Sibylle Hagmann, Teri Kahan, Ronna Penner, Olivera Stojadinovic, and Mira Vucko are part of a new and growing group of female typeface designers. While you may not be familiar with their names now, you soon will be.

SIBYLLE HAGMANN
Sibylle Hagmann has been creating award-winning typeface designs since she first clicked a mouse in Fontographer. She began drawing alphabets at CalArts while studying under Jeff Keedy. In fact, her first typeface design grew out of one of Keedy’s class projects. “He started us with an exercise in writing a script with a broad nib pen,” she recalls. “We could choose which kind of script we wanted to write. Once familiar with the characteristics of the chosen script, curve and stroke parts were translated into Fontographer. This was to become PostFound, my first digital typeface.” The design won a Type Directors Club (TDC) Typographic Excellence award in 1997. Her next typeface design, Cholla, a large sans and slab serif family, was drawn as a commission for the Art Center College of Design. It, too, won a TDC Typographic Excellence award, in addition to recognition in ATypI’s typeface design competition, bukva:raz!.

Hagmann became interested in typeface design while she was still in her teens, but soon became discouraged after trying her hand at sketching a set of uppercase letters. This typographic inquisitiveness, however, stayed with her through college and into an early job at the Swiss design agency of Zintzmeyer and Lux. It was there that Hagmann’s interest blossomed into a passion. “The agency had commissioned Hans Eduard Meier, the designer of Syntax, for a special project,” she remembers. “A couple of times I had the chance to look over his shoulder while he was working and was immediately bitten by the type bug. I wanted to design letters myself and looked for an opportunity to try it out.”

Something else also inspired Hagmann’s love of typeface design. “While working as a graphic designer, I quickly tired of always having to please the client,” she explains. “I think of type design as a niche where a creative person has more freedom.”

Hagmann’s most recent design, Odile, is inspired by an experimental typeface of W.A. Dwiggins. The design, named “Charter,” was a study in informal Roman character shapes. Only a lowercase was drawn and the design was not released commercially. In her interpretation of Charter, Hagmann has not only added the missing caps but also additional weights, a suite of swash letters, and two italics (a sloped and an upright design). www.kontour.com

TERI KAHAN
In Hawaiian, kaha means to draw, make marks, turn, or surf. The same letters make up the last name of designer Teri Kahan, and it’s no mere coincidence: Kahan loves to draw, and a passion for the ocean and the spirit of Hawaii (where she once lived) inspires her life and artwork. She developed an artist’s eye and a fondness for nature while growing up in Southern California. At 14 she discovered Speedball pens, and her graphic talents were nurtured in art classes throughout high school and college. While others were joining sororities, Teri found kindred spirits in the Society for Calligraphy.

Kahan’s professional graphic services began with restaurant menus and hand-painted posters, and have since evolved into corporate print, apparel, and web communications. In the late 1980s, Toyota Motor Sales commissioned her to develop an alphabet based on the Lexus logo. The experience prompted her to send some of her hand-lettered logos and headlines to International Typeface Corporation (ITC). The creative collaboration of Teri and ITC led to two typefaces, Cherie and Surfboard, and two illustration fonts, Connectivities (relationship images) and Holistics (images of spirituality).

Soon after launching her business, Kahan began teaching lettering and design part time for Golden West College. Since then she has traveled widely, teaching workshops for various art societies, conferences, museums, and colleges. The courses Teri teaches range from pencil to pixel, encompassing both traditional and digital lettering, illustration, photography, and design.

Her most recent fonts, Puamana and Kahana, were released in 2004. ITC Puamana captures the essence of the tropics, suggesting palm trees bending in an ocean breeze. In ITC Kahana, Kahan created a design that is both distinctive and versatile. Menus, posters, display headlines, packaging, and brochures fall easily within this typeface’s range. www.terikahandesign.com

TOP: Part of Olivera Stojadinovic’s presentation of Aspera to ITC was this powerful piece of calligraphy. Proving once again that type in use is much more engaging than a simple alphabet showing—and that good use can be a powerful communications tool.