher is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world. Described as the “master conjurer of the instantly familiar,” Scher straddles the line between pop culture and fine art in her work. Iconic, smart, and accessible, her images have entered into the American vernacular. Scher has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early 80s, when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential. In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have re-imagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design. Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a broad range of clients that include Bloomberg, Microsoft, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Shake Shack, Perry Ellis, the Walt Disney Company and many more. During the course of her career Scher has been the recipient of hundreds of industry honors and awards.

1954 – present Susan Kare

Susan Kare pioneered the design of computer interfacing and is one of the main reasons why we now have a user-friendly interface instead of having to type code when using a computer. Susan joined Apple in 1982, and without much experience with digital design or computers in general, designed the first icons ever to be used on a commercial computer, as well as the first font family for the Macintosh system. This meant that instead of having to learn and type code commands, users now had access to easy-to-understand symbols and images.  Some of her icons, still widely used and recognized today, include the trashcan, computer disk and document with turned-up page corner. She later went on to work independently for multiple clients such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Sony Pictures and Facebook.

1933 – 2019

Gudrun Zapf von Hesse

Zapf von Hesse was an apprentice and assistant at the bookbindery of Otto Dorfner in Weimar from 1934 to 1937. Her calligraphy practice began during this apprenticeship; in her acceptance address for the Frederic W. Goudy Award, she said “One afternoon a week we had to write very simple letters. I was not satisfied with this form of instruction; therefore, I taught myself at home, from a detailed examination of the works of Rudolf Koch and Edward Johnston.” After completing her apprenticeship in 1937, Zapf von Hesse stayed on as an assistant in Dorfner’s bindery until 1940. She received a Master’s Diploma in bookbinding in 1940. She completed further studies at the Berlin Graphic Arts School in 1941 with Johannes Boehland, German painter and graphic artist, 1903-1964. In 1941, Zapf von Hesse worked as a bookbinder in Berlin. From 19441945, she taught bookbinding and calligraphy as therapy for soldiers with head injuries at a hospital in Bad Ischl, Austria. After World War II, in 1946, she opened her own book bindery on the premises of the Bauer type foundry in Frankfurt. The director of the foundry, Georg Hartmann, gave her permission to operate her bindery on the premises. Zapf von Hesse’s career as a type designer began after Lepold and Zapf commissioned her to design typefaces for Stem-

pel. Her first typeface for Stempel was Diotima, issued in 1951. The New York City Opera used Diotima for advertisements in the New York Times, and it was also used for headings in the British Airways in-flight magazine. In 1948, Zapf von Hesse opened a bookbinding studio with one apprentice in the Stempel Type Foundry building. Her bindery at Stempel closed in 1955 when her son, Christian was born, but she continued designing typefaces “as time and family duties allowed.” In the 1970’s, Zapf von Hesse worked with her husband Hermann Zapf to prepare bitmaps by hand for his alphabet designs Marconi and Edison. As technologies changed in the second half of the 20th century, Zapf von Hesse continued to design typefaces for photocomposition and digital production. She was actively designing typefaces into the 90’s for Berthold, Bitstream, and URW Hamburg.

Patricia Saunders

1933 – 2019

Born Patricia Mullett on 7 June 1933, she was educated at Reigate County School for Girls and, after a two-year spell working in an art book shop, Patricia joined the Monotype Drawing Office in Salfords, Surrey, in 1951. Hired and trained as a drawing clerk, Patricia contributed to the making of many Monotype faces such as Castellar, Spectrum, and Glint Ornaments, as well as non-Latin designs which were originated in-house. Like most of the women who worked in the Type Drawing Office, her work involved the completion of character sets for hot-metal typefaces, as well as the drawing of optical sizes, and the development of weight and width variants for existing designs. Patricia met her husband David Saunders in the Monotype Drawing Office and, after marrying in October 1959, she left Monotype to start a family in 1960. While the majority of the young women who left the drawing office upon having children did not return, Patricia joined Monotype again in 1982. Having left the company when its main activity still revolved around hot-metal typesetting, upon her return Patricia was being asked to adapt and develop typefaces for the Monotype Lasercomp, the industry’s first digital laser phototypesetter. Under the supervision of Robin Nicholas, her work involved adapting Monotype’s iconic typefaces such as Van Dijck and Centaur, as well as

completely redesigning Felix Titling, which was originally produced by Monotype in the 1930s and was based on the work of fifteenth-century calligrapher Felice Feliciano. Patricia is more specifically remembered for her contribution to a series of typefaces produced by Monotype in the early 1980s, and which were adopted by Microsoft as their core fonts, most notably Arial, co-developed with Robin Nicholas and based on Monotype Grotesque, as well as the script face Corsiva. In 1992 she designed Columbus, a digital typeface ‘with a Spanish flavour’ as a tribute to explorer Christopher Columbus.

Patricia Saunders and a female colleague in the Monotype drawing office in the 1980s.

Christiane Herrandon, Annette Celso, Ladislas Mandel

Georgina Surman, Lesley Sewell, Sarah Morley, Gillian Robertson, Ros Coates, Fiona Ross, Donna Yandle

Turin, 1960

ARATA’S WORKSHOP

Carla Arata typing

Like all good stories, it starts with «A-i era na vòlta...» (Once upon a time) which is also the title of a book of fairy tales in Piedmont «for children and adults» written by Alessandro Arata, linotypist from Turin who, widowed at the birth of the third daughter, after II World War, he left the safe place to La Stampa in Turin and risked the few liras of liquidation to set up a shop in the Piedmontese capital.

These were the years of the economic boom, which in large part was due to many such bets. The machines were very expensive, you got into debt for years and for as many you had to work hard, without looking at the clock or listening to fatigue. In those linotypes - which served the many small print shops in Turin - the linotypists of tomorrow grew. The small artisan companies were then the concrete complement of the vocational schools and formed on the field the new levers that became coveted prey for newspapers and large publishing houses.

So it was also for Carla, the middle daughter of Sandro Arata. In the lucky years, we are at the end of the fifties of the last century, when so many counterparts (the daughters of small artisans) were preparing to debut in good society, Carla was already dancing her fingers on the ninety buttons of an imposing and threatening linotype, always strictly reserved for boys. And, line after line, it was so for the beauty of 41 years.

The linotypes were directed by father, daughter and a worker until the advent of photocomposition, when the printers began to abandon the hot composition, no longer competitive. Lost the last worker, even the old Arata left his «linotipia» and retired to write stories and proverbs in Piedmont. Carla took the reins of the shop and carried on production and management until the dawn of the third millennium: in December 2001 she surrendered to new technologies and finally turned off the crucible of the last linotype mod.

Thus ceased the rattling of that wonderful composing machine that with its eccentric rotation had for decades, daily, punctuated its time. Although it was still perfect in its operation, no one wanted it anymore so it was destroyed leaving Carla in tears.

Carla Arata on the last day of work

Milan, 1864

KRONOS: GIOVANNI, MIMMA, ELENA

Moro typing

Elena

We are now moving to Milan to tell another story. The composer by hand Giovanni Moro, son of a rotary artist of the Sole 24 Ore, had installed, just nineteen, a small typography in the Lombard capital, Kronos. He was then married to Mimma who he had also wanted to work with him in his printing workshop. Tons of characters, a «star» Heidelberg, a stationery department. A model 5 linotype arrived, rebuilt in the workshops of Edoardo Grioni, Giovanni’s brother-in-law.

Then Elena was born, who was to follow a very different path. In fact, twenty-five years later we find her graduated in law from Cattolica university in Milan. Meanwhile, his father Giovanni had put the first linotype to rest, replacing it with a quick Practica by Officine Menta.

It was Christmas Eve 1990 when Giovanni Moro suddenly missed. His wife Mimma felt lost and for the printing press it seemed to be the end world. Elena, who specialized in Labour Law, had become a highly appreciated civil servant of a large company and dealt with trade union disputes.

