TIPO BRDA 06
In the Silence of the Hills Type Designers are Hidden

author: Jelena Drobac
photo: Jelena Drobac, Lucijan Bratuš

Twelfth typographic workshop Tipo Brda was held from 29th of July to 6th of August in Kaverljag, in the Slovenian part of Istria region. For the last ten years Slovenian typographers, along with occasional guest participants and lecturers from abroad, organize a work full gathering. During previous years their guests were from Austria, Hungary, Romania, UK, Croatia... and this year it was my turn, as the first participant from Serbia.

My kind hosts really did their best to make me feel very welcome. Beside the inevitable discussions about typography, software improvements, peaks of Slovenian design and working practice of Ljubljana’s Academy of Art and Design (ALU), Slovenian colleagues introduced me to beauties of the local landscapes and cities, the basics of their language, culture and customs. Those were really precious acknowledgements!

In the last three years, the workshops were held in a small village called Kaverljag, about 10 kilometers from Kopar, the biggest Slovenian harbor. In fact, it’s in the house of Ales Sedmak, Slovenian painter and illustrator. Besides this gathering, here are held many other international workshops organized by Association Kaverljag, ALU and Slovenian Artist Association.

Tipo Brda was launched in 1997. in Šsmartno, located in the located in the wine region Brda near the Italian border, thus the name of the workshop (Type Hills). Back then, the gathering was organized by Lucijan Bratus, professor of Typography at ALU and several enthusiastic students. Since then many things have changed – Tipo Brda grew in to a non-profit organization and a specific cultural institution. Many participants and lecturers passed through this typographic atelier, location changed, but the mixture of fun and hard and creative work remained their trade mark.

This year there were sixteen participants with different backgrounds: architects, freelance and agency designer, graphic and industrial design students, estimated type designers, New York Type Directors Club winners, freshmen students... This diversity of participants contributed to the specific charm and quality and resulted with a creative exchange of ideas and solutions to typographic problems. Beside those academic and generation differences, there was a substantial distinction in the approach. The designed letterforms were diverse – from rounded Art Nouveau forms to rough, technocratic forms, from book to display typefaces, from classical calligraphic letters to street graffiti culture. The only thing they had in common is that they were created under the supervision of our mentor professor Lucijan Bratus and during those eight days.

Among many guests and visitors in Kaverljag during our stay there, Ermin Međedović, well-known Slovenian designer, attracted special attention. Last September, he finished the project of designing a typeface family containing about 40 new typefaces specially for Delo , one of the leading Slovenian daily newspapers. This project was a part of a complete redesign of Delo , created by professor Ranko Novak. Međedovic’s lecture was focused on some improved features of the FontLab software which is used to create fonts, but also to some shortcuts and tricks of trade. To me, the most interesting appeared to be his quote of Goudy “Old masters stole our best ideas”, but also the final sentence of his lecture “Good typography is the one that everybody sees but nobody notices” (Beatrice Word, Printing should be invisible). We were delighted that he afterwards found time to see our individual work and to give us some useful and practical suggestions.

The evident result of the workshop is 15 new ready-to-use fonts. The exhibition of this year’s work was presented in that same atelier and afterwards transferred to Ljubljana. It is planned that the whole exhibition is going to be put on display in ALU premises at the beginning of the next school year. It should be noticed that the selection of works from all previous workshops of TypeMountaineers was exhibited in March in the Gallery Kresija. Tipometar already wrote about that. For that occasion, they published two promotional publications: catalogue 100 črkovnih vrst – 100 pangramov (100 typefaces – 100 pangrams) which was shaped as a printing colours catalogue and Tipoledar – typographic calendar where every month is presented with a typeface.

For me, as a student of Belgrade’s Faculty of Applied Arts, it was interesting to face different ways of solving typographic problems and riddles, encounter new principles and methods used in Slovenia. It’s was peculiar to see that Slovenian colleagues use new FontLab Studio, while we in Serbia still use the older Fontographer. Equally interesting was the fact that the vast majority of Slovenian designers make their sketches directly in the computer. Surprisingly for me, Slovenian colleagues were really interested to learn about Serbian way of work and practice and did not hesitate to ask me about anything related to typography and design in Serbia. In that context Cyrillic letters and typeface were especially interesting and exotic to them.

Next gathering of TypeMountaineers is scheduled for the first week of February, this time really in mountains, below mountain Triglav, in Trenta.

Participants of this year’s workshop were, in alphabetical order:

Samo Ačko
Žiga Artnak
Marjeta Bratuš
Robi Doljak
Jelena Drobac
Domen Fras
Miha Kosmač
Tomato Košir
Tanja Medved
Ivian Kan Mujezinović
Tomaž Pilih
Gašper Premože
Uroš Strel
Andraž Sedmak
Andraž Tarman
mentor Lucijan Bratuš