ATypI was founded in 1957 after the encouragement of Charles Peignot, president of the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot. Its first goal was to protect custom typefaces from piracy. However, during the last twenty-two years ATypI has taken steps ahead by trying to discuss, analyze and promote good typography. ATypI’s most important contribution to the typographic world is unquestionably its annual conference, which takes place in world capital cities and centers of typographic importance. By both measures, Rome, as Garrett Boge, the program coordinator admits, “should have been selected as a host city early on. Though esteemed and surely visited by many on typographic and cultural pilgrimages, until recently Rome could claim very few ATypI members and no dedicated base for hosting its annual conference. But this year has augured well for such a confluence.”

More than four hundred delegates from more than thirty-five different countries attended the conference, which was held at the Auditorium della Tecnica Centro Congressi. A quite modern building, which is located just outside the historical center on the south side of Rome, in the EUR area. Giovanni Lussu, an Italian graphic designer and professor at both Politecnico di Milano and Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, introduced the topic of the 2002 conference the shape of language to us, after the welcoming speech of Mark Batty, president of the ATypI. Giovanni’s talk was focused mainly on answering some intellectual typographic questions, like “is typographic the most suitable form of writing for the third millennium?” or, “is typography able to give a visible shape to speech?” Later, on the same day, Jonathan Hoefler, a typeface designer and proprietor of The Hoefler Type Foundry received the Prix Charles Peignot award for his interest and ability in the craft of typeface design.

In the following days many delegates had the opportunity to listen to some exceptional speakers, such as: David Berlow, Matthew Carter, John Hudson, Robin Kinross, Paul Luna, Rosemary Sassoon, Erik Spiekermann, Gerard Unger and to exchange views and ideas on issues of contemporary typography. Certainly, ThinkTank together with Scriptoria were the forerunners, and of course, the special half-day symposium on Multilingual Typography was the cherry on the cake. Victor Gaultney, a typeface designer with SIL International (an educational and development organization) was one of the eight speakers who talk on the symposium. During the coffee break we had the opportunity to talk about his last project, Gentium.

Gentium, designed by Victor Gaultney.

Gentium is an original Latin typeface family, which includes many extended Latin letters and diacritics, but also supports both monotonic and polytonic Greek. Victor informed me that a Cyrillic version is under way and will be added in the near future. “So, are you going to design Hebrew and Arabic as well?” I asked him. “In fact, I am thinking about it…the difficult thing is to know the boundary. Look the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic for example; all of them have the same roots. Both Latin and Cyrillic derived from the Greek somehow. However, when I am designing the Cyrillic version of Gentium, I am trying to design a Cyrillic typeface that works on its own, but it matches well with Gentium Latin too. This is the thing that I wanted to get, and this is the case whenever you look into a new writing system, you have to respect it,” he replied. Victor after all believes that Gentium is a typeface for the nations, “My hope is that Gentium might be embraced by the nations and empower them to become fully-fledged members of the wider publishing community.” [Ed: Gentium is available for free download here.]

On the afternoon of the same day, I met Huda Smitshuijzen Abifares, author of the book Arabic Typography, Zeina El Abed and Nathalie Fallaha graphic designers from Lebanon, and Habib Khoury graphic and typeface designer from Palestine. My curiosity, more than anything else, drove me to start up a conversation on Arabic typography with them. They explained to me that the two main problems in Arabic typography are firstly, the lack of various fonts and secondly, the conservatism of the society which helps calligraphy to remain the main communication medium in the Arabian Peninsula, even though design is becoming stronger and stronger day by day. Moreover, Arab calligraphers, as Nathalie believes, “seem to be really traditional people. Most of them are afraid of loosing their job, although some of them are very experimental and very good.” Unfortunately, as Huda admits, “they do not seem to care about sharing their knowledge, and this is really bad. So, the worst thing is that or you are with them or not.” Huda also points out, “we do not have a proper type foundry, or even some proper typeface designers…in this conference there are all the big companies, but there are quite a few smaller ones, and this is really important, because the smaller foundries are more experimental.”

Next day, Linotype presented Sabon Next designed by Jean François Porchez, a French typeface designer owner of the Porchez Typofonderie, and vice president of the ATypI. Sabon Next is a revival of a revival and part of Linotype’s platinum collection, an exclusive series of optimized classic typefaces of the Linotype Library. Platinum collection, as a concept, is both interesting and beneficial to Linotype for two very good reasons as Jean François explained to me, “firstly, because Linotype is going to keep its roots alive and secondly, it is a very good way to give new energy to an old product.” Although, he admits later on that there has always been a problem on how to get an old typeface to a new system without loosing essential elements of the original drawings, especially when the designer is not at present or even alive.

Sabon next, designed by Jean-François Porchez. From the Linotype specimen.

On this account, Linotype people together with Jean François Porchez were facing some problems when they first started working on Sabon. Jean François informed me that the most crucial problem was when he discovered the two versions of Sabon, the Monotype/Linotype version from 7 to 12 points, and the Stempel version from 14 points to upper sizes. “The Monotype/Linotype version has been the model for both phototypesetting and digital Sabon,” he says, and then he continues by saying “Fortunately, the Stempel version does not have the mistakes of phototypesetting and digital Sabon, since nobody brought it to this day. Hence, the Stempel version is more delicate. It looks like a true Garamond.” Later, Jean François realized that the Stempel version is closer to what Tschichold wanted to do, because, as he found out, Tschichold a few years prior to Sabon, designed another nameless roman typeface, which is quite similar to the Stempel version of Sabon. However, four months ago, Jean François discovered that there is an even closer version to what Tschichold probably had in mind at the time. This version, as Jean François told me “is a careful revival of Garamond, however it is not a Garamond Itself. I found it very recently, and I am very happy about it, because it proved to me that I am moving to the right direction. I am not only trying to bring back the Stempel version, but also to come back to the roots of the Stempel version. So, when I am designing Sabon Next I have always in mind the Stempel version and I am always trying to imagine what were Tschichold’s limitations, or even better, what Tschichold could do if he had no limitations.”

Sabon, according to Jean François Porchez, gives the impression of being a problematic typeface for ‘illiterate’ graphic designers; “Tschichold was a controversial man, so someone might like his first period or the second one. If you are a young graphic designer, you will be fascinated by his first period and then when you start being a little bit more aware, intellectual in your views, you move to the second one. Unfortunately, many graphic designers use Sabon because Tschichold did it, not because they study it. They do not know if it prints well at ten points on glossy paper for example. Therefore, the font seems to have a false reputation. I think that moderate graphic designers are not able of justifying a font properly. Most of them accept things without asking why. They accept them because of reputation and fashion. So, if they start using Gill sans one day is because they have seen it somewhere, perhaps in a magazine…they think that it looks trendy! Generally, graphic designers feel like artists. They do not want rules, and the funny thing apparently is that the only rule in the graphic world is that you should know the rules in order to break them!”

See you in Vancouver, Canada, 24 to 28 September 2003!

Michail Semoglou © 2002