Giambattista Bodoni designed many non-Latin scripts in his career without knowing much about them, often ending up with results which puzzle native readers. In order to pay him homage the Parmigiano Typosystem involves an international group of designers. A series of interviews – featuring images of the in-progress work – will introduce all the partners. Our first interview is with Irina Smirnova, a Russian type designer living and working in The Hague, who is in charge of the Cyrillic designs.
Let’s start with the big question: why do you design typefaces? What’s your interest in letterforms and what to you is the most valuable aspect of this work?
I was fascinated by the perfection of the letterforms designed by the great masters, so I did my best, and worked hard to achieve this kind of perfection. Since I came to study at Type&Media in The Hague, my idea about type design started to change and it took a few years till the rhythm became my main aspiration. The first time I felt satisfied with the result was when I was practising calligraphy and the rhythm started to work in the Latin minuscule, so I wanted to achieve it in type design too. Last year I was working on two headline typefaces for Google and I experimented with the simplest rhythm where the ratio of black and white is almost 1:1, typical for Fraktur and German lettering. The result was two fonts, Denk and Fjalla, which have a different expression but share the same rhythm. My challenge is to find a good rhythm in Cyrillic.
For Parmigiano I made a few sketches and focused on testing Cyrillic in the text as soon as possible.
I intend to come back to drawing later on in order to find the right details.
Time to get to know more about you. How did you come to type design and what are your interests and your experiences in type design? Could you tell us about one of the projects you are most happy with?
I studied at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts. The faculty of Graphic Arts has a great tradition created by several generations of book artists. I learned painting, drawing, book illustration, printing techniques and graphic design. Though the drawings were mostly realistic, the emphasis was put on the space between the objects. I learned to work with the white space of a book page and to value the light coming from the surface. Perhaps the urge to move from realistic drawing to abstract forms brought me to type design, with its clear rhythms of black and white. I was fascinated by the music of calligraphy from the first moment I touched the broad nib pen, which at that time was just a piece of a wooden ruler split and cut for writing. I became seriously interested in type in the final year of my bachelor degree and did my internship at ParaType. A year after the graduation I was invited to teach typography at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow. In the beginning I had very little knowledge and a lot of courage and curiosity and the interaction with students was exciting and taught all of us a great deal. Surprisingly enough, a few years later when I had my lectures well prepared the interest was gone and I started to question all my ideas and practice. In search for the new perspective I came to The Hague to become a student again. Speaking about my favourite project, it is still to be designed. Every typeface I’ve been working on is a step towards it.
My first steps in type design and my first encounter with a Bodonian typeface: in 2003 I made numerous sketches for Bauer Bodoni Cyrillic. An ‘old school’ technique: tracing paper, pencil 0,35 mm, isograph 0,1 mm, black ink, white gouache for corrections, the size of a capital letter 70 mm.
Many things are said about Bodoni’s heritage. What was your idea of Bodoni and of Bodonian typefaces before joining the Parmigiano Project?
With my natural inclination for the broad nib pen and the dynamic of the Renaissance typefaces, the Modern serifs looked too static and rational to me and I used to feel like a guest in an alien world. It is interesting that Robert Bringhurst refers to Bodoni as the ‘nearest typographic counterpart to Byron and Liszt’ calling him ‘typography’s arch-romantic’. Before joining the Parmigiano project I thought that his designs were pure perfection. This impression was created by a few images I have seen in the books on type history and mostly by designing Cyrillic for Bauer Bodoni, and I spent hours and hours trying to make perfect drawings. My teacher Tagir Safaev patiently guided me through my learning process back then. I had a feeling that Bodoni shapes were flawless. But looking at the original copy of Manuale Tipografico changed this impression. There I found such a variety of forms and proportions that I understood it was a continuous experimentation, endless change, as if the master was never satisfied with the result. The endless urge to move on, to do something different. At least, this is what I saw studying Bodoni’s Cyrillics.
What’s your opinion of Bodoni’s Cyrillic designs?
The Civil Type we are using now was introduced in the early 18th century, when the reform took place, and during the following century Cyrillic evolved to work well with the Modern Serif. Typefaces designed by the Didot family had a great influence on Cyrillic typography and were popular in Russia. With Bodoni Cyrillics it was different, he never sold them to Russia and I wonder if they were ever used for any publication besides the Manual. I wonder why did Bodoni cut so many Cyrillic fonts (81 pages in the second volume of Manuale Tipografico are dedicated to the Russian fonts). Perhaps he used as a reference some Cyrillic examples from the early and mid 18th century, while the script evolved and his design would look old-fashioned for Russian eyes even in his time. But his exploration of Cyrillic was very dynamic and daring, especially the way he treated the ‘inconvenient’ letters. Some shapes are very expressive, some are clumsy, but he kept all of them. I have the impression that his experimentation was not systematic, but rather he wanted to try all the possibilities. For different sizes he used letter patterns originating from the different historical periods, for example ‘zhe’ in the big sizes is more archaic than in the small ones. It is very interesting to observe how one letter changes from one size to another.
Digital photographs of the Cyrillic letter ‘zhe’ (from the 1818 Manuale Tipografico) show the changes in letter pattern from the smallest size to the biggest and the experiments of the great master with an alien character.
What’s your approach in designing Parmigiano Cyrillic? How would you describe the Parmigiano Cyrillic you’re working on?
For me this project gives a reason to look at the rich historical material for Cyrillic we have from that period, from the great Italian master himself, from his competitor, the Didot family in Paris, and from Russian type foundries. The Royal library in the Hague has an original copy of Manuale Tipografico so looking at the Cyrillic designs made by the great master will be a great source of inspiration. Making a revival of Bodoni’s design won’t work nowadays, but there are a lot of ideas definitely worth trying. For example, Bodoni systematically made the ‘legs’ of ‘zhe’ much thinner than the stem, I am almost sure this solution can work well in the text. The spirit of experimentation will be the key for my design process. I will try different ideas, I will compare the variations, I will see how they influence the rhythm and how they change the balance between historical and contemporary feeling. What I like most about the Parmigiano project is that it is a contemporary type system inspired by the work of Bodoni, so my aim is to find the unique Bodoni expression in modern Cyrillic.
My inspiration in designing Cyrillic comes from the language, from Russian literature and poetry. Cyrillic script might not be the most beautiful because of its dramatic history, but the language has a lot of genuine rhythms, beauty and power. I have chosen a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva written in 1915 to reflect the spirit of Romanticism present in Bodoni designs.
Thinking about Parmigiano Typofamily in use. What would you think to be one of the most interesting applications?
I think for a big family the most interesting application would be a piece of complex typography, with different kinds of texts. It might be interesting to set a theatre play with this family. I would think of loud, expressive, experimental typography rather than calm and classical, because the whole family is a crazy set of contrasting styles. Back at my university we had an assignment to give intonation to the text by means of typography. So the choice or the change of the typeface was not determined by the function of the text but by the emotion and emphasis we wanted to give to it. It involved mixing more than two or three different typefaces, and Parmigiano type system can give amazing variety and unity at the same time.