Language Culture Type
In 2002, ATypI produced a major book on international type design:
Language Culture Type: international type design in the age of Unicode,
edited by John D. Berry, designed by Maxim Zhukov, and published by Graphis.
The book was initially distributed to delegates at the 2002 ATypI Rome conference, and is now available from Graphis, price $60
Language Culture Type is a wide-angle snapshot of global typeface development at the start of the 21st century. It is a landmark publication in the long history of type and printing. No other book has taken such a consciously global approach to the way written communication is reproduced around the world.
At the heart of the book are the one hundred winning type designs from ATypI’s first-ever international type competition, bukva:raz! The winning typefaces are presented clearly and spaciously, along with information about each face, its language/script, and its designer. The book not only shows off the winners but puts them in context, with a series of essays on various alphabets and writing systems, and the constraints and opportunities involved in designing type for them.
In Robert Bringhurst’s ground-breaking lead-off essay, “Voices, languages, and scripts around the world,” he presents a whole new classification system for the world’s different kinds of writing — a “taxonomy of written language.” John Hudson’s complementary essay, “Unicode, from text to type,” tells us where we stand in the technical challenge of communicating across cultures through digital type, without loss of detail or meaning. The other essays look at type design for Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, Japanese, and the languages of Africa, as well as, of course, the Latin alphabet.
The essays are thoroughly indexed; the winning typefaces are presented alphabetically. Language Culture Type is bound in signatures, and the 384-page volume is divided almost evenly between the essays, heavily illustrated and printed in black and white, and the type showings, printed as double-page spreads in five colors on coated stock.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword / Mark Batty
Preface / John D. Berry
LANGUAGE CULTURE TYPE
Voices, languages and scripts around the globe / Robert Bringhurst
Unicode, from text to type / John Hudson
ITC Cyrillics, 1922- / Maxim Zhukov
How do the Japanese read? / Akira Kobayashi
An approach to non-Latin type design / Fiona Ross
A primer on Greek type design / Gerry Leonidas
Zvi Narkiss and Hebrew type design / Misha Beletsky
Type ramblings from Afrika / Saki Mafundikwa
Arabic type and typography / Thomas Milo
Civil Type and Kis Cyrillic / Vladimir Yefimov
Pickled herring and strawberry ice cream / Adam Twardoch
BUKVA:RAZ!
United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations
Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI)
Sponsors of bukva:raz!
Letter from Giandomenico Picco, United Nations
Rules of the competition
Wherefore bukva:raz!? / Maxim Zhukov
The jury
Tribute to Henrik Mnatsakanyan, 1923-2001
Pictures from a competition / John D. Berry
The winners of bukva:raz!
Type showings: the winning typefaces from bukva:raz!
Contributors
Index to the essays