Ha, didn’t even notice I wrote “typedesigner”, unconscious Germanisation. Alas, one cannot edit the title of the list, but now it found a new and better home anyway.
So, I think “type designer” is the right spelling.

- I would use this http://typophile.com/node/20643, replacing #2 with Female. I'd keep #1 because of the first word in the title of Verena's article. And without #3 it would be way too loose.
- I'd say "type designer", two words. This is English, Indra. :-)
- Margo Chase.

hhp

I know that a number of the lead designers at H&FJ are women.

Hrant, do they need to be alive? I think the point of this list has evolved into simply women who have designed—or are designing—typefaces. But I can see how a little more articulation might be a good thing.

Trevor, I think we've got the women at H&FJ represented. :)

So does the alphabetizing by first name bother everyone?

Yeah, I can relate to Hrant’s remark about #3. Now it got a bit too loose for my taste as well (and that’s why I didn't add myself. None of my own typefaces are commercially available, the rest were only contributions or custom fonts.)

The problem being that some of these women are known to be designing type, but their names are not associated publicly for one reason or another. Where do we draw the line?

So does the alphabetizing by first name bother everyone?

FWIW, I much like lists alphabetized by first name; but I'd probably rather do it in a «friendly» environment where people tend to know each other by first name primarily. This being a professional context I'd prefer last-name sorting too.

Well, if you help their names become public that's a bonus!

> who have designed—or are designing—typefaces

Make up your mind. :-)

Oh, and I would alphabetize by last name.

hhp

We've changed the alphabetizing to keep it professional. But I'm with you Nina, I like alphabetizing by first name.

Hrant, the list should show anyone who has designed/produced type. Ever. And if someone has passed away I think we need to reflect that.

Some old threads with several names:
http://typophile.com/node/807 (!)
http://typophile.com/node/6414
http://typophile.com/node/19397
http://typophile.com/node/29489
http://typophile.com/node/38754
http://typophile.com/node/71309 (who was the first?)

Great! Thanks for digging those up.

If the idea of alphabetizing the list by first names occurred to those involved because it was a list of women, or at least it's possible that people might think so, yes, that should bother people.

It had nothing to do with the fact that they are women. If I had my way I'd do all lists of people by their first name because I usually refer to people by their first name.

But there are so many people named John and William... but Baskerville and Caslon are much less common names. This is a major reason why lists are usually by last name; there is a much greater variety in surnames than in given names, and so the surname lets you proceed more directly to a specific individual.

Also, a given name is sometimes variable. Thus, Ivan Ivanov might also be known as Jean Ivanov in France or John Ivanov in Britain. For a real example, there's Zsuzsa Polgar... also known as Susan Polgar. Chinese people living in English-speaking countries often use an English given name as well as a Chinese one.

While formality and dignity is no doubt part of the reason people are typically alphabetized by surname, there are good practical cataloguing reasons for doing it that way. Would you really want to have the local public library's catalogue order books by author under the author's first name first?

Trevor Baum
30.Mar.2011 2.24pm
I know that a number of the lead designers at H&FJ are women.

Miss Tiffany
30.Mar.2011 2.25pm
But do they need to be alive?

Very unfortunate sequitur in this context.

Actually, my article was the response to Indra’s earlier request for some names for her list.
Since I’m not sure about the point of these unmodrated lists, I decided to not search for actual (sometimes ancient) names, but more for the reason for what obviously is going wrong in our profession/society.
I’m quite afraid, that these lists might be mistaken by some people for »proving« the existence of females in the szene, even, they are sometimes already dead or just to be found on these lists. But not in features, articles, juries, on stage (see Typo London 2011, Raabs...), etc.
Although, it is great to see, that the names on the lists are much more than just the excuse-dingbats-calligraphy-kitty designeresses, people mostly think of, when they say: »but there are women...«

Instead of setting some limit on whom to include and where to make the cut-off, maybe the best approach is to do the most comprehensive list possible, then have a simple key of asterisks or lettercodes indicating for each person:

• whether they are living
• whether they have worked professionally as type designers
  • if yes, when they last did so ("currently" being a potential answer)
• whether they have published typefaces credited to their name
  • if yes, how many
• any other variable that is relevant

Doing this will not only yield the most comprehensive documentation, but will also provide some clear distinctions without relying on judgements as to what level of accomplishment is more worthy of inclusion or not.

Of course it'd be best to do this with a truly dynamic system that could be easily expanded on the fly (e.g. if you wanted to change the key coding system or sort order, automatically generate individual person pages, include font name credits, birth/death years, etc, etc), but this wiki entry is a good start.

