E D U C AT I O N :

T h e A r t I n s t i t u t e o f C a l i f o r n i a - H o l l y wo o d

G ra p h i c D e s i g n

Fa l l 2009 - Winter 2011

F a s h i o n I n s t i t u t e o f D e s i g n & M e rc h a n d i s e

G ra p h i c D e s i g n / B ra n d i n g

Fall 2011 - Current

E X P E R I E N C E

F re e l a n c e Jo b s

L a y o u t D e s i g n / F IDM MODE magaz ine

Fash ion Inst i tute of Des ign & Merchandise/ Fa l l & Winter 2011

N ew s l e t t e r D e s i g n

The Ar t Inst i tute of Ca l i forn ia-Hol lywood / Spr ing 2011

B i r t h d a y I n v i t a t i o n / J anuar y 2011

G r ap h i c D e s i g n e r / P h o t o g r ap h e r

R o j a s B o u t i q u e / June 2010 - Ju ly 2010

Cata log des ign for the summer c loth ing l ine +

photogr apher for c loth ing l ine photoshot + in char ge

o f up load ing images onto the webs i te and facebook updates

T E C H N I Q U E S

A d o b e P ro g r a m s

A d o b e I l l u s t r a t o r C S 4 / C S 5

A d o b e I n D e s i g n C S 4 / C S 5

A d o b e P h o t o s h o p C S 4 / C S 5

P l a t f o r m s

M a c O S

W i n d ow s X P, V i s t a

& W i n d ow s 7

O t h e r :

M i c r o s o f t Wo r d 2 0 0 7

M i c r o s o f t E x c e l l 2 0 0 7

Wo r d P r e s s

Enter the year in a more balance place RESERVATIONS: b e i j i n h o t e l & r e s o r t . c o m

Typography makes at least two kinds of sense, if it makes

any sense at all. It makes visual sense and historical sense.

The visual side of typography is always on display, and

materials for the study of its visual form are many and

widespread. The history of letter- forms and their usage is

visible too, to those with access to manuscripts, inscriptions

and old books, but from others it is largely hidden.

This book has therefore grown into some-thing more than

a short manual of typographic etiquette. It is the fruit of a lot

of long walks in the wilderness of letters: in part a pocket field

guide to the living wonders that are found there, and in part a

meditation on the ecological principles, survival techniques, and

ethics that apply. The principles of typography as I understand

them are not a set of dead conventions but the tribal customs of

the magic forest, where ancient voices speak from all directions

and new ones move to unremembered forms.

One question, nevertheless, has been often in my mind.

When all right-thinking human beings are struggling to

remember that other men and women are free to be different,

and free to become more different still, how can one honestly

write a rulebook? What reason and authority exist for these

commandments, suggestions, and instructions? Surely

typographers, like others, ought to be at liberty to follow or to

blaze the trails they choose.

YPEUbiqUiToUs

The presence of typography both good and

bad, can be seen everywhere.

Typography thrives as a shared concern and there are no

paths at all where there are no shared desires and directions.

A typographer determined to forge new routes must move,

like other solitary travellers, through uninhabited country and

against the grain of the land, crossing common thoroughfares

in the silence before dawn. The subject of this book is not

typographic solitude, but the old, well- travelled roads at the

core of the tradition: paths that each of us is free to follow or

not, and to enter and leave when we choose if only we know

the paths are there and have a sense of where they lead.That

freedom is denied us if the tradition is concealed or left for dead.

Originality is everywhere, but much originality is blocked if the

way back to earlier discoveries is cut or overgrown. If you use

this book as a guide, by all means leave the road when you wish.

That is precisely the use of a road: to reach individu- ally chosen

points of departure. By all means break the rules, and break

them beautifully, deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends

for which they exist.

Letterforms change constantly, yet differ very little, because

they are alive. The principles of typographic clarity have also

scarcely altered since the second half of the fifteenth century,

when the first books were printed in roman type. Indeed, most of

the principles of legibility and design explored in this book were

known and used by Egyptian scribes writing hieratic script with

reed pens on papyrus in 1000 B.C. Samples of their work sit now

in museums in Cairo, London and New York, still lively, subtle,

and perfectly legible thirty centuries after they were made.

Writing systems vary, but a good page is not hard to learn

to recognize, whether it comes from Tang Dynasty China, The

Egytian New Kingdom typographers set for themselves than

with the mutable or Renaissance Italy. The principles that unite

these distant schools of design are based on the structure and

scale of the human body the eye, the hand, and the forearm in

particlar and on the invisible but no less real, no less demanding,

no less sensuous anatomy of the human mind. I don’t like to call

these principles universals, because they are largely unique to

our species. Dogs and ants, for example, read and write by more

chemical means. But the underlying principles of typography

are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of

human fashions and fads.

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a

durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its

heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of It is true

that typographer’s tools are presently changing with consider-

able force and speed, but this is not a manual in the use of any

particular typesetting system or medium. I suppose that most

readers of this book will set most of their type in digital form, us-

ing computers, but I have no preconceptions about which brands

of computers, or which versions of which proprietary software,

they may use. The essential elements of style have more to do

with the goals the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into

living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new

machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source

“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.”

Luca Barcellona is 32 years old. He has his own studio in

Milan, where he works as a freelance graphic designer

and calligrapher. Letters are the main ingredient of his

creations. He teaches calligraphy with the Associazione

Calligrafica Italiana and holds workshops in several

European cities. The means of his work is to make the

manual skill of an ancient art as writing and the languages and instruments

of the digital era coexist. In 2003 he founded with Rae Martini and Marco

Klefisch the collective Rebel Ink, with which he gives life to a live exhibition

of calligraphy, writing and illustration. In 2009 he has worked for the National

Museum of Zurich, with calligraphist Klaus Peter Schaffel, to realize the faithful

reproduction of a big globe dated back to the 1569, using calligraphy with

original materials (quill and natural inks). Among the brands that requested his

lettering we can number Carhartt, Nike, Mondadori, Zoo York, Dolce&Gabbana,

Sony BMG, Seat, Volvo, Universal, Eni. Among his latest collective exhibitions:

“Oscuro Scrutare”, at the Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan, the project “Some

Type of Wonderful” in Melbourne/Sidney and “Don’t Believe the Type” (Den

Haag). As well as taking part to several independent projects his works appeared

in many publications; the latest were on american magazine “Letter Arts

Review”, “Calligraphy and Graphic Design” by Marco Campedelli, and the books

“Playful Type 2”, “Los Logos 5” and “Arabesque 2”, published by Gestalten.

-let type talk-HERB LUBALIN