Emigre

Official Description

Started by Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans.

Emigre, Inc. is a digital type foundry, publisher and distributor of graphic design related software and printed materials based in Northern California. Founded in 1984, coinciding with the birth of the Macintosh, Emigre was one of the first independent type foundries to establish itself centered on personal computer technology. Emigre holds exclusive license to over 300 original typeface designs created by a roster of contemporary designers. Emigre’s full line of typefaces, ornaments and illustrations is available in Type 1 PostScript and TrueType for both the Macintosh and PC.

Emigre’s designs have won numerous awards; Emigre is the 1994 recipient of the prestigious Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design and the 1996 Publish Magazine Impact Award. Emigre is also the 1997 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal Award and the 1998 Charles Nyples Award.

Emigre history

In 1984, Dutch designer Rudy VanderLans began to publish a low-budget experimental design magazine out of his Berkeley, California studio. The first issue of Émigré magazine was produced with typewriter type, but from the second issue onward, Émigré used digital type and digital technology. The magazine was quite controversial at first—the aesthetic of digital type was outrageous to traditional modernist designers like Massimo Vignelli who publicly declared it “garbage.” Despite its early detractors, Émigré has now achieved wide acceptance—even Vignelli retracted his position. The magazine goes down in history as the publication that began to define the possibilities of digital technology for graphic design.

In 1984, VanderLans’s wife, Zuzana Licko, began using the computer to design coarse bitmapped typefaces to accommodate low-resolution printer output of the magazine. After readers inquired about their availability, she sold them to the public as well. Today Licko is one of the profession’s premier type designers. Moving away from bitmapped and decorative faces, some of her most successful recent designs are revivals. For example, Mrs Eaves is a revival of Baskerville and Filosofia is a revival of Bodoni.

Émigré magazine is no longer in publication, however, the Émigré type foundry is a great resource for both unusual, experimental typefaces as well as legible text types.

emigre