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.