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.

What are the last 3 typefaces that you used? 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)

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.

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