Verena, I have to say that your essay is highly unconvincing to me - ironically, as if it were written by a man! I expected more rigor, sensitivity, insight and balance. You do make an interesting point about the "unfinishability" of fonts and how that counters the female psyche (although I don't attribute that entirely to social conditioning). Furthermore, although my direct exposure to German culture is limited, I have had great indirect exposure, and in fact have been regularly impressed with how much respect women get in your country. Here in the US the passing of a *vice*-presidential *candidate* from *thirty* years ago is a big deal because she was a woman! :-/

hhp

Verena, I didn’t request any names for any list. I just forwarded you the initial question by Stephen. The idea of a list came much later after some less fruitful back and forth on twitter. And it isn’t “my” list, actually I’d rather like to stay out of the discussion since I don’t quite concur with most of the points made.

Yes, in a way the list is here to proof that there are women working in the field of typeface design, to whatever extend. The question why they don’t speak on conferences is a completely different one (one we shouldn’t discuss in this thread).

Nick’s suggestion to add some commentary is great in my opinion and better than having several overlapping lists.

erik, thanks for pointing that out. Out of context it is unfortunate.

Indra, sorry for putting your name as being involved. I didn't know it was an issue.

Verena, while I think that it is somewhat rude to downplay the work that the, as you put it, "excuse-dingbats-calligraphy-kitty designeresses" are contributing I don't see what the problem is. This isn't a list of only the cool kids.

So if I'm following you why didn't you title your article, "Where are all the Women in Type Design who only design the highest quality fonts?"

Some type designers might need the help of others to do the technical side, some might start out that way and graduate into doing most/all of it on there own, some start out right in Fontlab, some can find there way around the FDK, and on and on. So yes, making a list means you can't limit it to just the so-called "serious" type designers. I'm a definitely one to promote strong typefaces. And I've even said that some typefaces aren't really typefaces but more just digital rub-down lettering—although I was just being a bit of a jerk when I said that. But to NOT make a list just so you can avoid having to share that list with the gamut of female type designers is not right. There are no bad typefaces. Just typefaces appropriate for the job at hand. Sometimes all you need is a cute script for a headline and sometimes you need an full-featured OT workhorse font.

But I think there are too many people trying to keep up appearances. Everyone is here to learn. Everyone can grow and become better. Growth doesn't happen without output and hardwork. Output doesn't happen unless you release something. Sometimes what gets released is simple. But you know what? Sometimes simple is all you need.

And further, why does someone need to be recognized, awarded, public, etc. to prove they are good at what they do?

If I've misunderstood you. Then I do apologize.

I also think adding commentary would be good.

Let me just add that as a user of fonts I do appreciate quality fonts. And generally only license quality fonts. But in terms of the original article, I assumed Verena was speaking generally. I thought a list would be a nice way to recognize the fact that there is a growing list of women at different stages in their careers designing type. So I stand by the list. Maybe some research needs to be done to qualify everyone and adding commentary seems like a good idea. It is a sad day when we avoid making a list just to keep some people off of it.

No worries Tiffany, misunderstanding. I’m all for putting a comprehensive, collaborative (and commented) list on air.

Okay, I’m going to suggest some flags/tags:

✝ = dead

/ = not practicing anymore

* (or ƒ?) = full-time professional typeface designer (self-employed or employed at a foundry)

℗ = published + number of faces, e.g. ℗3 for “three typefaces commercially available under her name”

nothing = occasional, free-lance, part-time type designer or considerably involved in the production of fonts of any kind

> why does someone need to be recognized, awarded,
> public, etc. to prove they are good at what they do?

Not proof, evidence. And it's not (or shouldn't be) an ego thing* - it's just a matter of getting more exposure** so you get more business. For example I submitted my work to the CR Type Annual, and was lucky to be included; it's a nice feeling seeing it out there, but mostly I'm concerned with the question of how much more work it will cause me to get. BTW, there's a very good reason to speak at a conference besides exposure: pushing something you believe in, like respect for blackletter type or awareness of Latinization. I think Verena might be focusing too much on the fame aspect.

* Although if that happens to get somebody up in the morning and do good work, I guess it can't be all that bad!

** Not to mention saving money on conference registration fees! :-)

> ✝ = dead

Might be offensive to non-Christians. :-)

> / = not practicing anymore

Currently instead of any more.

hhp

Hrant, I wasn't saying that those things are bad. And yes, you are right that exposure can lead to more work. But does it mean your work never existed if it didn't appear in a journal?

Indra, I like those.