Elena Moro, lawyer, specialized in labor law, decided to dedicate herself to typesetting.

With her mother she decided to participate in the resumption of the typographical activity imagining a division of tasks: Elena would be interested in the typesetting and management of the administration, the mother took care of the composition and would collaborate in the layout and the press.

Elena spent his nights studying the mechanics and operation of the linotype. Then left his toga and his clothes to wear the blue-worker apron and replaced the lost father figure in the printing house. Helped and educated by two wonderful people: Carlo Radaelli, mechanic of Officine Menta, and Adriano Soffiato, nephew of Edoardo Grioni.

She set to the keyboard of the legendary linotype to align the matrices that went to compose her first line: “Dad, I love you”.

So the activity continues, without having lost memories and things: the old model 5 is in the cellar preserved as a precious relic, as well as the legendary paternal Lancia Fulvia, which now boasts the coat of arms of the historic cars, which is parked in the family garage on display.

Today Elena Moro, the linotypist of the third millennium, tells: “The linotype has a voice and a heart and I am still alive with her!”

The fairy tale could end here if it wasn’t true, as the Typography Kronos, in via Belinzaghi 17, in Milan: the print shop in pink.

Mimma and Elena at Kronos

From 1600 onwards, women had much more space in the printing industry, and so also in Italy came the first woman printer. Her name was Girolama Cartolari, of Perugia, who, like Anna Rügerin, took over the family printing house after her husband’s death. There isn’t much information on her on the internet, beside a Wikipedia page which includes an “unnoticed work” section, which I’ve never encountered before.

Girolama Cartolari (c. 1500-1559) was an Italian printer from Perugia active in Rome from 1543 to 1559. She was the wife of printer Baldassarre Cartolari and ran the Cartolari printing workshop in Rome after his death. The date of Cartolari’s marriage to Baldassarre is not known but likely occurred after 1524 since there is no mention of her in a legal document he signed that year. Thanks to this union, she became a member of the Cartolari family and adopted his last name with which she is remembered. In the first half of the 16th century, the Cartolari family was active and relevant in the typographical field in the city of Perugia.

The long family tradition in the printing field can be traced back to Baldassarre’s grandfather, who around 1445, moved from Papiano to Perugia to practice the paper-making activity first and then, towards the end of the century, became a typographer. It is further proven by the fact that both Baldassarre’s father, active between 1500-1518, and his elder brother, active between 1510-1549, were also famous typographers.

Between 1538 and 1540 Girolama and Baldassarre moved to Rome, probably attracted there by the easy earning prospects offered by the Papal State, a major cultural and political center. In 1543, after the death of Baldassarre, Girolama succeeded her husband, by inheritance, in running the printing workshop that was initially located in Vico Peregrini, near Campo dei Fiori and the palace of the Apostolic Chancery, thus continuing on his fairly established and profitable printing business. She was responsible for moving the printing shop to new locations: from January 1545 to the end of 1547 in Piazza del Parione, and from 1548 in Piazza San Pietro near Borgo.

The books produced by the printing workshop under her direction represent continuity with the work of her spouse. Cartolari, in fact, continued to print for various institutions associated with the Catholic Church. At the same time, she was also able to contribute to the printing of works from the lively cultural environment represented by the circle of writers revolving around the Farnese family, in particular its most important member, Pope Paul III.

For the sixteen years in which she assumed the direction of the family business, Cartolari produced up to twenty-six works a year. The first work she printed was the Tractatus reservationum papalium ac legatorum by Enea Falconi. She also printed a range of publications: ecclesiastical announcements, papal bulls, regulations issued by the Apostolic Chancery, orations, lectures from the Council of Trent, anti-Lutheran pamphlets written by the archbishop and famous theologian Lancelotto Politi, as well as ordinary documents. Among them are the works of the German astrologer Mathias Brottbeychel and works by the Perugian Tommaso Grifi. The press paid attention to Umbrian authors such as Gaspare da Perugia and Matteo Spinelli. Other publications printed by Cartolari are the works of the pontifical doctor Andrea Turini and his colleague Michelangelo Biondo, as well as Latin grammars edited by Giovanni Fabbrini and works by the humanists Gabriele Barri and Mambrino Roseo.

The relationship of Cartolari with authoritative booksellers and publishers, such as the Venetian Michele Tramezzino, is well documented. Tramezzino financed the printing of a dozen legal texts in Cartolari’s printing shop but in 1547, when Tramezzino returned to Venice, the production of Cartolari decreased significantly. Around the same time, writer Michelangelo Biondo, a regular customer of Cartolari, also moved to Venice and established his own printing shop. At the time, those who ran a printing business usually didn’t carry out the related function of publishers. it was usually the authors themselves, or people linked to them through patronage relationships, who financed the printing of their works. Only the printers with the highest volume of work, often most popular and affluent, were able to bear the costs of publishing and could therefore perform this function. There is no evidence that Cartolari’s activity continued after May 1559.

According to a study conducted by the University of Virginia Professor Deborah Parker on women in the book trade in Italy between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 17th century, the work of women printers and booksellers throughout history has gone unnoticed and has rarely been the object of study by scholars and researchers. Cartolari is one of few women who signed their name on the works they printed, although at the beginning of her career she identified herself as the heir of her husband’s activity, a practice that was very common at the time. In this period most women did not print their names on the title page or colophon of the works they produced. Other times, as it happened to Cartolari, the evidence of their existence and activity has been altered in subsequent books and bibliographies. This happened for example in G.M. Mazzucchelli’s book titled Gli Scrittori d’Italia, where the author lists Michelangelo Biondo’s work and corrects Cartolari’s first name changing it from Hieronymam to Hieronymum (Girolamo).

Annali della tipografia romana by Baldassarre Jr and Girolama Cartolari.

36 days of type by Magdalena Marchocka

The women contemporary type design scene in Italy

Data, thoughts and interviews with the designers

SOME OF THE BEST ITALIAN WOMEN TYPE DESIGNER

Alessia Mazzarella, Maria Chiara Fantini, Michela Graziani, Sofia Bandini, Lorenza Liguori, Agnese Addone, Alessia Nicotra, Elena Albertoni, Giulia Boggio, Giulia Ursenna Dorati, Michela Ferretti, Silvia Porcu, Silvia Virgillo, Emanuela Conidi, Veronica Vidal, Alessandra Morcella, Alexandra De Angelis, Alice Donadoni, Allessia Castelli, Anna Ronchi, Beatrice Caciotti, Beatrice D’Agostino, Camilla Bertoni, Cristina Pi, Ivana Tubaro, Marta Erica Bernstein, Valentina Alga Casali, Eloise Barbanera, Ivana Concilio, Maria Pirogova, Martina Casonato, Agnese Tisi, Alessia Sbabo, Alice Tebaldi, Angelica Baini, Anna Clara Fanesi, Anna Morena, Annalinda Ruocco, Arianna Valentini, Aurora Biancardi, Beatrice

Davies, Beatrice Tamagnini, Benedetta Bovani, Bianca Vagnoli, Chiara Di Terlizzi, Chiara Quaggia, Chiara Virdis, Clara Zorzoli, Claudia Altavilla, Claudia Rolletto, Cristina Pellicano, Elisabetta Giordana, Emilie Rollandin, Greta Bassanese, Ilaria Iacovello, Johanna Lo Bosco, Laura Antonucci, Margherita Rubini, Marta Ambrosetti, Martina Ginevra Albano, Nadia Abate, Sandra Sisofo, Giorgia

Pinotti, Maria Bruno, Sara Lavazza, Sara Panepinto, Valentina Marchio, Federica Ciotola, Federica Colombo, Giulia Gambino, Laura Sansotera, Martina Elisa Cecchi, Silvia Mondello, Sofia Lanzoni, Giulia Russo, Mariarosaria Digregorio, Gioia Silvia Buracchini, Sara Staffelli, Sara Wird Raffaelli, Serena Petraglia, Valentina Moroni

My research started with the Luc Devroye’s list of italian type designers.

