35th Tipo Brda: Secesija Now

35th Tipo Brda, a summer type design workshop in Slovenia is this year inspired by the art nouveau lettering (Secesija in Slovenian). Alphabets designed 100 years ago were often based on natural forms and organic shapes using mainly uppercase letters. We will analyse reference samples from an archive of public lettering and printed ephemeras compiled by Slovenian type designer Alja Herlah, and use uppercase letters as inspiration to create digital lowercase letters.

The lowercase comes from the uppercase alphabet. Yet it makes up the great majority of what we read, and contains most of the information of the visual DNA of a typeface. We will explore the relationship between the two cases, from historical to visual and technical aspects. The intensive workshop is suitable for both beginners and advanced designers, students or professionals. Each of the participants is going to have an opportunity to design their own typeface with quality feedback from the mentors.

This year, the guest mentor is Riccardo De Franceschi. Riccardo De Franceschi is a Milanese typeface designer based in London. His love for lettershapes brought him to England, where he studied at the Department of Typography at the University of Reading. He has been making typefaces for design studio Dalton Maag since 2012. He has a special interest for vernacular lettering and display typefaces used in ephemeral materials and the public space.

Type designer Alja Herlah is going to support Riccardo on mentoring the workshop. After the graduation Alja developed strong interest for designing non-Latin scripts as font developer in Atlas Font Foundry, Berlin. She has broadened her skills working as font developer in Dalton Maag, London. Currently she works as Teaching Assistant at Academy of Fine Arts and Design.