Cover of the presentation "Basque Lettering Style: Letters for self-assertion". 2020-11-17
Watch the video here (https://vimeo.com/511290721)
TRANSCRIPTION:
I'm pleased to now introduce our speaker today, Juan Luis Blanco. Juan Luis Blanco is joining us live from the Basque Country. It may be lunchtime in California, but in Euskadi, it's time for dinner pintxos washed down with a Rioja alavesa.
Juan Luis Blanco is a graphic designer, a type designer, and a calligrapher based in Zumaia in the Iberian Peninsula, otherwise sometimes called Spain. I don't want to step on any Basque toes here. In 2013, Juan Luis studied at the University of Reading and earned his MA in typeface design, and it was there that he developed Amaikha, a multi-script font family ...
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There is something about the visual landscape of the Basque Country that will not go unnoticed to the eyes of its visitors regardless of their knowledge of typography: the peculiar lettering style spread all over the region on street plates, signs, posters and fascias. They display extremely heavy letters in a sort of overemphasised glyphic style with characteristic concave stems that produce very sharp terminals and awkward letter forms. Those shapes look certainly rough, unrefined and overdone, conveying a sort of primitiveness rooted way back in time. This seems to make it a convenient choice for food shops, restaurants, cider houses and other cases in which projecting the idea of authenticity, tradition and "Basqueness" is intended.
Harri, as ...
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(Basque version) (Spanish version)
As a follow up of the interview held in September 2018, I have been invited to collaborate weekly in the public Basque radio to talk about typography in the afternoon show “Baipasa”. It is both an honour and a challenge to have the opportunity to talk about my passion and to spread the interest and knowlegde about type in my community.
Every Thursday around 5:15 – 5:30 PM we will discuss differents aspects of typography. We started on March 12th with a talk about Times New Roman. Three more programs have been broadcasted since then in which we discovered uses, details and anecdotes around well known typefaces: Comic Sans, Helvetica and Trajan. If you are interested and ...
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Sarean #37. Calligraphy, Typography and New Technologies were the three main subjects addressed in the interview.
Few days ago I was interviewed in Sarean, a radio programme of the Basque Radio in collaboration with Sarean.eus association. We talked mainly about Calligraphy and Typography. We also discussed how new technologies make the production of comercial fonts easier, cheaper and faster. We went through the whole type design process, from the first sketches to the tools used for the final production of digital typefaces.
Glad to see Typography is gaining presence in my near environment. If you are curious and want to know how "type talk" sounds in Basque, clic on the image or follow ...
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Talking about Tifinagh and multi-script typefaces as a way to normalise cultural diversity in multi lingual environments. Image: E. Herrera.
From 27 to 29 June 2018 the Second Conference in Graphic Design, organised by the Graphic Design Department of the University of the Basque Country took place in Bilbao. The theme of this edition was "Design and sustainable society" and I was given the opportunity to talk about Tifinagh.
Various aspects concerning the link between Graphic Design and sustainability were discussed: gender, accessibility, environment, identity, activism... It was the ideal context to talk about how Type Design may help normalising the presence of minority languages and scripts in multicultural areas, in this particular case giving voice to the Tifinagh script in a context in ...
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Before we start drawing in the computer it is worth experimenting with different analog tools to see how they affect letter forms.
2018 started with a stimulating commission: I was invited to give a workshop on Tifinagh type design at the École Supérieure des Arts Visuels (ÉSAV) in Marrakech.
15 students of the Master's of Graphic Design took part in an intense one-week workshop. The goal was to make them familiar with the general principles of type design and to illustrate how those apply to the design of the specific letter forms of Tifinagh. We also looked into the history of the alphabet, tried different tools to experiment how they affect the shapes of its letters, got acquainted with specific ...
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