Open Houses are back this week!
Theme: TypographyWed 2/22/2023-Thu 2/23/2023 10am-4pm each day. Free and open to all!
On February 22, 1991, “A Few Basic Typefaces” exhibition opened at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Massimo Vignelli was awarded their annual Master Series award which included an exhibition. He chose to highlight work in only a few typefaces: Bodoni, Century, Garamond and Helvetica. This week marks the 32nd anniversary of this exhibition.
SVA’s Masters Series began in 1988 as “an annual award exhibition to honor great visual communicators—designers, illustrators, art directors and photographers—of our time.” Massimo Vignelli was the 3rd person to receive this honor.
“It was a polemical exhibition to protest the inflation of meaningless typefaces polluting our world.“ Vignelli: From A to Z, p. 187
For our Open Houses this week, we will be revisiting this exhibition and invite you to think about designing type and designing with type. You will be able to view many of the artifacts from this 1991 exhibition plus some designs done after 1991 that includes these 5 typefaces.
From the exhibition records, we found that the exhibition plan originally included designs using Times New Roman as well. You will be able to see these works too. Along with images of the original exhibition, the original exhibition checklist, and other documentation. Plus numerous OTHER typefaces, many custom, that appear in the Vignellis’ work. Futura. Optima. Didi. Bloomingtype. Our Bodoni. Our Futura.
Plus numerous custom alphabets for architectural graphics, logotypes, etc. And we’ll have examples of designs using type that might seem very “un-Vignelli.”
More details about Open Houses can be found on our website: https://www.rit.edu/vignellicenter/events