Having been included in the list, I have mixed feelings about the comments in this thread. Yep, I would probably be classified by many as excuse-dingbats-calligraphy-kitty designeress. I'm not sure what "published typefaces" means exactly. I have fonts that I sell commercially. Is self-publishing publishing?

I'm just confused as to the boundaries of this "type designer" classification....

node/20643 is missing at least 5 names that I can think of, and possibly more!

To me "published typefaces" means fonts that people besides you use - not a trivial feat. And "commercial typefaces" means they've compensated you for the fonts, which is even harder! :-)

Michael, it's a wiki, so add away!

hhp

As someone with a technical background, I fully support respecting the work of type designers who design dingbats... or, even more to the point, sorts. Without them, we would have to write all our equations by hand.

And music scores need to be typeset as well... and chess diagrams.

At one point, needing a chess diagram for my web page, and desiring something legible and immediately recognizable, in drawing the symbols for chess pieces, I gave "sincere flattery" to some unknown (well, unknown to me, and at least unsung) type designer at Linotype:

rather than trying to undertake the daunting task of coming up with a clear and legible original interpretation of the chess pieces.

EDIT: I considered this matter important enough to confess to my sin against some hard-working type designer, but I'm feeling less bad now. After doing some web search, I find that Linotype only has a more modernized and stylized form of chess symbols available, PIXymbols chess regular - and the classic styles of chess fonts have instead been digitized and made available by a company called Alpine Electronics - the classic one that also inspired me as Linares.

I have never considered something like chess in terms of type before.

Is "number of typefaces commercially available or credited with her name" meant to exclude custom typefaces that are not commercially available? If so, "number of typefaces commercially available AND credited with her name" would be better.

I’d say we should include/count custom typefaces that are credited with her name but are not commercially available. (The phrasing was meant to not exclude those.)

Please do edit your entry in that case, I only knew of your (great!) Bullen typeface.

((Edit: I should have read your bio on the FB site more attentively ... so, ja, includes those custom faces, too.))

Note that commercial does not mean retail - to me it includes custom work.

hhp

Right, retail is what I meant with “commercially available”. Commercially would also include custom work, that you were paid for. (Mmh, but what with those corporate fonts we do for NGO’s for free ...)

So, do we agree on counting typefaces that are available retail or commercial/custom work, but no private, unpublished projects?

I'll change the key on the wiki, but then I'd really love to let others take over.

You can get paid with something besides currency, but if the gain is non-material then it's not commercial. To me it doesn't matter whether it's public, private, [un]published, etc. The benchmark is that somebody values your work enough to give you something of material value in return.

hhp

I think this is a really good list, the kind of thing that can inspire.

✝ = dead, is usually "deceased" or "d.", or covered by the dates of entrant's life.

/ = not practicing anymore, could be better if said "not currently practicing" as "anymore" implies finality not certain to be certain.

* (or ƒ?) = full-time professional typeface designer (self-employed or employed at a foundry), I would think to be the default and mark-less.

℗ = published + number of faces, e.g. ℗3 for “three typefaces commercially available under her name”, a nice idea, but this means a lot of up-keep. Published is published.

nothing = occasional, free-lance, part-time type designer or considerably involved in the production of fonts of any kind. why bother? This would make a class of cool kids who are much known for little? I mean there must be 1,000,000's of women who have done something to some type at some point in time and space, since Gutenberg's daughter.

David, I think once we work our way through the list on the wikipage there will be few, if any, with nothing next to their names.

David, all good, except:
> why bother?

Do you mean the list should only include full-timers? That would exclude too many nice things to look at. I mean the fonts.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/veraevstafieva/5585830695/

hhp

Vera Evstafieva's Amalta is definitely an interesting typeface.

One of these days, I would like to see a calligraphic Latin typeface of such unassuming legibility as to be fully suitable for use as a text type.

Hmm. Not really what I was looking for, but it seems like Ladoga qualifies.

And there are a few others: Stockholm LP, Bouwsma Text, URW Alcuin (which, by Gudrun Zapf von Hesse, is on topic for this thread), Monarcha, perhaps even Scrivano... attempts are being made.

Are you seriously saying there's a shortage of calligraphic Latin text faces?

hhp

>One of these days, I would like to see a calligraphic Latin typeface of such unassuming legibility as to be fully suitable for use as a text type.

Brioso

Agreed William.

And,
You all know Hrant hates calligraphic Latin typefaces :-) So don't encourage him! At least he said calligraphic instead of chirographic.

@quadribloc... look for the origins of Ladoga! Simply wishing to lay the design ethos where it lies as opposed to some usurper.

