Zuzana Licko (born Zuzana Ličko, 1961) is a Slovak-born American type designer and visual artist known for co-founding Emigre Fonts, a digital type foundry in Berkeley, CA. She has designed and produced numerous digital typefaces including the popular Mrs Eaves, Modula, Filosofia, and Matrix. In 1997, Licko was awarded the AIGA Medal for her contributions to American graphic design.

As a corresponding interest she also creates ceramic sculptures and jacquard weavings.

Early life

Licko was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia and came to the United States with her family aged 7.

Licko was introduced to computers by her father, a biomathematician at the University of California, San Francisco. She would help him with data processing during her summer breaks. The first font she created on a computer was a Greek alphabet, adapted for the pen plotter, which her father used on his graph printouts.

When she started her university education, her goal was to earn a degree in architecture, but she changed to a visual studies major when she discovered her passion after taking graphic design and typography classes.

Emigre

In 1985, Licko and VanderLans started Emigre Graphics which had grown out of Emigre magazine, a publication co-founded by VanderLans and two Dutch friends the previous year. VanderLans also started incorporating the bitmap typefaces that Licko designed on the Apple Macintosh in his layouts with issue # 2. Licko's experimental type designs became a prominent feature of the magazine for its entire run. Licko began selling commercial licenses of its digital fonts to users worldwide, first under the name Emigre Graphics and later as Emigre Fonts.

Emigre magazine prominently featured Licko's fonts, some of which were initially created for use in the publication. The magazine is an unintentional archive of Licko's work and progression as a type designer. From her pixelated fonts optimized for bitmap printing to her sophisticated vector designs, Licko's technique advanced with technology. In Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm, Licko discusses her necessary departure from classic type forms in her early fonts. <blockquote>I started my venture with bitmap type designs, created for the coarse resolutions of the computer screen and dot matrix printer. The challenge was that because the early computers were so limited in what they could do you really had to design something special. Even if it was difficult to adapt calligraphy to lead and later lead to photo technology, it could be done, but it was physically impossible to adapt 8-point Goudy Old Style to 72 dots to the inch. In the end you couldn't tell Goudy Old Style from Times Roman or any other serif text face.</blockquote>

Fonts designed by Licko

  • Bitmaps: Emperor, Universal, Oakland and Emigre, 1985, re-released as Lo-Res, 2001
  • Modula, 1985
  • Citizen, 1986
  • Matrix (typeface), 1986, re-released as Matrix II, 2007
  • Variex, 1988 (collaboration with Rudy VanderLans)
  • Oblong, 1988 (collaboration with Rudy VanderLans)
  • Senator, 1988
  • Lunatix, 1988
  • Elektrix, 1989
  • Triplex (typeface), 1989, Condensed added in 1991
  • Totally Gothic, 1990
  • Journal, 1990
  • Whirligig, 1994
  • Dogma, 1994
  • Modula Round, Outlined & Ribbed, 1995
  • Soda Script, 1995
  • Base Nine and Twelve, 1995
  • Mrs Eaves, 1996, based on the 18th century designs of John Baskerville
  • Filosofia and Filosofia Grand, 1996
  • Base Monospace, 1997
  • Hypnopaedia, 1997
  • Tarzana, 1998
  • Solex, 2000
  • Fairplex, 2002
  • Puzzler, 2005
  • Mrs Eaves XL Serif, 2009
  • Mr Eaves Sans, 2009
  • Mr Eaves XL Sans, 2009
  • Base 900, 2010
  • Program, 2013
  • Tangly, 2018
  • Crackly, 2019

Essays by Licko

  • Ambition/Fear, Emigre 11, with Rudy VanderLans, 1989.
  • Discovery by Design, Emigre 32, edited by Rudy VanderLans, 1994.
  • Ceramics and Type Design: Differently Similar, online at the Emigre website.
  • Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm.

Awards

Licko and her husband Rudy VanderLans won the Chrysler Design Award in 1994. Apart from winning this award, their work on Emigre also won the Publish magazine Impact Award in 1996. A year later, they got an American Institute for Graphic Arts Gold Medal Award. Soon after, in 1998 they were awarded the Charles Nyples Award in Innovation in Typography.

The Society of Typographic Aficionados awarded Licko the 2013 SOTA Typography Award, citing her "intellectual, highly-structured approach to type design" and her contributions to the digital typography industry.

  • MacUser Desktop Publisher of the Year Award, 1986
  • Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, 1994
  • Publish Magazine Impact Awards, 1996
  • American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal, 1997
  • Charles Nypels Award for Excellence in Typography, 1998
  • Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco holds a complete set of Emigre magazine in their permanent collection.

