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

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.

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 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.

143 O O NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N O N O N O NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NOO NO NO NO NO NO NO N O N N O N NO N O N O N O N O NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N O NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N O N O N O N O N O N O N O N O NO NO NO N

Typefaces, websites, talks, instagram pages, books

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 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 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.

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.”

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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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/

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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