TIPO BRDA 08
Another Splendid Typographical Workshop

author: Milica Pantelić
photo: Lucijan Bratuš

translation into English: Dimitrije Stamenović

The renowned Slovenian workshop Tipo Brda, lead by a professor of the Academy of Visual Arts of Ljubljana, Lucijan Bratuš, with the help of a designer Tomato Košir gathered a group of 12 young typography enthusiasts. As in previous years, Tipo Brda welcomed friends of typography from the Belgrade Faculty of Applied Arts.

During the workshop gathering, a change was made in the workshop’s 10 year long tradition. Instead of a standard project which includes development of a font according one’s own sensibility, this time a special task was assigned by the Cultural Association Myra Locatelly.

The village of Čiginj, located in the vicinity of the beautiful Alpine ranges, has attracted tourists by its natural beauty, variety of sport activities and the rustic village life. While selling houses by the local population to foreign tourists helped to increase tourist visibility of the village, it also jeopardized its unique identity. Thus, on the initiative of the Cultural Association Myra Locatelli lead by the writer Zdravko Duša, it was decided to offset this trend by establishing a written record of the names of the village houses including the local dialect. It was proposed that each house in the village would carry a marble plate with the house’s name carved in the plate, so that everyone can read it using the correct dialect.

The typographers-enthusiasts faced a serious challenge. First, they had to conceptualize symbols for semi-vowels for which there are no existing phonetic symbols. Second, they had to come up with typographic and artistic designs for nearly sixty marble plates. Each attendant of the workshop had to design 5 such plates and then present them at a poster session. All names were written with the Čiginj Mantinia font developed by Professor Bratuš.

This tedious work which lasted seven days has been a success owing to the good spirit of the participants, comfortable accommodations and specialties of the local cuisine. Importantly, the young artist were capable of making a good compromise between tedious work in the workshop and the opportunities for having good entertainment, which threatened to divert them from the road of salvaging one Slovenian village from loosing its cultural identity.

Tomato Košir
Jure Kožuh
Tanja Semion
Aljaž Vindiš
Jure Legac
Ana Farkaš
Žiga Artnak
Miha Kosmač
Peter Koštrun
Milica Pantelić
Nemanja Joanović
Lucijan Bratuš

Previous workshops :
Tipo Brda 06
Tipo Brda 07