New Zealand is a young country and hasn't had the time, or resources to develop a typeface culture... a lot of our twentieth-century typography seems to be rather British. There might be certain styles of lettering that has a unique Kiwi-ness to it - I'm thinking of the lettering Neil Pardington did for Parihaka - but no definable typeface characteristics.I wondered what is it that makes a style of lettering have a unique Kiwi-ness? How can a typeface express a local or Maori identity?
"Parihaka" is the typeface drawn by Neil Pardington (Kai Tahu), Aaron McKirdy and George Clarke for the exhibition and book Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance at City Gallery Wellington in 2001. It's origins and development make a uniquely New Zealand hybridized font. It's based on the lettering hand-painted on the walls of some nineteenth-century Maori meeting houses, which in itself was influenced by printed letterforms remembered from the early missionaries' Bibles. The lettering was re-interpreted and hand-drawn by the EyeWork Design designers and digitized.
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| Parihaka Typeface |
"Parihaka" is instantly recognisable as New Zealand because of its heritage, and although it's digitised the typeface retains a quirky, hand-painted quality. It's elegant and delicate, with the thin cross bars and serifs, but also solid. I particularly like the variations of the capital A.
The second typeface I looked at, Whakarare, was specifically designed for Te Reo by Johnson Witehira. Johnson's intention was to create a new usable Maori typeface for print in the real world, that expresses 'Maoriness'.
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| Whakarare Typeface |
I found it interesting to read about his process in developing the typeface - the design questions he posed himself and answered in responding to his personal brief. The Whakarare typeface has a whakapapa as it references the he carved pattern or whakarare. Johnson also incorporated Maori typographic preferences established after research Maori typography, including high contrast stroke widths, a strong vertical stress, a preference for a very high x-height, and also the use all caps and small caps without letters extending below the base-line.
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| Whakarare Typographic Details |
If you'd like to look at and read about the development of other typefaces with a local New Zealand accent the following electronic document is a good place to start. It contains essays and typeface specimen illustration, developed for an Objectspace exhibition on the topic. This is something I intend to follow up on in my printed research.
Title: Printing Type - New Zealand Type Design Since 1870
Editor: Jonty Valentine
Accessed: 3 April 2013
http://www.objectspace.org.nz/Downloads/Assets/2187/Printing_types.pdf
Sources:
Website: Eye Magazine - No 79, Vol 20, Spring 2011Title: Reputations: Kris Sowersby
Accessed: 27 March 2013
http://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-kris-sowersby
Blog: Art, Life, TV, Etc
Title: Playing On
Author: Cheryl Bernstein
Accessed: 3 April 2013
http://cherylbernstein.blogspot.co.nz/2009/08/playing-on.html
Website: Design Assembly - Conversations on Graphic Design
Title: Arohatia te Reo – cherishing the language with Maori typeface Whakarare.
Author: Corinne Smith, 26 July 2012
Accessed: 3 April 2013
http://www.designassembly.org.nz/articles/arohatia-te-reo
Melanie poses a good question - What elements make a typographic style "Kiwi"?
ReplyDeleteI believe that in-depth research into what a typeface is being created for, is crucial to embodying a desired typographic style. In this case, an iconic Kiwi style. I found it really interesting to read about the process of creating Parihaka. Delving into the history to find inspiration seems to be an invaluable process - and as the blog entry that Melanie referenced (Cheryl Bernstein) covers, it is a testament to a cyclic process of design - where historical elements of design are reintroduced and often altered to be relevant among today's society.
When I read Melanie's quote from Kris Sowersby, I realized I had recently seen "Feijoa", his first retail typeface in 2007. Though the typeface was not designed to posess a NZ identity, I still gravitated to this thought - that it posessed a NZ-esque quality or kiwi-ness as Melanie put it. Sowersby talks about his desire to create a soft, human-like typeface with Feijoa.
If I were to assign it a persona, the typeface reminds me of a new organic fruit juice company. But after viewing the typeface in different languages here: http://www.typographyserved.com/Gallery/Feijoa/57741, I wondered whether it still posesses the same NZ-esque elements. For me, personally, it seems to. However, I can't help but notice how well it looks in French!
I particularly love the enthusiastically elegant ligatures of Feijoa. There is a friendly, homely feel to the typeface. Perhaps that's just the kiwi-ness coming through.
Comment by Caroline Konarkowska
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ReplyDeleteA really helpful research, i'm trying to research about the same topic, but then, i found some thing else that about type and identity. and i found that as the time change the architecture develop the typeface changes as well.
ReplyDeletefeel happy read your research :) thank for sharing.
-Livia
As soon as I hear Kiwi-ness I cant help but jump straight to Dick Frizzel. The type-faces brought up in this post are distinctly kiwi in a historical and cultural sense but I just jump straight to the retro-nostalgia side. I think we as a culture embrace the humor of the 'good old days' in our products such as Mammoth Supply Co. and ofcourse the revert back to the classic L&P identity. Dick Frizzel as we know embraces these idea but a specific area of his work I found interesting was Frizzel Wines. The labels are designed with Frizzels nostalgic type face that you would see on a road-side fruit cart but I find the use of this nostalgia on a product that is very much more a part of modern day New Zealand culture interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.frizzellwines.co.nz/index.php
THIS IS AARON
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