Jeffery Keedy, born 1957, is an American graphic designer,

type designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

, writer and educator. He is notable as an

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

and contributor to books and periodicals on graphic design. He is also notable for the design of ''Keedy Sans'', a

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

acquired in the permanent collection of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in 2011.

Biography

A 1985 graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Keedy has been teaching design at the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

(CalArts) since his graduation. Keedy was also a frequent contributor to ''Emigre'' magazine throughout the twenty years of its publication. His designs and essays have been published in '' Eye'', '' I.D.'', '' Emigre'', ''Critique'', ''Idea'', ''Adbusters'', ''Looking Closer'' One and Two, ''Faces on the Edge: Type in the Digital Age'', ''New Design: Los Angeles'' and ''The Education of a Graphic Designer''. His typeface Keedy Sans, designed in 1989, is distributed through Emigre Fonts. “Jeffery Keedy described his design of Hard Times as an “ironic commentary” on classic typefaces. Whether the font was truly ironic—its name conjures up not only a typeface but also Charles Dickens and the Great Depression—or just the result of someone goofing around with Fontographer is immaterial. Either way, Keedy’s alteration of Times New Roman—hacking off and reassembling serifs and other parts—encouraged a whole slew of typographic mutilations in the 1990s (including fonts “designed” for advertising campaigns for Putnam Investments and Air France).” Juan Pablo Mejía (2011). In the mid 1980s he was a proponent of the view that design should be looked at as a cultural practice connected to themes of popular culture than a problem solving one.

Books

* With

Rudy VanderLans Rudy VanderLans (born 1955, Voorburg) is a Dutch graphic designer, photographer, and the co-founder of Emigre Fonts with his wife Zuzana Licko. Emigre Fonts is an independent type foundry in Berkeley, CA. He was also the art director and editor of ...

Zuzana Licko Zuzana Licko (born Zuzana Ličko, 1961) is a Slovak-born American type designer and visual artist known for co-founding Emigre Fonts, a digital type foundry in Berkeley, CA. She has designed and produced numerous digital typefaces including the ...

, Mary E. Gray, ''Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm'', Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993. ()

Articles

* ''Graphic Design in the Postmodern Era'', ''Emigre 47: Relocating Design'', edited by

, 1998

(Full text available online

* ''The Rules of Typography According to (Crackpots) Experts'', Eye (magazine), ''Eye'', No. 11, Vol. 3, edited by

Rick Poynor Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography, and visual culture. Career He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on ''Blueprint'' magazine in London. After founding ''Eye'' magazine, which he edited from 19 ...

, Wordsearch Ltd, London, 1993.

References

External links

Short CalArts bio

Short Emigre bio

Keedy Sans at Emigre Fonts

Biography

Books

Articles

References

External links

See also