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The disruptors of dogmas:
Jean-Baptiste Levée on the liberating role of Emigre
During the 20th century, the profession of type designer demanded a vast skill set that included calligraphy, stone-cutting and drawing. The invention and popularization of personal computers in the 1990s made it much easier to produce typefaces, yet the professional community was still holding firm to established dogmas.
The role of disruptor was played by the American duo Emigre, who paired up their talent with digital technology to run one of the first independent digital font foundries that successfully competed with big industry players. Type designer Jean-Baptiste Levée talks about his love-hate attitude to the duo’s work and their freeing and reformative role.
(since 1980s)
California-based design duo Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. The couple is renowned for their pioneering use of digital fonts and for Emigre magazine, one of the most influential graphic design publications of the 1980s and ’90s. In 2016 Emigre was awarded a TDC Medal.
Navigating between love and hate
I'm a French type designer who was trained in French public schools in the early 2000s. My graphic design teachers were all Frenchmen who were themselves young, active design professionals during the 1990s. This was the zenith of the Emigre era: back then, they were hugely influential beyond the Anglo-Saxon world. My teachers put me in touch with the Emigre body of work, emphasizing how fresh and rule-breaking it was and continues to be.
When I switched to specialized typeface design studies, teachers leaned towards the opposite point of view with Emigre, calling their digital typefaces and layouts badly drawn, not very crafty and illegible. I had difficulties forming my own opinion, whether it was admiration or to move away from that work. I really navigated back and forth between these two feelings.