I took 273 of them which were women and wrote their: name, number of typefaces published, website, font names, links, portfolio, eventual brand or studio and a grade from 1 to 5.

The next step was to analyze the data I gathered and see what the situation is:

190 on 273 designers only published one typeface, suggesting they didn’t pursue the type designer career; of the remaining 83 type designers, 28 gained a grade from 3 to 5, 10 of them published more than 5 typefaces.

Step forward I decided to interview Alessia Mazzarella, Sofia Bandini, Valentina Alga Casali, Marta Bernstein, Silvia Porcu, Elena Albertoni, Giulia Boggio, Beatrice Caciotti and Sara Lavazza.

I found bizarre that out of the nine, only four (Valentina, Sofia, Beatrice and Sara) still live in Italy, but that element helped me understanding the different experiences, between Italy and abroad.

Link to researchmy

Women type designers that only designed 1 typeface (190 on 273)

Women type designers that designed more than 1 typeface (83 on 273)

Poster by Sasha Staicu

sad daTa TO TaKE IN

17%

63% of design students are women*

63% 17% are in leadership roles*

1. Do you know many women designers?

2. When and how did you become interested in typography?

3. What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

4. Do you consider yourself a feminist?

5. Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

6. Do you know examples of women who have not been given credit for their work or who have been forgotten in the history of design?

7. Do you think it’s important to talk about the gender gap in type design? Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

8. In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this? Why do you think it happens?

9. Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male?

10. Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

11. Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018?

Sara Lavazza

Do you know many women designers?

Yes. I have a circle of friends who are 100% designers who come from the university and now also work, and regarding them I would say just 50/50. Especially the people I work with are mostly women. I am freelancer, I collaborate with studios and I have my clients, in both the female component is very important.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

I was always interested in the part of design that deals with layout, layout of magazines and books where the textual component is fundamental and therefore from a design point of view I have always focused on that aspect. Before being a designer I was very much in love with the world of graffiti and so I started looking at the letters from there, which is a much more common thing than I thought at the beginning. And then, apart from that chapter, for me there was also calligraphy, so experimenting with different tools I also explored that field. Then putting all the pieces together and studying design I also started approaching softwares like Glyphs, then just theory for the design of fonts, from there it started my passion for type design specifically.

Futura, Obviously, Gig by Franziska Weitgruber, which I am a fan of.

Do you consider yourself a feminist?

It feels weird to say it, because obviously behind the word “feminist” there is always activism that puts in subjection self attribution. But at the same time, in the form and dimension of my life, I think I am. First of all I try to document myself and pay attention to certain issues, every time I meet them in my life I try to talk about them with the people I have around me, I confront a lot with all my friends on certain issues that concern feminism, and then talk about intersectional feminism. I always try to keep the subject alive. It is also not the first time that I have been contacted as a woman type designer, which is not something other than just being a type designer, but for the world in which we live in is a condition that is important to talk about. So yes, I consider myself a feminist and I think it’s necessary for everyone today to be one.

*Sara designed Coconat, one of the typefaces used in this book (for the interviews’ titles, for example)

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

I don’t think I have models. I like to analyze the different aspects of the professionals, in this case the type designers, and understand what I like about each one, so I don’t have a figure I rely on. One person I have already mentioned, however, is Franziska Weitgruber, who is not far from my figure because she is still very young. She studied type design at the University of The Hague. I really appreciate the way she works and somehow I envy her too. I happened to meet her once in Milan last year and I like how she works professionally rather than as a freelancer. In the last 4-5 years there has been a lot of talk about being women in the world of type design, allowing to create a lot of network and many pages like Women In Type were born giving space to type designers women showing their existence and their work. So I don’t think there are too few examples of female type designers. When I was studying I had as a teacher Marta Bernstein who in the Italian scene is certainly one of the pillars, and I also know Beatrice D’Agostino.

Do you know examples of women who have not been given credit for their work or who have been forgotten in the history of design?

The first example that comes to mind is Carolyn Davidson who designed the famous Nike swoosh for a few dollars. She has been completely forgotten and is never mentioned despite having drawn one of the most important logos ever. This made me think that there are many famous logos of which I do not know the author, for example at university they make you study Milton Glaser with I Love NY, while the Nike one is rarely mentioned. In type design, women who worked in type foundries and drawing studios did a fundamental job in developing fonts, starting from the initial artistic direction and making everything work and were never given credits. They were all women because they were paid much less and could not make a step forward in the career of printing because of the society that expected them to take care of their children.

In universities students usually don’t notice gender gap, but later it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this?

My point of view might be a bit particular because I ended up working in predominantly female environments, but this in my opinion was not a purely random factor but by my own choice. The first jobs I had were not in purely female environments, indeed in the very first one I was the only woman, in the following ones it was 50/50, so I did not see a large gender gap, but this is just my experience. If I had to ask this question to many of my friends they would answer differently.

For me to work with typography, in addition to a theoretical and technical basis, requires eye, taste and confidence in yourself, in the sense that if you want to make changes that the numbers do not confirm you must be confident, and this could be sociologically associated with a more assertive male quality. Clearly I do not think so, I think it is a merely patriarchal stereotype and indeed, as I said before, women from the beginning in the foundries did a technical work and are continuing to do it.

Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male?

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

If I have to think of the most important Italian calligrapher I think of Luca Barcellona, in the world instead I think of James Clough, so I think it is absolutely a stereotype that always comes from our patriarchal society so everything that is geometric, straight, rational and minimal belongs to the male universe, while everything that is soft, curved and descriptive is associated with the female world. It is a trend that has developed in recent years in design because if you look at the work of men designers in the 60s/70s/80s they used more curved, expressive and decorative shapes, now in the last ten years we tend to reduce to bone, all black and white and minimalist style, although maybe we’re finally getting out. About this topic there is an article that I really like, written by a woman designer that I respect very much:

Silvia Porcu

Do you know many women designers?

I work in London, so the situation may be different from Italy. In Italy I worked just a little, but still in a group where there was zero gender gap. The girls were graphic designers and the boys were programmers. Here in London it’s the same. There are as many women as men. Only in one company I was the only woman (out of four), changing job I had the opposite situation. I never noticed this disparity.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

I went to university in Florence and participated in a workshop organized by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. The course was mainly about calligraphy and I really enjoyed it. I’ve always been interested in illustration, I’ve always liked manual work, so I was intrigued by fonts. I downloaded the softwares and for a year I was very passionate about it. I created about ten fonts, mostly out of necessity, since customers didn’t want to pay for the licenses and I decided to create them myself.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

Helevetica Neue, American Lemon Sans, Headliner, And mine!

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes, absolutely, I am all for gender equality, but it to me it looks like over time the word feminism has taken on aggressive tendencies.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

I don’t remember names, but they are contemporary designers, both men and women, and I follow them on social media. Otherwise, I think about designers from the 70s, mainly men. I like to work on new things, so try new technologies, new styles, working with the web. I try to be always in tune with the technologies we have now. I may have grown up with some influences, but since there has been a rapid change in recent years, my inspiration comes from people adopting new things, including men, women, trans and non-binary people.

Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

No, not now in 2022. But even when I started working I never felt this gender gap. I never felt as if a man had taken my place, indeed lately with the illustrations I feel advantaged.

Do you think that the design industry gives equal space to women and men?

With the illustrations to promote my work I used hashtags and chains to get in touch with other women, this was the way to advertise the projects. It helped me raech more women artists than men, but there are as many women illustrators as men. With all the freedom that there is now, for men it is easier to express the elegance that maybe once was seen as an effeminate thing, giving space to a side that they have always had but that before was not accepted.

