dot-font: Trilateral Typography

dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro.  If you’d like to read more from this series, click here.

Eventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking About Fonts, which are available free to download here.  You can find more from John at his website, https://johndberry.com.

Three continents were united in San Francisco on August 10. North America was represented by the venue and the audience; Europe was represented by Erik Spiekermann from Germany; and Africa was represented by Saki Mafundikwa from Zimbabwe.

It was a sort of trilateral typographic event.

Global Type

The event was billed as “Two Global Types: an evening with Saki Mafundikwa and Erik Spiekermann.” The place, a new theater space on lower Potrero Hill called the Thick House, was packed with the Bay Area’s typographic community. (But not the whole typographic community. The theater’s capacity was well below the 300-odd people who responded to invitations and publicity. Attendees such as graphic designer Erik Adigard expressed pleasure at the “intimate setting,” but if future events draw the same response, larger quarters will be needed.)

ZIVA

Mafundikwa led off, describing the efforts and travails he’d gone through to establish a school of graphic design and new media in Harare, Zimbabwe, and to encourage the creative potential for truly African contributions to worldwide typography.

Amandungu, by Saki Mafundikwa student Paul Ndunguru, Tanzania

ZIVA is the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital(tm) Arts. Mafundikwa invented (and trademarked) the word “vigital,” as a way of expressing the blend of visual design and digital video that he felt could be such a fertile area for growth in his country. (The word came to him, in fact, on a previous visit to San Francisco, while he was riding a Muni bus through the city.) It neatly made possible the acronym ZIVA, which is also a word in Shona, one of the principle languages of Zimbabwe, meaning “knowledge.” And imparting knowledge, giving students the tools to explore their own culture and express it in a global context, is what ZIVA is all about.

Mafundikwa was born and raised in Zimbabwe when it was still white-ruled Rhodesia, but like many Africans he went abroad to study. Unlike most from this former British colony, however, he headed for the United States. He spent twenty years here. After earning a degree in telecommunications and fine arts at Indiana University and an MFA at Yale, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a designer at Random House and taught as an adjunct professor at Cooper Union.

He conceived the idea of ZIVA while he was in New York, but he knew that the only way to get funding for a visionary project is to turn the vision into reality; once the project really exists, it’s much easier to get backing. (The recent dot-com boom may have contradicted this wisdom, but Mafundikwa was planning for the long haul, not the quick buck.) Two years ago, he moved himself and his family back to Harare to start the school. Last year ZIVA opened its doors.

Kukumbila Kunyata, by Saki Mafundikwa student Pascoal Mbundi, Mozambique

The school is small—only ten students in its first class—but thriving. Mafundikwa showed slides of the building and his slowly growing student body (“This was my first student”—click—“Then I had two”—click—“Now a third”—click—“And suddenly four”), giving faces and a visual reality to the abstract idea.

Afrikan Alphabets

In his classes at Cooper Union and in workshops in places as farflung as Uganda and Colombia, Mafundikwa has taught students from a variety of cultures to look at the ignored parts of their own worlds. “At first they’re looking to Europe and America, to the Modernist canon,” he said. “When you mention their own homegrown visual culture, they go, ‘What’s this? Why would we care about all that stuff?’ But when you show them, when they can see with their own eyes how to make something new out of their own heritage, then they understand. Then they get excited.”

Mafundikwa’s own researches into the many indigenous writing systems of Africa have been taking shape in a proposed book, called Afrikan Alphabets. When sample spreads from this appeared in an article about ZIVA in the now-defunct type magazine U&lc, Mafundikwa kept getting inquiries from people (“especially from Europe,” he said) wanting to buy the book. (“They were very disappointed to find out that it didn’t yet exist.”) But the showings of alphabets and syllabaries from around Africa—the Bambara and the Bamum scripts, for just two examples—have inspired Mafundikwa’s students.

He showed some of the alphabets created in a workshop in Kampala, Uganda, that he taught last year—one based on a student’s experience with drinking too much (Kukumbila Kunyata, shown above), another echoing the graceful birds that the students saw around them. And he showed the source of inspiration for the logo he designed for ZIVA: the alternating diagonals of the brickwork patterns in the walls of the Great Zimbabwe, the medieval African brick city complex from which Zimbabwe takes its name.

Mistari, by Saki Mafundikwa student Martin Mirucah, Kenya

Euro Type

Complementing Mafundikwa’s talk and following it, Erik Spiekermann presented the European tradition, and his own eclectic part in it. As a founder of MetaDesign and Fontshop, he has been instrumental in establishing the kind of comprehensive questioning and meticulous execution that characterize “European” design in the eyes of many Americans. And of course, as designer of the now-ubiquitous typeface Meta, he has influenced our visual landscape in a pragmatic way. (Mafundikwa pointed, laughing, to the text face he had used on ZIVA’s collateral—”Meta! My favorite typeface!”)

Spiekermann began by explaining that he was suffering from a nasty summer cold, and apologized in advance in case he slipped absentmindedly into German. (He didn’t.)

He structured his talk around the quest for good typefaces and how to use them. To demonstrate the problems of quick solutions, he showed several different manufacturers’ versions of famous typefaces, such as Univers and Futura, and how the finest details of design—the way a curve flows, the thickness of a stroke—make the difference between a crisp, effective letter and a slovenly, flaccid imitation.

As an aside, Spiekermann offered to have Fontshop donate the now-enlarged FF Meta family to ZIVA (“it takes up a whole CD now”), then he addressed the realities of typeface protection outside the privileged circles of high-end graphic design studios: “I’d rather see a student rip off a good typeface than use a legitimate copy of something that’s crap.”

He used his own design experience to highlight creative solutions to localized typographic problems. He showed how typography matters in real-world environments: the signage of the Berlin transit system, which MetaDesign reworked, and—even more dramatically—the new signage system for the Dusseldorf airport, where after a catastrophic fire the authorities determined that the confusing hodgepodge of signs had cost some travelers their lives as they tried to find the exit in the smoke.

Creative Juxtaposition

The confluence of Spiekermann and Mafundikwa, from Europe and Africa, was an opportunity that presented itself simply because the organizers (I was one) knew that both of them were going to be in San Francisco at the same time. We were looking for a kick-off event for the new type organization Typeset (in conjunction with TDC (Type Directors Club) and ATypI). The juxtaposition was a happy accident. In fact, the two speakers had never met, until they had lunch together on the day of the event.

It was also, surprisingly, the first time that either of them had given a talk in San Francisco. (Spiekermann had been the MC of the Fuse conference here a couple of years ago, but he didn’t make any presentation there himself.) Taking advantage of a couple of talented, articulate designers’ travel plans seems like a very fine way to organize an event. And a rewarding one for the local audience.

This kind of cross-cultural collage should happen elsewhere. Everywhere.

John D. Berry is a typographer, book designer, design writer, editor, and typographic consultant. He is a former President of ATypI, and he is the founder and director of the Scripta Typographic Institute.
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