David, I changed most of this on the wiki page already (I cannot change my old proposal here though).
But I think it’s a good thing to not only include full-timers.
Regarding number of published typefaces – should be okay to maintain if everybody puts in their own and what they know of. Can be seen as an indicator of activity among the free-lance designer.

Michael: Not *hate*. But not just Latin either. :-)

hhp

@hrant:
Are you seriously saying there's a shortage of calligraphic Latin text faces?

Perhaps there is a surfeit, as it appears that however many of them may exist, calligraphic faces for the Latin script seem to resolutely remain used as display faces only.

However, it just occurred to me that I was overlooking one exception that someone may actually have used for body copy. If they did, though, I would tend to agree with those who would view it as wildly inappropriate for the context.

AMS Euler.

It may be a beautiful typeface - designed by Herman Zapf himself, so who can doubt - and I can even sympathize with the desires of those involved to find a new, original paradigm for the typesetting of mathematics - but I'm afraid it is, to me, at any rate, jarringly not what I am used to.

@typerror:
look for the origins of Ladoga! Simply wishing to lay the design ethos where it lies as opposed to some usurper.

I had seen the beginning of the description, where it said the face was designed in the Soviet Union in 1968 by Anatoly Shchukin. I hadn't opened up the description to see that Ladoga itself, however, was based on it by someone else in 2010.

Is it Viktor Kharik that you see as the usurper, though, or Anatoly Shchukin - does this face have a still earlier origin?

I see that Anna Simons is included on the list of women type designers. I'm a fan of her work, especially the initials and titling lettering she created for the Bremer Presse, of which I own a lovely folio set, but I'm not aware that she created any typeface designs. She was a calligrapher and lettering artist, and although she created some letters for use in print editions, she didn't design any full typefaces, to my knowledge. I'm not saying that she should not be included on the list, but I am wondering how the criteria apply in a case such as hers? [Her inclusion also makes me wonder about the influential role of women in type design education, and how this might be recorded or acknowledged in the list; among Simons' students was Jakob Erbar.]

Here are some Soviet women type designers or lettering artists included in the 'big grey book of Soviet typography' (The lettering art: work by Moscow book designers, 1959–1974) and not yet included in the wiki list. The situation of 'type designers' in the Soviet Union was complicated by the difficulty of manufacture. Relatively few type designers ever had their designs produced as type, so most worked at drawing 'type' for reproduction in book titling etc. A notable female exception was Galina Andreyevna Bannikova (1901–1972), designer of the Bannikova and Baikonur families. I have little doubt that these designers, if working today, would have been happily producing their own fonts -- in the great Russian font software, of course --, so I'm content to think of them as type designers. The book was published in 1977, so it seems certain that at least one of these women has since died.

Sophia Evgenyeva GANNUSHKINA
Born 1947, Moscow.

Irina Alexandrovna GUSEVA
Born 1936, Moscow.

Elizaveta Yakovlevna KRIVINSKAYA
Born 1907, Kharkov.

Elena Alexandrovna TROFIMOVA
Born 1943, Moscow.

Another name for the list: Sylvie Chokroun, designer of Nathan, one of my favourite recent Sephardi Hebrew types (featured in Language Culture Type).

John, thanks for your thorough research, you can add those names yourself if you want.
Regarding Anna Simon – we had this discussion on twitter the other day and Dan Reynolds pointed us to the dissertation of Sandra Winter at Reading. She researched over Anna Simon and writes about her typefaces. Alas, the link to the pdf seems to not be cached anymore, perhaps Dan can help? Here are the tweets:

Florian Hardwig: http://is.gd/AhBp6p mentions she cut initials.
Dan: See S. Winter's Reading Dissertation about A. Simons for the list of types she was almost definitely behind! http://bit.ly/hLy0AP
Florian: Perfect, thanks. ‘Anna Simons and type design’ starts on p55.

Wonder if Pia Frauss and Petra Heidorn (Cybapee) qualify for the list. Don't know enough to tell...

Thanks, Indra. I'll try to track down Sandra Winter's dissertation.

I'm hoping that someone else can add the other names I suggested to the list. I've had a frustrating time trying to edit wiki entries in the past, and figure it will get done more efficiently and with less swearing if someone more experienced does it.

John... are you aware of Hildegard Korger from "East Germany?" Do not know if any of her "complete Alphabet" experiments made it into the typographic annals but they were certainly complete character sets.

Edit: yes Typoskript.

Hooray for gender-specific pronouns!

Currently, Identifont has about 130 entries for female type designers (vs. 434 male).
MyFonts lists 134 women who do type design (and 542 men).