Oct 9, 2025
Rudy VanderLans, Hand-drawn 1985 type exploration, Emigre, 1985 [Letterform Archive, San Francisco, CA. © Rudy VanderLans / Emigre, Berkeley, CA]
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Rudy VanderLans, Hand-drawn 1985 type exploration, Emigre, 1985 [Letterform Archive, San Francisco, CA. © Rudy VanderLans / Emigre, Berkeley, CA]
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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.
View more Typography Tuesday posts.
Emigre • Alternative-culture graphic-design magazine by Rudy VanderLans & Zuzana Licko ⌥ born with the Macintosh, shaping digital type, experimental layouts, and design culture, 1984...2005
New York City, 1911. A Syrian immigrant with a hookah in front of his shop in the lower Manhattan neighborhood known as "Little Syria" (also called the Syrian Quarter, it was a vibrant enclave along Washington Street near the Battery where thousands of Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, and others from Middle Eastern and Mediterranean communities lived).
There’s a lot of good stuff to say about the Nimona movie, but since I haven’t seen anyone else taking the typography nerd angle—someone clearly had fun getting to use Emigre’s Mason so extensively. It’s such a weird one, and Nimona’s anachronistic setting is the perfect opportunity.
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Raising voices emigre #31, 1995
Some more in-progress pics! Shral up top, and Thelen on the bottom. Flat colours only for now while I play around with skin tone and colour palettes, but overall I'm reasonably happy with the poses! Both of their chitin patterns are opaque for the time being as well, though that will change in the future.
You'll note that while Shral has very pronounced subdermal chitin on his face and around his antennae, he doesn't have any on his hands like Thelen does. Coming from different Clans, both of them have differing chitin patterns and expressions thereof. Thelen has much more pronounced chitin all over the rest his body, which is a vestigial trait of Clan Sannev. Shral does not, which is in keeping with the dominant Clan Hrisvalar expression.
EMIGRE Magazine n°21 'New Faces' (1992). This issue shines a light on some CalArts students' work in three graduate projects