THE BIG COLORFUL BUTTERLY SPREADS ITS WINGS

COME ON, GO WITH A SMILE!

Marta Erica Bernstein

Do you know many women designers?

Yeah. The owner of the studio where I work now is a woman, the team is mainly female: we are two women art directors, as well as project managers. More often customers are men, so we often work with predominantly male teams. Working in the USA, however, I have a different experience, in Italy on the university level there is no prevalence of one gender. Here in America there are many more female students than men, also because graphics and design here are part of Fine Arts and therefore the cliché is different. In the working world it is clearly different, I could see that in roles where the responsibility increases, such as art directors are more men than women, who is the head of a studio or has an entrepreneurial approach is still male. I guess it’s still different than when I started, so 15 ago.

Interesting to understand the difference between the situation in Italy and the USA!

I live in Seattle, which is a very liberal place, where there’s a lot of attention on equality and accessibility talk, so it’s a little different. We often work with museums and usually those who run them are women, I have to say unfortunately they are professions that pay less and it is easier to find a woman who is happy with a lower salary.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

It’s not a linear story, but I discovered graphics studying art history, seeing that the avant-garde of the 900 also did advertising and therefore graphics, which I didn’t even know existed when I studied in high school. There I began to be interested in the subject, I enrolled at the Politecnico and I graduated in communication. There I met Anna Steiner, who I do not know if she still teaches at the Politecnico, but her course in the first year was a lighting for my path of study which I had started unconsciously, and then I learned what it meant to do the graphic designer job (quoting her father’s book), but also learning that typography exists, and all its historical part. In addition, later I met Professor James Clough, who at the Politecnico no longer teaches, and I attended the course of printing and typography at Bauer. That was the beginning, Clough became my thesis supervisor and I started a research project that I’m still working on now. This was the beginning of a passion.

I am very happy that in one of the studio projects we are using Universe, because it is a character that I really like but it’s also a bit old and so I have never been able to use in a project; the studio font is Caliber by Klim Type Foundry, which we always use and is always pleasant to work with; for another project we closed recently we used IBM Plex, needed a free font for a food bank.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes, absolutely.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Surely there is a problem of representation, so i can’t say “My model is + name”. Anna Steiner has certainly been very important for me from the point of view of training and profession, both in the way of teaching and on the professional level. She and her husband have a studio and they do set-ups and they’re great. She taught me to think about my job with a certain awareness and responsibility towards what I do. She was definitely an example of awareness of a skill that I thought was very commercial, being perceived like so generally. Even Mara Campana, who teaches the most photographic and visual side. The fact that they were two women, two feminists who participated in movements and collectives made the course at the Politecnico a truly illuminating moment.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

wo-

Yes, but the answer is that no one gives you the role of leader, women have to take it and that’s what makes the process a little bit more tiring. I realize as a teacher, the difference between female students and men students in the way they present their work. Generalizing and simplifying, on average, a male student is more confident of himself and present at the work he does in a more assertive way, than there are very good female students who seem to apologize while presenting their project. This thing pisses me off, because maybe it’s something that needed to correct before, since at university a person is already trained enough. This approach then translates into the working world and leads to accepting less money, to being less assertive, which does not mean less aggressive, but accepting only what you deserve, whether it is a title, salary etc.

The theme of representation is an important theme. I strive to speak at conferences and I realize when I teach that I do not simply have the role of teacher who is passing content, but as a woman I have a little more responsibility than one of the many male teachers there are, because I want to show that I teach, but I also have a position of responsibility, that I have a team, I run big projects. I feel I must give my testimony from the perspective of representation. In my opinion in Italy there is much less attention on this subject, in America for example it is no longer acceptable that at a conference there are only male speakers.

Do you think there are too few

men in the role of leader in the field of type design?

Do you know examples of women who have not been given credit for their work or who have been forgotten in the history of design?

There are two interesting projects on this theme: one is the documentary Graphic Means, which talks not so much about names but about how the photo composition has taken hold among women not being part of the unions and therefore it cost less. This is definitely an interesting point of view, also of why there are so few female figures in the history of design, or in any skill that historically requires a practical part. Maybe it was easier in the past when there was a wealthy painter it was because she was the daughter of a rich family who had the means to dedicate herself to this hobby, a little more particular. Another interesting project is the one by Alice Savoie, who is a French researcher, on the history of typography from the point of view of women (Women In Type) in which it is explained who were the women who worked in the foundries, what kind of contribution they made. Surely there are a lot of stories, which we do not know and perhaps we will never know, of female contributions that have been forgotten. Now it is difficult to do research on the subject as there is no testimony.

Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male and calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

Historically yes. Although the most famous calligraphers are still men. I must say that from the point of view of those who work in the industry it’ss a very inclusive, caring and respectful environment. In the master I did in the Netherlands we were 11, including 8 men and 3 girls. Right now it’s 5 and 5, but they’re trying hard to find female canditates that are interesting. As there are so many type design courses now, I don’t think it’s a field that can only be identified with one gender, but the most famous and well-known type designers are still men.

Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018?

I’m having a hard time identifying it as a turning point. I see a difference between 2010 and 2020 surely, especially thanks to the new generations everything is more balanced.

Did you ever feel like you only got called to a festival as a woman? Yes, it happened to me. It was so many years ago and it’s one of those things I regret because I wasn’t quite aware of it yet. I was invited to a two-day conference by the Associazione Editori Lettori for which the main Italian newspapers sponsored the daily in class as an activity. Two days of lectures with journalists were organized for some of the competition’s winning high school classes. The one I was invited to was in Parma, for an event on Bodoni where there was for example De Bortoli, director of Sole 24 Ore, and a series of similar characters; I was the only woman, the only one under 45 probably, and they called me because I was an expert in printing theory, but the reality is that they realized that in two days there weren’t invited any women. Besides making me a little angry because I was talking about something else and they didn’t even know what to ask me, given the context of journalists. The interesting thing is that it was invited the former director of the Washington Post, who was the only person upset by the demonstration of patriarchy there and therefore the absence of women. We became friends and we still are, we send each other Christmas cards. It shows how the journalism environment is worse than the design one. I happened to be invited to conferences and realize that in order to have this 50/50 some of the invited speakers did not have well-structured presentations, but you become good at public speaking only practicing. For example Typographics strives to invite as many different people as possible, not only Americans, not only Europeans, not only men etc. Also because the theme of representation does not concern only women, but a slice of the world that is usually not spoken of. Here in America they are much more politically correct, maybe they don’t always truly believe in it, but they know they can’t help but do it, and giving a lot more chances and making everything more diverse.

Valentina Alga Casali

Do you know many women designers? Enough, we try to keep in touch.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

I became interested in typography and lettering when I was studying at the former School of Comic, I studied graphic design there. There was no internal course, so from 2009/2010 I started to go back and forth from Jesi to Arezzo to take calligraphy lessons from Monica Dengo. For me the fastest mental association was: what is the origin of typography? Calligraphy, so I decided to start there. It was an annual course, we had intensive weekends throughout the year and from there I started attending parallel courses of sign painting, type design etc. I realized I wanted to only deal with letters very late though, for many years I did graphic design. It was only when I moved to Milan that I realized that it could be a path to take, so at a certain point I decided to throw myself in it at 25.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

Obviously di James Edmondson, Forma di David Jonathan Ross, Fraunces by Undercase Type.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? I would say yes, maybe not very active, but absolutely yes.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Probably Zuzana Licko of Emigre. To me their typographical experimentation was at the forefront, despite their golden age being passed. I have always admired the depth of their work and the fact that they sweep a lot between experimental and historical, they manage to have everything. She also as collateral practices such as ceramics that she creates, it’s what I’m trying to do myself.

