Emigre
Encyclopedia
Emigre, also known as Emigre Graphics, is a digital type foundry
, publisher and distributor of graphic design
centered information based in Berkeley, California
, that was founded in 1984 by husband-and-wife team Rudy VanderLans
and Zuzana Licko
. The type foundry also published Emigre magazine
between 1984 and 2005. Note that unlike the word émigré
, Emigre is officially spelled without accents.
, developing typeface
s without an association to a typesetting equipment manufacturer. Coinciding with the advent of the Macintosh
computer, Emigre took advantage of the new medium to design digital typefaces, as such they did not require the manufacturing infrastructure of a traditional type foundry. Licko began designing fonts that, rather than trying to imitate letterpress technology, capitalized on the idiosyncrasies of bitmap
design and dot matrix printing, and later, vector-based design
. The company is credited with being the first type foundry to design original fonts made on and for a computer.
Through a good part of the late 1980s and most of the 1990s, some of the most cutting-edge typefaces were developed or released by Emigre. Its magazine, in the meantime, provided an outlet showcasing the potential of its typeface designs, and was well known for its graphical experimentation, criticism and essays on contemporary design.
Emigre was often criticized for rejecting standard design rules. Designer
Massimo Vignelli
was highly critical against Emigre and viewed their designs as a direct threat to Modernist ideals. Vignelli called Emigre a "typographic garbage factory," and to him, their work represented "the degradation of culture."
Despite denunciation from traditionalists in the realm of design, Emigre became influential in the field. "People read best what they read most," was a manifesto that VanderLans and Licko held to when facing critics. Citing that what is deemed readable is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font.
Eventually, Vignelli, even after strongly criticizing the work of Emigre, directly promoted Licko's font Filosofia, to which Licko responded, "Massimo's willingness to collaborate on our announcement reflects Emigre's ability to bridge different approaches."
. *http://www.emigre.com/EB.php
, Rodrigo Cavazos, Barry Deck
, Eric Donelan, John Downer, Elliott Peter Earls, Edward Fella, Sibylle Hagmann, Frank Heine, John Hersey, Jeffery Keedy
, Zuzana Licko
, P. Scott Makela
, Conor Mangat, Nancy Mazzei, Brian Kelly
, Miles Newlyn, Claudio Piccinini, Just van Rossum
, Christian Schwartz
and Rudy VanderLans
. See also Emigre typefaces library and the fonts section of Emigre's website.
Type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...
, publisher and distributor of graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
centered information based in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, that was founded in 1984 by husband-and-wife team Rudy VanderLans
Rudy VanderLans
Rudy VanderLans is a Dutch type and graphic designer and the co-founder of Emigre, an independent type foundry.VanderLans studied at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Later, he moved to California and studied photography at the University of California, Berkeley...
and Zuzana Licko
Zuzana Licko
Zuzana Licko is a typeface designer based out of the San Francisco Bay Area who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.Licko came to the United States when she was a child along with her family...
. The type foundry also published Emigre magazine
Emigre magazine
Emigre was a graphic design magazine published by Emigre Graphics between 1984 and 2005; it was first published in 1984 in San Francisco, California, USA...
between 1984 and 2005. Note that unlike the word émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
, Emigre is officially spelled without accents.
History
Emigre was founded in 1984 as an independent foundryFoundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...
, developing typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
s without an association to a typesetting equipment manufacturer. Coinciding with the advent of the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer, Emigre took advantage of the new medium to design digital typefaces, as such they did not require the manufacturing infrastructure of a traditional type foundry. Licko began designing fonts that, rather than trying to imitate letterpress technology, capitalized on the idiosyncrasies of bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
design and dot matrix printing, and later, vector-based design
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
. The company is credited with being the first type foundry to design original fonts made on and for a computer.
Through a good part of the late 1980s and most of the 1990s, some of the most cutting-edge typefaces were developed or released by Emigre. Its magazine, in the meantime, provided an outlet showcasing the potential of its typeface designs, and was well known for its graphical experimentation, criticism and essays on contemporary design.
