#digital type

Typography Tuesday

Zuzana Licko

Here are some of the many typefaces Slovakian-American designer Zuzana Licko (b. 1961) has created for her digital type foundry Emigre, which she founded in 1985 with her business partner and husband Rudy VanderLans in Berkeley, California. These type specimens are from the The Emigre Catalog, published in Sacramento, California in 1999. Emigre's fonts have received numerous awards, including a 1994 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, a 1997 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and the 29th New York Type Directors Club Medal in 2016. When asked how she judges the validity of a new or experimental typeface design, Licko responded:

Design is about creating something new each time we approach a problem, even if it’s the same problem. . . . Thus, the “same old solution” tends to become boring over time and leads the audience to lose interest. In addition, new technologies and environments arise to present new problems for the designer to address. The most successful experimental typeface designs are often those that address the new needs of a new, yet unchartered technology.

Licko maintains a simple definition of a typeface: "the ornamental manifestation of the alphabet. If the alphabet conveys words, a typeface conveys their tone, style, and attitude."

View other posts on the type designs of Zuzana Licko and Emigre.

View more posts on women type designers.

View other type specimen books.

digital lettering added March 31, 2025

New Creation | Theme: Good Starts

Type and Edit by @clarizagueta

No one is too broken that God cannot restore. No one is too lost or too far gone for God not to find. Sometimes we are too focused on ourselves; our failures, our awful past, our mistakes, our sins and we started to think that we have no hope and that God doesn't want us anymore. We are too ashamed to even call on to God in prayer. We think we are unworthy and that we are not deserving of God's love and mercy. That's why God saved us through His amazing Grace (something we do not deserve but given to us) because God loves us so much, He gave His One and Only Son Jesus to pay for our sins.

God can make a new creation in you. Don’t believe the lies of the enemy that you cannot be changed because God can change you! In fact, He's the only one who can make a new creation in you! Someone you never thought you can be. You may not see it now, but you just have to fix your eyes on Him. He's not finished on you yet. You are His work in progress. He will make all things new and He will make a miracle of you!

We are His children, His beloved, in Him we are a NEW CREATION.

Revelation 21:5 (ESV)

Typography Tuesday

Here are a few type specimens from the The Emigre Catalog, published in Sacramento, California in 1999. Emigre is a digital type foundry founded in 1985 by European-born designers (hence Emigre) Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko based in Berkeley, California. Emigre has been criticized for fonts that are a burden on legibility, to which Licko has responded, "People read best what they read most" -- fonts we have gotten used to are not intrinsically legible but become so through repeated use. The fonts shown here are:

Elliott's Typhoid Mary from the novelty font family The Apollo Program designed ca. 1997 by Elliott Peter Earls.

Big Cheese designed ca. 1992 by Eric Donelan and Bob Aufuldish.

Backspacer designed ca. 1993 by Nancy Mazzei and Brian Kelly.

Blockhead Alphabet and Blockhead Illustrations designed ca. 1995 by John Hersey.

Council designed ca. 1999 by John Downer.

Thingbat designed ca. 1993 by John Hersey.

Missionary designed ca. 1991 by Miles Newlyn.

Zeitguys designed ca. 1994 by Eric Donelan and Bob Aufuldish.

View other type specimen books.