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Typefaces are not intrinsically legible. Rather, it is the readers' familiarity with faces that accounts for their legibility. Studies have shown that readers read best what they read most.

Zuzanna Licko: Do you read me? in Emigre, Nr 15, p12, Berkeley, 1990

#typography #zuzanna licko #licko #legibility #readable #typeface #typefaces #what is legible #emigre

NEW Neill Von Tally featuring Neo G Yo and DNVN

LICKO !

Get with it.

#Eyrst #Futro Records #Licko #Matthew Herbert #DNVN #Neo G Yo #Neill Von Tally

Mrs. Eaves

Even though Licko had started creating new fonts for Émigré magazine since its inception (1984), Mrs. Eaves was like her breakout role. There are two reasons why Mrs. Eaves was created: 1. Émigré had started to publish more essays and 2. She needed a type that would be fitting for the pioneering magazine and be set in large bodies of content.

So she created Mrs. Eaves in 1996; while there were constant revivals of Baskerville she questioned how it would look if it was a little bit heavier and give it a bit more character. She reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She then reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. It is such a unique type with its imperfection but is still pleasing to look at and fun to read. Mrs. Eaves does have her shortcomings like her limited “loose” spacing and when the letterforms are by themselves they look a little awkward. The top three suggestions to resolve some of her “flaws” are: greater space economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to pair it with a Sans-serif design. So to help resolve the issue of limited space, Licko created Mrs. Eaves XL. In XL, the x-height is 25% larger than in the classic. And o f course, a bold italic was added to the family, and a Mrs. Eaves Sans will be released soon.

Mrs. Eaves was Zuzana’s answer to the designer’s dilemma of needing a type that could do it all and still have the unique ability to bring freshness to typesetting large amounts of text with ample space and be used to display headlines or even music covers like Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. In Licko’s mind, it was possibly a natural thing for her to see Baskerville and appreciate it for its design, see how easy it was to use in literature, asked herself why not create a modernized version of Baskerville.

#Mrs. Eaves #emigre #licko #typography

Licko

Zuzana Licko (pronounced Litch-ko) has risen to rock star status in the Graphic Design world. Mrs. Eaves is one of the most popular typefaces of the 20th century and beyond. Mrs. Eaves is Licko’s revival of the classic typeface, Baskerville, in fact, Licko named the typeface after Baskerville’s former live-in housemaid who later became his wife. Inspiring, huh? But why revive Baskerville? Why type design at all? What made Licko pursue this area of design? And what inspired her to create in general? What really makes her tick?

I think one of the most important factors that play into why Licko is who she is today has a lot to do with where she grew up in the first part of her life. She was born in Czechoslovakia during its Communist rule, there was a lot of economic downward spirals, oppression, and political turmoil, in other words not a great place to live in. Even though she was relatively young, she finds that because of her background this may have led to her questioning things around her and seek out resolutions to problems or that could be a part of her character. Either way, design was the perfect industry for her and her creativity, designing is all about solving problems and giving the right answer (most of the time) through creative visual communication. She went to UC Berkley for Architecture then eventually changed her major to Graphic Communications. While there, she took a calligraphy class that she found very difficult because she is naturally left-handed but she had to write with her right hand. I can relate because as a lefty, my hand tends to rub on the paper and then smudges the medium I work with and I took a calligraphy class, I constantly got ink on my left hand and forearm. This could be a huge reason as to why Licko was so open and gravitated to new technology; when the first Macintosh was released she found this opportunity to create without having to compromise her natural abilities or have so much difficulty in the creative process. And technology grew with Zuzana as she designed more and more typefaces.

#licko #zuzana #psychology #typography