Irene Vlachou

The Evolution of Greek Typefaces

June 10, Saturday 13:00 – SALT Galata

The presentation will deal with the evolution of Greek typefaces in the last decades, in particular how new technology and environments have altered/affected the skeleton of the script and what are the new trends.

The period that will be covered is for multi-script typefaces of the 90's till today.

Through the presentation of case studies, it will analyse the methodology of the design procedure, i.e. how it was done in the past and how it’s done these days, and the typographic needs that have changed over these two decades. It will also study the stylistic side of the Greek letterforms, the fashions and the styles that were preferred back in the 90’s and talk about how the technological evolution is reflected in the skeleton of the greek letterforms in today’s typography.

In this presentation I will also attempt to answer the following questions:

How are fonts developed for specific languages, and how does that affect the Greek fonts?

What research do designers undertake these days when they include Greek character sets in their designs, and what methodology do they use?

How has the lack of education in the typography field affected the typographic style of modern Greek typefaces and could that result in a second wave of latinization of the Greek typefaces?

About Vlachou

Irene Vlachou is a typeface designer working in Athens. She holds an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, UK. She is collaborating with many international type foundries as a typeface designer and as a consultant on several projects specialising in the Greek script. In recent years she is senior type designer for Type Together foundry.