Here you’ll find articles and essays on typography, type design and graphic design written by myself (denoted with ‘KT’ below) and my friend and colleague Michail Semoglou (MS). We reserve all copyrights for these works and should you be interested in publishing or reproducing them elsewhere, you must first get our written permission.

Digital typography: a primer (KT)
247K PDF / Ever since the advent of printing with movable type, typography and technology had become inseparable. If we were to accept the definition of typography as the mechanical production of written language, then we must have an intimate understanding of our prevailing typesetting technology – the computer and its software and peripherals – in order to become competent typographic designers. Craftsmanship is inherent in our technology; creativity is also built upon the foundation of understanding the technology. This handout outlines the basic concepts of digital typography.

Baseline grid (KT)
107K PDF / An explanation of how baseline grids work.

Keith Tam’s design pedagogy (KT)
8.31 MB PDF / Seven assignments that I designed (with one exception) for my students while I was teaching at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver, illustrated with examples of final outcomes.

Wolfgang Weingart’s typographic landscape (KT)
An article about the work of Swiss typographic designer Wolfgang Weingart. Based on a questions and answers session in Vancouver in March, 2001. This article was written for the Polish design magazine 2+3D.

A report on the ATypI conference in Rome, 2002(MS)
Michail Semoglou’s report on the annual ATypI conference held in Rome in September 2002, titled The shape of language/La forma del linguaggio. In this article he interviewed Victor Gaultney (designer of Gentium), Jean-François Porchez (designer of Sabon Next), Huda Smitshuijzen Abifares, Aeina El Abed & Nathalie Fallaha (designers from Lebanon) and Habib Khoury (designer from Palestine).

The revival of slab-serif typefaces in the 20th century (KT)
268K PDF / An essay that traces the historical developements of slab-serif typefaces in the 20th century.

An Interview with Gerard Unger (MS)
Michail had an interview with the Dutch type designer Gerard Unger in Thessaloniki, Greece in 2002. This article was written for the Polish design magazine 2+3D, issue IV–2002.

Calligraphic tendencies in the development of sanserif type in the twentieth century (KT)
943K PDF/ Abstract: Sanserif typefaces are often perceived as something inextricably linked to the ideals of Swiss modernism. They are also often thought of as something as far as one can get from calligraphic writing. Yet, throughout the twentieth century and especially in the past decade or so, the design of sanserif typefaces have been consistently inspired by calligraphic writing. This dissertation hence explores the relationship between calligraphic writing and the formal developments of sanserif typefaces in the twentieth century. Although type design is an inherently different discinpline from writing, conventions of calligraphic did and till do impose certain important characteristics on the design of typefaces that modern readers expect. This paper traces and analyzes the formal developments of sanserif typefaces through the use of written forms. It gives a historical account of the development fo sanserif typefaces by charting six distinct phases of sanserif designs that were in some ways informed by calligraphic writing:

Three primary ways to create calligraphic writing, namely the broadnib pen, flexible pointed pen and monoline pen are studied and linages drawn to how designers imitate or subvert the concentions of these tools. These studies are put into historical perspective and links made to the contexts of use. The focus of this dissertation is on typefaces that are generally know as ‘humanist sans’; grotesques and neo-grotesques are not included in the discussions.