Do

Now things are changing, in history they are definitely. If there was a woman in charge of a department, they saw it as something that was there, but that didn’t matter.

you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

Do you think it’s important to talk about the gender gap in type design? It must be addressed in all fields of work! I think it’s important to talk about it and especially not to hide when money is mentioned, when it comes to gender pay gap.

Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

If we look at companies like Monotype yes, they have only one woman, so i think it’s still like so. In independent foundries things certainly move differently, there is a different percentage.

You think it’s generational? Could be.

In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this? Why do you think it happens?

Probably when I went to school it was not perceptible, but now it is. The thing that’s happening now though is to use the type designer role as a token. You get called as a woman, to make a number, and that is worse than being replaced by a male colleague. I mean that if a man is chosen because he is simply more competent it is okay, but the fact that now companies hire simply because we’re women it’s even more demeaning.

Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male?

Yes and no. Often people do not know what it’s meant by type design, but in general yes, but because it is what has passed for many years, so banally out of habit.

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work? It could be, but there are many men who practice calligraphy, even ornamental. But, yeah, maybe a gender bias.

Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018?

Yeah, absolutely. There is a very strong opening, probably also due to the pandemic, and therefore to the use of online tools for school education giving a way to women, bipoc and other minorities to access courses or knowledge that otherwise would cost too much. It will however take a few years for the figures that are growing now to reach central roles.

Sofia Bandini

Do you know many women designers? Yes, beside the ones I work with in Zetafont. Especially in calligraphy, in type design just a few. I know Femme Type and their foundry Alt.tf, with only young emerging women. I also really like the CEO of Love Typography Naine Chaine, but also Veronika Burian and Valentina Casali.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

After 3 years of communication in IED I had Francesco Canovaro, partner of Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, as a professor and gave us as exercise: the rebranding of Yahoo using only one typeface. Thanks to that stimulus I started to have a research approach. Obviously not requiring the classic fonts, I started looking for features, particular serifs, the roundness of the letters, let’s say the nerdy side of letters, as we call it in the office. Now I am constantly surrounded by it and despite what I actually do is graphics, I feel the need to understand letters.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

The Zetafonts catalog for work of course; lately I’ve been keeping an eye on Velvetyne, but mostly I use the classic Roboto, Montserrat, Merriweather.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Kind of, on certain things it is worth fighting, when they want to inflate and get angry about every little thing no. Let’s say I’m a soft feminist.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

I had many loves, then growing up I changed references. In terms of image composition I’d say Malika Fevre, who is an illustrator I esteem very much, then Munari, who in order to understand his work you have to enter his mind. I’m very selective, I try to look at several different things and not just focus on one. Regarding leader roles I think there is absolutely a deficit of women.

In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this?

I had a bit of a traumatic work experience at the very beginning. I was rejected by a studio in Arezzo whose boss at the interview told me that I, as a woman, did not have the qualities that he had, deminishing me and listing things that I did not know how he did. He suggested I expanded my postgraduate knowledge because I wasn’t able to work for him. We were three girls and one boy doing the interview, all three treated this way, he was hired. That was the first interview I ever had. Now one of my bosses is a woman and there is also attention in the selection of staff on the gender equality level. In the office we are 4 women and 5/6 men, in the university there was a clear majority of women, not only in my class.

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

I associate the figure of the calligrapher more easily with a woman rather than type design, but then there are examples like Luca Barcellona who is not at all “feminine”, indeed he is elegant in his own way, having a more gothic style.

Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018?

Yes, in positive and perhaps also thanks to social networks. For example Valentina Casali is very good with type, and she is also in communication, this certainly helped her to have the visibility she deserves.

Giulia Boggio

Do you know many women designers?

Designers in general, a lot. Type, it’s a whole new world for me. I’ve been finding it out especially since I got involved with Femme Type and Amber Weaver, which opened my eyes to a super creative world I didn’t know much about. I love Charlotte Rohde’s work, I see myself in her, both as a style and as a way of communicating. In Milan, I like a lot what Alice Zani does, I find it very strong!

When and how did you become interested in typography?

There has always been interest, let’s say that the dive I did during the first lockdown was a bit out of boredom and also because it was an important moment for many people, where you no longer have excuses. I feel comfortable in the corners where I put myself. It gives me the push I need. So I started to learn how to use Fontlab and I tried to build a typeface with the letters I had drawn for a crappy project at school.

What did you study?

Graphic Design & Art Direction at NABA.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

Faust by Bouk Ra, T1 Korum by Valerio Monopoli, G2 Ciao by Gruppo Due.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes, absolutely.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

I think there are too few women everywhere, but I seem to see a big change happening and I like it. There are many projects related to the theme, in design and more (see ALT Type, Soli Type, Femme Type, Futuress, Diet Paratha, Kern the Gap etc), and I think it has been understood how important it is to be represented. I don’t know if there’s one person in particular I’m inspired by, and I don’t generally like to name such vague statements. This week I was inspired by Vivien Hoffmann and Samara Keller.

Do you know examples of women who have not been given credit for their work or who have been forgotten in the history of design?

I’ll leave you a story I liked when I read it:

Do you think it’s important to talk about the gender gap in type design? Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

All industries are, if we remove those related to health and cosmetics. Which says everything there is to say taking into account that we are in 2022. Things change, maybe not fast enough. I think the design field is quite accessible to everyone, especially considering the availability of softwares, information etc online. I’m a bit sorry to see a large part of women in the industry doing very standardized and “feminine” things, I wonder if it is intentional or if they are a little pushed in that direction.

In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this? Why do you think it happens? No because I actively chose not to work in studios, I took my corner and I have always more or less worked serenely with clients of various types. I notice some “bigger” (older) customers who tend to talk to you a little bit like I’m the secretary, which always makes me laugh. I’m always pretty straightforward, and if I feel frustration, I’ve learned to talk about it and confront myself instead of burning my liver. It’s a privilege to be able to do that, but I think it has revolutionized the way I work, for the better.

DIVERSITY INCLUSION BELONGING

Beatrice Caciotti

Do you know many women designers? No, I personally only know one type designer and a couple of calligraphers.

When and how did you become interested in typography? During the master’s degree course, I felt the need to deepen my knowledge of typography probably because during my path I did not have the opportunity to do a whole course specifically about it.

Where did you study? Three years in Industrial Design at the ISIA in Rome, Master in Design, visual communication and multimedia at the Sapienza in Rome and Type design course at the CFP Bauer in Milan.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used? Jäger di Vjtype, Archivo di Google, Degular di Ohno type.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design? Do you think there are too few women in the role of leader in the field of type design?

No, there’s not a particular figure I’m inspired by and yes, I think there are still few women leaders in the field, but I also believe that things are changing.

In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this? Why do you think it happens?

I believe that what happens in the working world, limited to the field of design, is only the manifestation of a wider phenomenon that especially in Italy unfortunately, is still a problem of considerable importance. If there are still those who argue that quotas for women are themselves a symbol of discrimination in the workplace, I do not think it is so difficult to meet women who have had discriminating experiences in the workplace, even simply asking for information about your emotional sphere and whether you intend to have children or not during a job interview. In my opinion this happens because there are still many prejudices about women in the world of work (men do not have pregnancies, do not have menstruation, do not have mood swings, do not have fragility, are more likely to be leaders etc.) but also because obviously this state has not done enough to rule certain phenomena.

I don’t see it. Surely until some time ago it was so, I think now with the new generations the paradigm is changing considerably.

Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male?

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

I think they have less difficulty in seeing it as a place where women can perform as well as men, or even better, always because of gender stereotypes.

Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018? Yes.

”

“Currently, the relationship between typography and gender stereotypes is still scarcely addressed, and when it is it’s regarding marketing and thus audience targeting. It is obvious that the use of gender attributes in the context of typography is not based on the lines drawn by the letters, but rather on cultural aspects.