Emigre was often criticized for rejecting standard design rules. Designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli is a designer who has done work in a number of areas ranging from package design to furniture design to public signage to showroom design through Vignelli Associates, which he co-founded with his wife, Lella...
was highly critical against Emigre and viewed their designs as a direct threat to Modernist ideals. Vignelli called Emigre a "typographic garbage factory," and to him, their work represented "the degradation of culture."
Despite denunciation from traditionalists in the realm of design, Emigre became influential in the field. "People read best what they read most," was a manifesto that VanderLans and Licko held to when facing critics. Citing that what is deemed readable is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font.
Eventually, Vignelli, even after strongly criticizing the work of Emigre, directly promoted Licko's font Filosofia, to which Licko responded, "Massimo's willingness to collaborate on our announcement reflects Emigre's ability to bridge different approaches."
Books
Emigre has published a number of books related to graphic designGraphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
. *http://www.emigre.com/EB.php
- Departures: Five Milestone Font Families by Emigre - "This book celebrates the acquisition of five Emigre typeface families by The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2011."
- Supermarket - "Photographic record of six years of road trips to and through the Mojave desert."
- Pages From an Imaginary Book - "A book of desert landscapes utilizing low budget reproduction techniques."
- Bagdad, Californie - "A book of photographs about the now vanished town of Bagdad, California."
- Emigre (Exhibition Catalog) - "Catalog to commemorate an exhibition about the work of Emigre at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands."
- Emigre Fonts Type Specimens Volume I - "Limited edition, case bound book containing 12 original Emigre Fonts type specimens."
- Emigre No.70: The Look Back Issue - "A 512-page selection of reprints that traces Emigre's development from its early bitmap design days in the mid 1980s through to the experimental layouts that defined the so-called."
- Palm Desert - "Part 1 of a trilogy of photo books about Southern California inspired by the music of Van Dyke Parks. Includes music CD."
- Cucamonga - "Part 2 of a trilogy of photo books about Southern California inspired by the music of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. Includes music CD."
- Joshua Tree- "Part 3 of a trilogy of photo books about Southern California inspired by the music of Gram Parsons. Includes music CD."
- Hard Sleeper (Dreaming Out Loudest) - "Thirteen track CD plus 72 page book presented in custom made box."
Typefaces
Emigre not only designed type but also licensed over 300 original typefaces by many different designers,. The company's type library features fonts by Mark Andresen, Bob Aufuldish, Jonathan BarnbrookJonathan Barnbrook
Jonathan Barnbrook , is a British graphic designer and typographer. He trained at Central St Martin's and at the Royal College of Art .- Work :...
, Rodrigo Cavazos, Barry Deck
Barry Deck
Barry Deck is an American graphic designer, typographer and art director. He is best known for the typeface Template Gothic....
, Eric Donelan, John Downer, Elliott Peter Earls, Edward Fella, Sibylle Hagmann, Frank Heine, John Hersey, Jeffery Keedy
Jeffery Keedy
Jeffery Keedy is an American graphic designer, type designer, writer and educator.Keedy has been teaching design at the California Institute of the Arts since 1985. Keedy was also a frequent contributor to Emigre magazine throughout the twenty years of its publication...
, Zuzana Licko
Zuzana Licko
Zuzana Licko is a typeface designer based out of the San Francisco Bay Area who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.Licko came to the United States when she was a child along with her family...
, P. Scott Makela
P. Scott Makela
P. Scott Makela was a graphic designer, multimedia designer and type designer.Among other work, he was especially noted for the design of Dead History, a postmodern typeface that combined features of a rounded sans serif typeface and a crisp neo-classical serif typeface...
, Conor Mangat, Nancy Mazzei, Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly may refer to:*Brian Kelly , television actor best known for his role in the US TV series Flipper*Brian Kelly , Australian rules footballer and coach...