See also

  • List of AIGA medalists
  • Filosofia
  • Mrs Eaves
  • Pirouette: Turning Points in Design

Notes

Additional online resources

  • Eye (Website), “Cult of the Ugly,” by Steven Heller, 1993
  • Letter to Emigre Magazine, (PDF) by Gunnar Swanson, 1994
  • 2x4 (Website), “Designer as Author,” by Michael Rock, 1996
  • Graphic Design USA 18. "Critical Conditions: Zuzana Licko, Rudy VanderLans, and the Emigre Spirit" by Michael Dooley, 1998.
  • SpeakUp (Website), Interview with Rudy VanderLans by Armin Vit, 2002.
  • Typotheque (Website), “Context in Critique,” review of Emigre #64, Rant, by Dmitri Siegel, 2004
  • Typotheque (Website), “Rudy VanderLans, editor of Emigre,” interview by David Casacuberta and Rosa Llop, 2004
  • AIGA (Website), “An Interview with Rudy VanderLans: Still Subversive After All These Years,” by Steven Heller, 2004
  • Design Observer (Website), “Emigre: An Ending,” by Rick Poynor, 2005
  • TapeOp (Website), “Rudy VanderLans: Emigre No. 69: The End,” review by John Baccigaluppi, 2008
  • Eye (Website), “The farewell tour syndrome,” book review by Emily King, 2009
  • Communication Arts (Website), “Emigre No.70: The Look Back Issue,” book review by Angelynn Grant, 2009
  • Dwell (Website), "Emigre No.70,” book review by Miyoko Ohtake, 2009
  • Print (Website), “Emigre’s Lucky Number,” by Steven Heller, 2009
  • Print magazine (Website), “Design Couples: Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko," interview by Caitlin Dover, 2010
  • Étapes magazine (Website) Zuzana Licko interview with Pascal Béjean, 2010
  • Fast Company (Website), “Type Master: An Interview with Emigre’s Rudy VanderLans," by Alissa Walker, 2010.
  • MoMA (Website), Emigre Magazine, issues 1-69, permanent collection, 2011
  • MoMA (Website), Oakland typeface, permanent collection, 2011
  • The Atlantic (Website), "Can the Rule-Breaking Font Designers of Three Decades Ago Still Break Rules?,” by Steven Heller, 2012
  • Plazm Magazine (Website), "In Conversation with Emigre" by Sara Dougher and Joshua Berger, 2013
  • 100 Best Fonts , 2015
  • Print (Website), “The Legibility Wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s ,” 2016
  • Communication Arts (Website), “Emigre Fonts,” book review by Angelynn Grant, 2016
  • AIGA, Eye on Design (Website), “Emigre Type Foundry Pretty Much Designed the ‘90s—Here’s What it Looked Like,” book review by Angela Riechers, 2016
  • MyFonts (Website), interview with Zuzana Licko by Jan Middendorp, 2016.
  • Fontstand (Website), “Emigre: Time and Time Again,” by Sébastien Morlighem, 2016
  • Klim Type Foundry (Website), “Tilting at windmills,” Rudy vanderLans replies to “Welcome to the infill font foundry,” 2016
  • Huffington Post (Website), “One of Today’s Most Popular Fonts Has a Wild Centuries-Long History,” by Maddie Crum, 2017
  • University of Reading (Website), “Emigre magazine: design, discourse and authorship ,” an exhibition curated by Francisca Monteiro and Rick Poynor, 2017
  • Typography & Graphic Communication (Website), "Emigre magazine: design, discourse and authorship,” exhibition, 2017
  • ReadyMag Stories (Website), “Emigre ,” by Zhdan Philippov and Vitaly Volk, 2020
  • “Typography and Legibility: An Analysis of Tschichold, Licko, and VanderLans,” (PDF) by Chaney Boyle, 2020

Additional print resources

Additional print resources

  • Bouvet, Michel, East Coast West Coast: Graphistes aux États-unis, Paris, France, Les Éditions Textuel, 2002. Essay on history of Emigre.
  • Cees W. De Jong, Alston W. Purvis, and Friedrich Friedl. 2005. Creative Type: A Sourcebook of Classical and Contemporary Letterforms. Thames & Hudson.
  • Dawson, Peter, The Field Guide to Typography: Typefaces in the Urban Landscape, New York, NY, Prestel, 2013. Interview with Rudy VanderLans & Zuzana Licko.
  • Eskilson, Stephen J., Graphic Design: A New History, London, UK, Laurence King Publishing, 2007. Essay on Emigre in chapter on “Postmodern Typography.”
  • Heller, Stephen, ed., Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design. New York, NY, Allworth Press with School of Visual Arts, 2014. Essay on Emigre in chapter on "Mass Media.”
  • Lupton, Ellen, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture, New York, NY, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Short profile of Emigre and Zuzana Licko's typefaces. Book published in conjunction with exhibit at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
  • McCarthy, Steven, The Designer as Author, Producer, Activist, Entrepreneur, Curator & Collaborator: New Models for Communicating, Amsterdam, Netherlands, BIS, 2013. Emigre referenced throughout, and short profile of Emigre in chapter on “Typographic Design Authorship.”
  • Meggs, Philip B., ed., A History of Graphic Design, New York, NY, John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Profile of Emigre in chapter on “Pioneers of Digital Graphic Design.”
  • Poynor, Rick, Design Without Boundaries: Visual Communication in Transition, London, UK, Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1998. Emigre referenced in essay “Cult of the Ugly,” and one essay, “Into the Digital Realm,” on Emigre.
  • Poynor, Rick, No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003. Emigre referenced throughout.
  • Shaughnessy, Adrian, How to be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul, London, UK, Laurence King Publishing, 2005. Interview with Rudy VanderLans.
  • Emigre official site
  • Emigre Archives at Letterform Archive
  • Emigre Magazine Index created by Jessica Barness for The Goldstein Museum of Design
  • Emigre Fonts at Adobe Fonts
  • Zuzana Licko