-Beatrice Caciotti

WOMEN ARE BAD DRIVERS

Elena Albertoni

Do you know many women designers? So many, more than 50.

Where did you study? Liceo Artistico in Bergamo, Academy of Art and Design ÉSAD of Amiens in France, and higher diploma in typographical creation École Estienne of Paris, still in France.

When and how did you become interested in typography?

During my studies in graphic design, I was fascinated on one hand by manual writing, then calligraphy, and on the other by the creation of characters, so sign system, black and white work, readability, customization.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

Working more on lettering I rarely use typefaces. For the latest graphic projects I used characters from the futurefonts library: Oaks, Pyk, Sig.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes.

Do you know examples of women who have not been given credit for their work or who have been forgotten in the history of design?

I am sure there are many women in this industry who have remained in the shadows. By the way I recommend the research of Alice Savoie and Fiona Ross on the role of women in the printing industry of the twentieth century (especially at Monotype and Linotype) published the work Women in Type.

Do you think it’s important to talk about the gender gap in type design? Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

Yes. It is a problem of visibility (attendances at conferences for example), wages, sometimes prejudice/discrimination. I think it is important not to fall into the illusion that now the change of mentality has happened and that therefore we can “relax”. It is an evolving process that develops and improves only with our own efforts, as mothers, sisters, colleagues.

In universities where you study graphic design, students usually don’t notice a lot of gender gap, but when they graduate, it’s inevitable to see it in the work world. Have you ever noticed this? Why do you think it happens? Yes, in my generation the paradox was very evident between good and numerous students, but then absent in the world of work. One of the reasons is definitely motherhood. For women it still has as consequences on career breaks, lower wages, part time work, discrimination, that’s why burnout and depression are not uncommon for those who try to manage everything and respond to high expectations. There is still much to be done in terms of equal rights and duties.

Do you think that people associate typography with technical work and therefore purely male? Maybe, but my experience is that just a few people out of the experts know what type is today. I personally was at first very passionate about the technique (production of characters, screen readability, opentype...) but at a certain point it’s this aspect that bored me and made me move away from type design. The technical aspect takes a large slice of the creation of a character.

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work? I don’t think so.There are many male calligraphers. It seems to me that it is associated more than anything with something from the past, or to some exotic thing (eastern culture for example).

Women’s voices are heard now, they have come to create important networks (Alphabettesfor example) and there is more awareness.

Have you noticed a change in the gender gap in type design since 2018?

this is a GENDERLESS TYPEFACE

DOLCE AMARO

Alessia Mazzarella

Do you know many women designers? Yes. When I started to study type design our class was 50/50, if I think about the people with whom I interact regularly I don’t notice a male prevalence, probably because I come from a younger generation. I notice a male prevalence in font engineering, so in the technical part that was my role when I was at Fontsmith, The Northern Block and that it still is my skill.

.When and how did you become interested in typography?

I studied graphics in Italy, in Rome, in a course very much based on architecture, a bit weird. At the end of the three years I didn’t have a portfolio because the course was so theoretical, so I moved to London where I studied at St. Martins. There it was pretty much the opposite and if you wanted to avoid the research part in the projects you could find shortcuts. The two courses gave me the preparation I was looking for, even though I had to do two. I noticed from my second year in London that I was very interested in type, although the course was very wide and included branding, photography, illustration, etc. In the third year I realized that I was really interested in letters in detail and then type design. At

the time there was no type design course, so I had to do my own project, supported by my tutors. From there I chose the master in type design and I did it in Reading, which had both the part of drawing characters, not only Latin, both a thesis. I hate writing, I think I’m terrible at expressing myself and my first version of the thesis was only three pages, so as a stimulus it was interesting. We did a workshop with Miguel Souza of Adobe and it was on all the technical part of the type and I realized that I particularly liked that kind of work, it was as if they were problems that I could solve easily, which I couldn’t do with graphic design.

How did Typeland happen?

Typeland was born while I was in college. I still remember perfectly where I was sitting when I bought the domain. At first it was just my portfolio, then it evolved and it was something I always planned to do but not having a job with a salary was difficult. After The Amazing Slab I was hired by Fontsmith and when it was sold to Monotype I took the opportunity to fully create Typeland. It was January 2020, so then the covid came along and my partner and I said, “Okay, let’s rethink our life and decide what to do about our future”. The idea was to

have fun at least with the part of characters finalized for the library, when there is a customer of course there are precise requirements, but at least for the part of the library we wanted to add something new to the sea of characters that already exists, Do what we like, original works. It was a risky choice anyway.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used?

IBM Plex Mono, Amifer, Zubtrak.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Yes.

Is there a figure you’re particularly inspired by in type design?

I have no particular figures I refer to, I think it’s innate in me.

Do you think the type industry is dominated by men?

In type design at the moment there is a good mix, especially among young people, even if in font engineering it is not like so. I have a foundry with a partner, a man, and I’m in charge of the technical side, and I often find that customers take it for granted that he’s in charge when it’s just me. It’s never explicit, but it’s the little things like in the emails where my name is written after my partner’s, even though my name comes first alphabetically. I’ve never encountered open sexism, always interned.

Do you think that people associate calligraphy with decorative and therefore purely feminine work?

I don’t understand anything when I write, I take notes and then I don’t understand what I wrote. I’m left-handed so calligraphic pens don’t work with me and I don’t know how to draw with a pen, so I personally am somewhere else. I know great men that work with calligraphy, and I think it’s one of those things like embroidery that people stereotype with women. I resent the very term “feminine” or “masculine” and attribute it to a character (dark, with clean cuts: masculine; with delicate and decorative traits: feminine) even more, it drives me crazy, for me it does not exist. Who said that? For me, characters have no gender, I have no way of recognizing whether a character has been drawn by a man or a woman. I say these things to my students too, I try to make them think about it.

WHO SAID THAT?

UNCOVER, AWDA 3–4 by Cinzia Ferrara, Laura Moretti, Carla Palladino

UNCOVER is a multifaceted project featuring the student, professional and research proposals selected for the third and fourth editions of the AIAP Women in Design Award. It is also a collection of analytical considerations that look through the lens of design at the issues of women’s rights, women’s work and, more generally, inequality in every sphere. The essays and visual projects are accompanied by interviews with people working in a wide range of different fields – economics, communication, journalism, politics, education, art, voluntary work and institutions.

The book is atypical in that it seeks to ‘uncover’ not only visual communication projects from all over the world, but also stories of activism and commitment, capable of triggering the cultural change that is necessary, now and in the future.

Essays by Fiorella Bulegato, Francesco E. Guida, David Grossman, Laura Ottina, Monica Pastore, Jonathan Pierini, Elizabeth Resnick

Interviews with Marcella Corsi, Cherry-Ann Davis, Yolanda Dominguez, Maria Luisa Frisa, Vera Gheno, Antonella Giachetti, Emanuela Grigliè, Andrea Grobocopatel, Martina Rogato, Guido Romeo, Giusy Sica, Francesca Vecchioni, Lorella Zanardo

Contributions from Gianluca Camillini, Costanza de Luca, Angelica D’Errico, Cinzia Ferrara, Melania Gazzotti, Nilam P Moeliono, Laura Moretti, Carla Palladino, Gianluca Patti, Daniela Piscitelli, Greta Rolando, Tommaso Sacchi, Maria Sætre, Bianca Sangalli Moretti, Marco Tortoioli Ricci, Greta Valotto

Illustrations by Catarina Alves, Lucia Biancalana, Irene Carbone, Valentina Alga Casali, Francesco Fidani, Giada Franceschelli, Irene Frigo, Marco Goran Romano, Nadia Mazzenga, Paola Momentè, Gianluca Patti, Claudia Plescia, Bianca Sangalli Moretti, Luca Tellurio, Nvard Yerkanian

Women In Type, by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication

Women in Type is a three-year research project undertaken at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading between March 2018–November 2021. The project benefited from the support of the Leverhulme Trust as part of its Research Project Grants. The project is led by Prof. Fiona Ross with principal researcher Dr. Alice Savoie and post-doctoral assistant Dr. Helena Lekka.