, Miles Newlyn, Claudio Piccinini, Just van Rossum
Just van Rossum
Just van Rossum is a Dutch typeface designer and computer programmer.-Typeface design:Just van Rossum’s typefaces combination of programming and letterform design has resulted in several developments in typeface design. His typeface FF Beowolf used a random feature of the PostScript language to...
, Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot.-Life :...
and Rudy VanderLans
Rudy VanderLans
Rudy VanderLans is a Dutch type and graphic designer and the co-founder of Emigre, an independent type foundry.VanderLans studied at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Later, he moved to California and studied photography at the University of California, Berkeley...
. See also Emigre typefaces library and the fonts section of Emigre's website.
- Cholla SlabCholla SlabCholla Slab is a geometric slab-serif variant of a larger typeface family called Cholla designed by Sibylle Hagmann in the period 1998–1999 for the Art Center College of Design. Cholla is licensed by the Emigre foundry...
- Dalliance
- Dead HistoryDead HistoryDead History is a typeface which explores combining structural elements of both geometric sans-serif and Didone serif typefaces. Designed in 1990 by P. Scott Makela, the face is licensed by Emigre....
- Democratica
- ExocetExocet (typeface)Exocet is a typeface designed by Jonathan Barnbrook for the Emigre foundry in 1991. It was originally designed for the European annual Illustration Now. It was used extensively for product designs in the 1990s, most notably for Tazo Tea. It can be seen in the 1993 movie Demolition Man where it is...
- Filosofia (based on Bodoni)
- Journal
- Matrix
- Modula
- Mrs EavesMrs EavesMrs Eaves is a transitional serif typeface designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996, and licensed by Emigre, a typefoundry run by Licko and husband Rudy VanderLans...
(based on Baskerville) - Priori
- Template Gothic
- Vista Sans
Awards
- Rudy VanderLans, and Zuzano Licko have been inducted as Honorary Members of the Society of Typographic Arts in Chicago
- I.D. Magazine Forty
- the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design
- the AIGAAiga‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...
Gold Medal Award - the Charles Nypels Award for Excellence in Typography
Museum Exhibits
- Walker Art CenterWalker Art CenterThe Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis - featured Emigre's book "Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue" and the font Base 900 in the Center's exhibit "Graphic Design: Now in Production." - Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
- featured Emigre Magazine issues # 10 and #11 in the "Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990" exhibit - Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh - featured all 13 typographic labels designed for the Historia type specimen in the exhibit "Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern"
- Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
- features 23 digital typefaces for their permanent collection, including five Emigre font families: Jeffery Keedy's Keedy Sans, Jonathan Barnbrook's Mason Serif, Barry Deck's Template Gothic, Zuzana Licko's Oakland (renamed Lo-Res in 2001), and P. Scott Makela's Dead History. They were displayed in their "Standard Deviations" exhibit - Museum für Gestaltung - Museum of Design, Zurich, ZurichZürichZurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
- holds Emigre Magazine issues in their permanent collection - Gallery 16, San Francisco - displayed Emigre's design work in 2010
- Berardo Collection MuseumBerardo Collection MuseumThe Berardo Collection Museum is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Belém, a district of Lisbon, Portugal.-History:...
, LisbonLisbonLisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
- Emigre Magazine issue's # 10 - # 24 were featured in their 2009 exhibit "Quick, Quick, Slow" - The Photography Show 2007, New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
- exhibited a photo portfolio of Rudy VanderLansRudy VanderLansRudy VanderLans is a Dutch type and graphic designer and the co-founder of Emigre, an independent type foundry.VanderLans studied at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Later, he moved to California and studied photography at the University of California, Berkeley...
' work in 2007 - Visionaire Gallery, New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
- featured 5 issues of Emigre Magazine in their "Megazines" exhibit in 2006 - Centre Pompidou, ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
- featured Emigre's work as part of their "D-Day" exhibit in 2005
External links
- Emigre official site
- Interview with founder Rudy Vanderlans Plazm Magazine