Áron Jancsó 1986 - 2015
Last year the typography world lost a number of its legends including Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger and Bram de Does. Yesterday I discovered, with great sadness, that Áron Jancsó, an incredible young typographer also passed away.
Although many will be less familiar with Áron’s work, before the age of 30 he had published five innovative typefaces and produced an expansive portfolio of exceptional artwork. His departure from the design community before fulfilling his potential is a great loss and it will leave a chasm of unexplored typography.
Áron died suddenly in September in a cycle collision while riding in the outskirts of his home city of Budapest. His work had a strong influence on my own typographic endeavours. Just a few weeks after setting up this blog in 2011 I had already shared some of his Áron’s characteristic lettering and we had exchanged a few lines on email. Back then was just 25 years old but his work had already made a lasting impression on me.
In his online profiles, Áron describes how he preferred to design everything from scratch. If it was a poster then he would design the type himself. His love for calligraphy, street art and oriental design infuses the work and he focused on bold typographic structures rather than extraneous effects.
Áron possessed a unique vision of how type could be moulded and composed. His typeface specimens, produced as posters, are among some of my favourite typographic designs of all time. Much of his work was experimental yet the results were invariably elegant and eye catching.
Áron left us with an array of superlative images and a collection of inspired typefaces, published by Gestalten.
Well worth a look at.
