As part of the 2009 AGIdeas programme, AGDA Victoria is bringing out from New York, type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones.

Frere-Jones grew up in a world of commercial art, his late father Robyn was advertising copy writer. Robyn was once described as a writer that could make sense of anything impossible to describe. His mother was in the creative business too, as a production manager. Frere-Jones grew up subsequently amid tightly set headlines; which he loathes, artwork and printed ephemera with a purpose.

Tobias Frere-Jones along with Jonathan Hoefler runs a small yet universally praised type house Hoefler Frere-Jones based in New York City. It is not every day that a genuine type designer, not a graphic designer that designs the odd typeface, presents their version of design to a willing Australian audience.

Type designers can be placed as one of the unassuming custodians of language itself. Type designers have a direct linage with creators written language since cuneiform letterforms developed in 34th century BC. Type designers work is a means of transporting written expression through history, and it also happens to be handsome to delicate individual creative expression.

What makes a type designer special, above and beyond your average graphic is that on the surface their work is a process blatantly familiar – as everyone through the process of hand writing designs and constructs letterforms in day-to-day communications. However behind this seemingly simple façade of developing letterforms is a rigorous, obsessive attention to detail, extraordinary foresight, and the ability to comprehend designs through the eyes and minds countless graphic designers, end users.

Type designers have to imagine their typefaces used by the worst of graphic designers through to the best. The better the type design it seems, the better it can make the most mundane and impractical design appeal to the innocent on lookers.

See Tobias’s exhibition here

TOBIAS FRERE-JONES (USA)
MAY 4 – JUNE 6
THE NARROWS

Tobias Frere-Jones
MAY 4 – JUNE 6 2009
The Narrows
Level 2
141 Flinders Lane
Melbourne VIC
AUSTRALIA 3000
+ 61 03 9654 1534

Open Wed to Fri 12 – 6 pm,
Sat 12 – 5

OPENS MONDAY APRIL 4, 6PM

Read about Tobias in The Age. Visit Hoefler Frere-Jones here