This website was conceived by Alice Savoie (content and project management) and Mathieu Triay (design and code) as an accessible and interactive tool to share the project’s findings with the wider public.

This website is set with the typefaces Gig by Franziska Weitgruber (headlines) and Grotesque 6 by Émilie Rigaud (texts).

The images presented on the website are taken from the following collections:

The Non-Latin Type Collection, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading

The archives of the Monotype company, Salfords, Surrey St Bride Library, London

The Type Archive, London Musée de l’Imprimerie & de la Communication Graphique, Lyon

Personal collections: Antonio Cavedoni, Richard Cooper, Fiona Ross, Ferdinand Ulrich

Kerning The Gap, by Nat Maher

Kerning the Gap is a community that Nat Maher started in 2015, aimed at getting more women into leadership roles within the design industry. For several years she had been noticing less and less women at the tables she sat at and asking herself the question “where have all the women gone…?”.

After reaching her first MD role, she finally having the confidence to say she was a bone fide ‘woman in leadership’ and felt both a need and a responsibilityto do something to unite the agencies in our sector, to come together to start challenging the issues that are leading to such a lack of diversity at the top of our field.

And so the mission, and core pillars of Kerning the Gap were built; their aim to see more diversity in leadership roles and by doing so, improve the opportunities for people at every level, and 1) make it accessible to all levels, 2) invite every discipline to the conversation and 3) to acknowledge men as a part of the solution, not the problem.

This book aims to shine light on work of women in type.

The first part of the book offers research on the gender issue in type design field. It includes statistics, data and an overview of some works that address this issue. Further it contains some biographies of female type designers that worked in the 19th and in the beginning of 20th century. These women contributed to the industry, yet they are rarely mentioned in educational material.

The second part is a series of the interviews with 14 women that are either currently working as type designers or are in any other way involved in the field of type design. These interviews intend to uncover the topic of unequal share of female and male speakers at type conference as well as the lack of women in the industry. The last part of the book is a showcase of typefaces designed by women. The purpose of this part is to show the great amount and broad variety of such typefaces.

Interviews with Designers: Gayaneh Bagdasaryan, Veronika Burian, Maria Doreuli, Louise Fili, Martina Flor, Loraine Furter, Jenna Gesse, Golnar Kat Rahmani, Indra Kupferschmid, Briar Levit, Zuzana Licko, Ana Regidor, Fiona Ross and Carol Wahler.

Good Girl typeface by Marion Bisserier

During her media and graphic design degree, recent grad Marion Bisserier read an interview with the type designer Susanne Dechant, titled ‘Type Persons Who Happen to Be Female’ in the book Women In Graphic Design (1890-2012). In the interview, Dechant points out that while there is currently an equal number of men and women studying type design at design schools, the representation of women in foundries and typographic conferences remains far lower than that of their male peers.

“I was interested in that visibility gap and how visibility plays a crucial role in encouraging more of us to pursue a career in the field,” says Bisserier. “As a response, I decided to address the issue of visibility by designing a typeface which purposely occupies as much positive space as possible and can hardly remain unnoticed.”

MANSPREADING

“Manspreading” or “man-sitting” is a pejorative neologism referring to the practice of men sitting in public transport with legs wide apart, thereby covering more than one seat.

two spreaders and a scruncher

Good Girl is a typeface that’s not afraid to take up space

In terms of design and form, typefaces that are playful in their use of space became key sources of inspiration for Bisserier, such as Calcula by Shiva Nallaperumal, Fit by David Jonathan Ross, or even Standard by Benoît Bodhuin. Conceptually, Good Girl sits in dialogue with Summer Studio’s Queer Type and the WR+RU’s Pussy Galore.

“When I was designing it, my tutor Paul McNeil said to me that type functions a bit like stereotypes, once you see the letter ’n,’ you expect other letters like ‘h,’ ‘m,’ or ‘r’ to behave similarly in their form. I really liked this idea, so combined it with my aim of deconstructing stereotypes about women in type and what a ‘feminine’ typeface should look like.

So while most letter shapes fit in with what you might expect of their forms, every so often, a detail surprises you, such as the counter of the capital ‘G’, which inserts itself into the letter’s body like a pushy elbow.”

From “Typography’s Retort to Manspreading”, by Madeleine Morley, published on AIGA, Eye On Design

FEMME TYPE, A Book Celebrating Women in the Type Industry by Amber Weaver and Femme Type

Born out of the lack of representation observed within the design industry, the Femme Type book intensely celebrates and highlights the work produced by over 40 talented women in the type space. Diluting the pool within a seemingly male-dominated niche, until now.

Hard Facts:

Includes contributions from over 40 international women

Foreword by GoodType Founder Brooke Robinson

272 pages + 8pp Cover / 25cm x 21cm / PUR bound

Litho printed CYMK plus a special Pantone Spot colour

Printed in English onto high-quality Fedrigoni Arcoprint paper

Published by People of Print (in Perpetuum).

Ladies, Wine & Design, by Jessica Walsh

Ladies, Wine & Design is a global non-profit initiative with chapters in over 285 cities worldwide. LW&D was founded in 2015 by Jessica Walsh after this happened. Only .1% of creative agencies are founded by women & non-binary people, and the numbers are even smaller for women/non-binary BIPOC: of course their space is inclusive of all women, non-binary, agender and gender non-conforming people. Their mission is to see more diversity in the creative industry, especially within leadership roles. LW&D takes an intersectional approach to this work. They also offer free mentorship circles, portfolio reviews, talks & creative meetups for underrepresented creatives.

Jessica Walsh started Ladies, Wine & Design in New York after doing a lot of thinking and reading on why there are so few women creative directors. She believes we can change that through mentorship and championing others’ work. We couldn’t agree more, and we also think it would be fun to meet other lady creatives, so we reached out to her and Ladies, Wine & Design Rome was born.

After discovering Ange Degheest’s archives at the Rennes School of Fine Arts, we decided to put together an exhibition that attempted to finally give the designer the full recognition she deserves. In this exhibition, visitors learnt about Degheest’s life story and professional achievements, and discovered many original archival documents that had never previously been presented to the public. In addition to this historical research, we revived some of Ange Degheest’s most remarkable typefaces and lettering work, which are now available in digital format under an Open Source license on Velvetyne Type Foundry’s website. To revive means: to resurrect, to reactivate, to renew; and in many ways our work consisted in a kind of resurrection. We had indeed to reactivate the memory of Ange Degheest by diving in her archives, by exhuming the story of a woman who lived through many ages and locations. Only once we had acquired a good grasp of her life story, were we able to revive her typefaces. Reviving her designs and distributing them widely, free of charge, is our way to honour Ange Degheest’s memory and to give them a new life in the 21st century.

La Donna A Caso

Instagram page exposing italian news media that don’t write women’s full names.

How lettering became gendered and why it is wrong

Article by Kris Sowersby on It’s Nice That, about sexism in typefaces with an analysis of gendered typography.

Women Make Up Over Half the Design Industry—So Why Are

There So Few at the Top?

Article by Laura Bolt on AIGA, Eye On Design, about gender gap in the design industry.

Women designers in history

Article by Pear Weerawong on Webflow, displaying women that made lasting contributions in design.

We Surveyed Gender Equality at the World’s

Biggest Design Conferences—and the Numbers Are In

Article by Eye On Design + notamuse on AIGA, Eye On Design, displaying data on the gender gap at design confereneces.

