Rudy vanderlans book

RUDYVANDERLANS A Book by Dila Fauzia

RUDYVANDERLANS

A Book by

Dila Fauzia

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was born in The Hague, Holland in 1955 and studied grapRudy VanderLans was born in The Hague, Holland in 1955 and studied graphic design at the Royal College of Fine Arts.

In 1981 he moved to the US and studied photography at UC Berkeley, where he met the Czechoslovakian-born designer Zuzana Licko. They married in 1983. In 1984 VanderLans launched the magazine Émigré, which became famous for its pioneering use of the Apple Macintosh. Part of its innovation lay in its use of typefaces such as Oakland and Emperor, designed by Licko to complement the low-resolution output of the early Macintosh. In the mid-1980s the company started to make these typefaces available to other designers; it now publishes some 70 faces designed by Licko and other typographers. In 1990 VanderLans set up the Emigre record label.hic design at the Royal College of Fine Arts. In 1981 he moved to the US and studied photography at UC Berkeley, where he met the Czechoslovakian-born designer Zuzana Licko. They married in 1983. In 1984 VanderLans launched the magazine Émigré, which became famous for its pioneering use of the Apple Macintosh. Part of its innovation lay in itsuse of typefaces such as Oakland and Emperor,In the mid 1980s the company started to make these typefaces available to

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EMIGRE 10 Cranbook (1988)

EMIGRE 04 (1986)

designed by Licko to complement the low-resolution output of the early Macintosh. other designers; it now publishes some 70 faces designed by Licko and other typographers. In 1990 VanderLans set up the Emigre record label. He moved to America in 1981 to study photography at the University of California, Berkeley, and it was here that he met and married Zuzana Licko. They founded the influential EmigrĂŠ journal in 1984. EmigrĂŠ took advantage of the development of the new Apple Macintosh computer and a bitmap font tool, and together, VanderLans and especially Licko developed fonts for the magazine.

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Emigre, Inc. is a digital type foundry, publisher and distributor of graphic design related software and printed materials based in Northern California.

Founded in 1984, coinciding with the birth of the Macintosh, Emigre was one of the first independent type foundries to establish itself centered on personal computer technology. Emigre holds exclusive license to over 300 original typeface designs created by a roster of contemporary designers. Emigre’s full line of typefaces, ornaments and illustrations is available in Type 1 PostScript and TrueType for both the Macintosh and PC.

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Emigre is also the publisher of the critically acclaimed design journal Emigre magazine which was published between 1984 and 2005. As a team, Emigre has been honored with numerous awards, including the 1994 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design and the 1998 Charles Nypels Award for excellence in the field of typography. Emigre is also a recipient of the 1997 American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal Award, its highest honor. In October 2010 the Emigre team members were inducted as Honorary Members of the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago. VanderLans is the recipient of honorary Ph.D. degrees from both the Rhode Island School of Design (2005) and the California Institute of the Arts (2006). Complete sets of Emigre magazine are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, The Bancroft Library, and many other institutions around the world. In 2011, five digital typefaces from the Emigre Type Library were acquired by MoMA, New York for its Design and Architecture collection. Each issue of the journal focused on a theme and concentrated on work that the VanderLans and Licko felt was being neglected by other design publications. Emigré is still published quarterly and as well as graphic design, VanderLans has now also introduced a strong music element.

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2000 MANIFESTO 14

A MANIFESTO Are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.

projects urgently require our expertise and help.

We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.

Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design

Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Siân Cook Linda van Deursen Simon Esterson Vince Frost Erik Spiekermann Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson

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Founded in 1914 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design and is now known simply as “AIGA, the professional association for design.

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For over a decade of typeface design and magazine publishing, Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans have withstood virulent attacks from an entrenched design establishment as well as from their contemporaries. Throughout it all, they have continued to pursue their unique visions and, consequently, have been a prime force in revolutionizing the industry and cultivating a spirit of exploration.Brian Eno’s quip about the Velvet Underground—that only a few thousand people bought their record but every one of them went on to form a band—could apply as well to Emigré. Although the print run of the first issue was 500 copies and its circulation peaked at 7,000 several years ago, its reverberations are still being felt around the world. The magazine that VanderLans published and art directed, and the fonts Licko developed for it, have stimulated designers to defy, and even overthrow, entrenched rules and to set new standards.Neither Licko nor VanderLans set out to transform the face of modern design. They achieved their notoriety rather unconventionally. Bay Area designer Chuck Byrne, who has closely observed their careers from the beginning, explains: “In the last fifty years or so, making a reputation for yourself was basically a process of winning competitions, getting your work published, and going around pontificating to the world about how great you are. What drove the establishment crazy was that Rudy and Zuzana totally 17 short-circuited this apprenticeship and became famous simply by designing for this international group of admirers.

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When did you first work on a Macintosh?

When the Macintosh came out there was a magazine started called MacWorld, and the editor was frantically looking for people who would be interested in doing illustration work on this new computer. They invited a whole bunch of illustrators from the San Francisco area to come and look at this machine, including Zuzana and myself. You have to understand that it was an incredible, ugly, primitive little machine that could do almost nothing but render very coarse, low resolution stuff.

But we thought it was the most amazing thing. The people at MacWorld offered to lend it to us for the weekend and we were sold. We went out and bought one.

Which were the biggest difficulties you had to manage concerning technique and content?

The biggest problem was that I could no longer open a lot of the old digital files. One of the first page make-up programs I often used was ReadySetGo! and I could simply not open those files anymore. So I ended up recreating a lot of the older layouts which took a lot of time.

How come a lot of your typeface names end in ‘x’? Elektrix, Fairplex, Lunatix, Matrix, Solex, Triplex and Variex?

If there ever was a reason, I can’t remember it.

What do you want to achieve with your book Emigre No.70?

I wanted to make a book that would highlight the best work we have published in the past 25 years, a distillation that would sum up what Emigre magazine was all about. The most difficult part was editing out all the work that deserves reprinting but simply wouldn’t fit. It was the opposite of doing the magazine where I often had to stretch content to fill it. But in the end, with all due apologies to those whose work I left out, I’m happy that the book gives a pretty good idea of what Emigre and graphic design were all about during the years that we published.

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How would you characterize the 21 years in which Emigre magazine appeared?

They were the most exciting years in graphic design that I’ve experienced. A lot of new ideas were being tested, there was a lot of discussion and heated debate, and it just seemed like the issues that were being debated really mattered to people. Graphic design really mattered to the people involved. And I think that attitude, that excitement, became very infectious, and it resulted in a huge boom within graphic design. Design schools were bursting at the seams, design books were being published like never before, and for the first time graphic design became this very cool profession that a lot people wanted to be a part of.

So how did it develop into a somewhat theoretical design magazine?

That happened little by little. The Macintosh was introduced in 1984-85, and we were very excited about it – as opposed to a lot of graphic designers who thought it was a hideous tool. And then we noticed – though this may be hindsight – that the whole industry, not just design but also printing and typesetting, was slowly being turned upside down because of this computer. So we thought it was an opportune time to start focusing on design again.

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Rudy VanderLans is the co-founder of Emigre, together with his wife Zuzana Licko.

VanderLans studied graphic design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. After working for a number of design studios in Holland for several years, he moved to California and studied photography at University of California at Berkeley. In 1984, VanderLans founded Emigre Magazine, a journal for experimental graphic design.

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“A mystery is the most stimulating force in unleashing the imagination.”

“They enjoy giving form to ideas. If designers were made of ideas, they’d be their own clients.”