Follow Their Lead: Why you should work with women-led creative agencies

Article by Abigail Glasgow on It’s Nice That, about gender representation and why we should support women.

Futuress.org

Hybrid between a learning community and a publishing platform. Mission: to radically democratize design education and amplify marginalized voices through various free public programs.

The Eye on Design Guide

To Women-designed Contemporary Type

Article by Angela Riechers on AIGA, Eye On Design, displaying contemporary types made by women.

Badass Libre Fonts by Womxn

Website by Loraine Furter, displays many typefaces made by women.

Women designers in history

Article by Pear Weerawong on Webflow, displaying 15 women that made lasting contributions in design.

9 Typefaces Designed by Women

Article on Ideo.org, displaying typefaces made by women and resources on intersectional feminism in design.

Why Are Women Still Behind in the Design World?

Article by Olivia Brown on Modus displaying data on payment and leadership roles.

Women in type

Talk made by Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie at ATypI, introducing the Women In Type project by the University of Reading.

Book by Farah Kafei, Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Tobias, Valentina Vergara, Leslie Xia, Kaleena Sales, Josh A. Halstead.

Women in type: acknowledging invisible hands

Online Talk by Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie at TypeTech Meetup deepening the history of women in typography.

T H I S I S

ATYPEREVOLUTIONNOT A SIMULATIONIREPEATNOTASIMULAT

I ON ,

OECD, Bridging the digital gender divide, 2018, https://www.oecd.org/digital/bridging-the-digital-gender-divide.pdf

EIGE, Gender Equality Index, 24 October 2022, https://eige.europa.eu/news/gender-equality-index-2022-gender-equality-under-threat-specific-groups-hardest-hit

UNESCO, Gender equality, https://www.unesco.org/en/gender-equality

World Economic Forum, Global gender gap report, July 2022, https://www3.weforum.org/ docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf

Savannah Scott and Beatrice Caciotti, It’s time to tackle gender tropes in typography, 17 January 2022, https://www.thefuturelaboratory.com/blog/its-time-to-tackle-gender-tropes-in-typography

Laura Bolt, Women make up over half the design industry - so why are there so few at the top?, 31 March 2020, https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/women-make-up-more-than-half-of-thedesign-industry-but-how-do-they-get-to-the-top/

Adelista Widjaya, Little Galore: the story of Pussy Galore in the typeface world, Issuu, 8 June 2020, https://issuu.com/adelistawidjayaa/docs/pussy_20galore

Morley Madeleine, The women redressing the gender imbalance in typography, Eye on Design, AIGA, 28 September 2016, https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-women-readdressing-the-gender-imbalance-in-typography/

Briony Harris, What is the gender gap (and why is it getting wider)?, World Economic Report, 1 November 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/the-gender-gap-actuallygot-worse-in-2017/

Verena Gerlach, Where Are the Women in Type Design?, Typographica, 22 February 2011, https://typographica.org/on-typography/where-are-the-women-in-typedesign/

Andy Mallalieu, Femme Type: A new book that celebrates women in the type industry, Creative Boom, 20 August 2019, https://www.creativeboom.com/features/femme-type-a-newbook-that-celebrates-women-in-the-type-industry/

Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading, Fiona Ross, Alice Savoie, Helena Lekka, Women In Type, March 2018, https://www.women-in-type.com/

Elena Veguillas, Women in type bibliography, Alphabettes, 1 April 2020, https://www.alphabettes.org/women-in-type-bibliography/

Jeremy Norman, Emily Faithfull Founds the Victoria Press for the Employment of Women, HistoryofInformation.com, https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4429

The Victoria Press Circle, About, 2018, https://www.victoriapresscircle.org/about

Julia Faiers, La Fronde: France’s first newspaper run entirely by women, The Connexion7 Fe-

bruary 2021, https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/People/Profiles/La-FrondeFrance-s-first-feminist-newspaper-run-entirely-by-women

Alice Savoie, Patricia Saunders 1933-2019, University of Reading, 29 June 2019, https:// research.reading.ac.uk/women-in-type/patricia-saunders-1933-2019/

Giorgio Coraglia, Donne in tastiera: quando il piombo si tinge di rosa, MetaPrintArt, 2 February 2012, https://www.metaprintart.info/cultura-grafica/5244-donne-in-tastiera-quando-il-piombo-si-tinge-di-rosa/

Amber Weaver, Introducing ALT.tf: A New Type Foundry Founded by Femme Type, Type01, 10 February 2022, https://type-01.com/introducing-alt-tf-a-new-type-foundry-foundedby-femme-type/

Billie Muraben, Elizabeth Friedlander: one of the first women to design a typeface, It’s Nice That, 8 March 2018, https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/elizabethfriedlander-graphicdesign-internationalwomensday-080318

Lauren Elle DeGaine, Women’s Type Project, Womenstype, September 2020, https://womenstype.wordpress.com/

Eye on Design, Aiga, notamuse, We Surveyed Gender Equality at the World’s Biggest Design Conferences—and the Numbers Are In, Eye on Design, AIGA, 3 January 2019, https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/gender-equality-at-design-conferences-by-the-numbers/

Fiona Ross, Alice Savoie, Women In Type: acknowledging invisible hands, Type Tech, January 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyUPWJ22t4c

Fiona Ross, Alice Savoie, Women In Type, Atypi, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2WAguIIAI

Simona Inserra, Maria Pia Cacace, Roberta Cesana, Valentina Sestini, Valentina Sonzini, Donne tipografe e donne editore, donne per la storia del libro, AIB, 8 March 2021, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vmMr7GlUkE

Kris Sowersby, How lettering became gendered and why it is wrong, It’s Nice That, 26 October, 2021, https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/kris-sowersby-how-lettering-became-gendered-and-why-it-is-wrong-opinion-261021

Cinzia Ferrara, Laura Moretti, Carla Palladino, AWDA 3-4. Aiap women in design award. Uncover, AIAP, Milano, 2022

Yulia Popova, How many female type designers do you know?, Onomatopee 184, 2020

Deirdre Beddow, Discovering Women’s History: A Practical Guide to Researching the Lives of Women Since 1800, Routledge, 1998

Dreyfus, J., Beatrice Warde, the first lady of typography, The Penrose Annual, n.63, pp.69–76, 1970

Cheryl Buckley, Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design, Design Issues, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 3-14, The MIT Press, 1986, https://www.jstor. org/stable/1511480

Farah Kafei, Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Tobias, Valentina Vergara, Leslie Xia, Kaleena Sales, Josh A. Halstead, Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers, Princeton Architectural Press, 11 May 2021

Olivia Brown, Why Are Women Still Behind in the Design World?, Modus, 28 January 2020, https://modus.medium.com/why-are-women-still-behind-in-the-design-world-5eb3b56c43f5

Pentagram, Paula Scher, https://www.pentagram.com/about/paula-scher

The Type Heritage Project, Nicolette Gray, https://history.typeheritage.com/historians/ nicolette-gray/

Lauren Elle DeGaine, The Gudrun Zapf von Hesse Website, 18 December 2019, https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/gzvh/

Special thanks to Laura Ottina for reviewing my research, to Nunzio Mazzaferro for the great suggestions and to all the designers that let me interview them.

In a patriarchal world the type design industry isn’t spared, just like any other industry. We have the power to make a difference, to bring information to the surface. Let’s do that.

In this book you will find research, data, history, biographies, visuals, typefaces, stories, projects, exclusive interviews and so much more content that deserves to be spread.

Interviews with: Alessia Mazzarella, Sofia Bandini, Valentina Alga Casali, Marta Bernstein, Silvia Porcu, Elena Albertoni, Giulia Boggio, Beatrice Caciotti and Sara Lavazza.

Gaia Argentino