Josef Týfa (5 December 1913 – 19 January 2007) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

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 ...

. He significantly contributed to the cultivation of corporate style and the development of book design and advertising in the 1950s and 60s.Association Typographique Internationale : Main Program – Life and work of Josef Týfa
/ref> Typefaces he designed include: Kolektiv, Tyfa, Juvenis, Amos and Academia, many of which he

digitize DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer- ...

d with

František Štorm František "Franta" Štorm (born 3 July 1966) is a Czech musician, photographer, typographer, writer, teacher, artist, illustrator and record producer, famous for being the vocalist and a founding member of the black metal band Master's Hammer. ...

, founder of Storm Type Foundry. He has indicated that his influences include Jaroslav Benda,

Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi (21 June 1891 – 9 January 1979) was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and is known wor ...

, and modern

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...

and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

including functionalism.Storm Type Foundry – Josef Týfa

/ref>

Life

He was born in the village of Běloves (part of

Náchod Náchod (; german: Nachod) is a town in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 19,000 inhabitants. It is known both as a tourist destination and centre of industry. The town centre with the castle complex is well preserved ...

) in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

in December 1913.Josef Týfa
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Náchodské.info

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Novinky.cz
He studied graphics at the Rotter School in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

and later became art director of the Centrotex export company.Josef Týfa – Linotype Font Designer Gallery
/ref> In the 50s and early 60s he designed advertisements for companies such as

Pilsner Urquell Brewery Plzeňský Prazdroj, a. s. (, known in English as the Pilsner Urquell Brewery, is a Czech brewery opened in 1842 and headquartered in Plzeň, Czech Republic. It was the first brewery to produce pale lager, branded as Pilsner Urquell, which becam ...

Bata Shoes The Bata Corporation (known as Bata, and in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, known as Baťa) is a multinational footwear, apparel and fashion accessories manufacturer and retailer of Moravian (Czech) origin, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzer ...

and the department store Brouk and Babka.Josef Týfa se zapsal i do pověstné knihovny Adobe
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Strategie.cz

/ref> Later in the 60s he began to focus more on type design and won several contests announced by state type foundry

Grafotechna Grafotechna (Grafotechna n. p., Závod 5, Výroba písma, mosazných linek a matric) was a Czechoslovak type foundry, created in 1951. It ceased to exist after 1990. It was the only manufacturer of metal types in the former Czechoslovakia , ...

. Throughout his whole career Týfa designed hundreds of books. Upon the improvement and popularization of digital typography software, although familiar with traditional requirements on

metal type In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts be ...

, he quickly began to enjoy the technology, and adjusted his old designs to a more contemporary look. He died in

at the age of 93.

Typefaces

Tyfa

"Tyfa" was designed in 1959 and first released in 1960 when a Czechoslovakian design competition was held to determine the best new Czech typeface for book composition. Týfa's "Tyfa" typeface was the winner and the design was made into fonts for the

linotype machine The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing; manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for individual uses. Lin ...

and as a hand-set type by the Czech type foundry,

(for

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...

Berthold Type Foundry H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era, making the transition from foundry type to cold type successfully and only coming to dissolution in the digital type era. ...

later produced letter matrices of the design for Staromat devices, used for manual

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting). Th ...

of display alphabets. It was also available on dry transfers of Transotype in the 1980s. Although the design found immediate and continued popularity in Czechoslovakia, it saw little use elsewhere.Storm Type Foundry – Tyfa
Fonts.com – ITC Tyfa
/ref> The design was inspired by the work of

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

ITC Tyfa

18 years after the publication of the original design Jan Solpera, another Czech type designer, sent a letter ITC suggesting that it should release Tyfa as an ITC font. ITC was unable to communicate with Týfa at the time due to existence of the "

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

". Týfa was willing to license his design to ITC but could only provide his original sketches from the late 1950s, which were a set of signs on pieces of yellowing cardboard about B2 in size. In 1995 František Štorm approached Týfa, proposing to

his design under Týfa's direction. It was issued by ITC in 1998.

Design

Storm began digitizing the typeface under Týfa's direction and feels the design shows "a little touch of baroque typography". According to ITC, while it is possible to see the influences of older Czech designers such as Oldřich Menhart, ITC Týfa is a unique typeface with a distinctive character all its own and international appeal. The structure is considered neoclassical, with clear contrasts between thin and thick strokes and italics, other than the

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

letters, differ largely in style from the regular characters.

Academia

Josef Týfa first published the Academia typeface in 1967–68. It was the winning design from competition aimed at new typeface for scientific texts, announced by

. It was cut and cast in metal in 1968 in 8 and 10

point Point or points may refer to: Places * Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland * Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States * Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland * Point ...

sizes of plain, italic and semi-bold designs.

Digitization

In 2003 Týfa began work with František Štorm on digitizing the typeface. As usual, Light and Black weight designs were used as starting points for the

interpolation In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points. In engineering and science, one often has a n ...

of the other weights. During 2004 Týfa approved a number of differences from the original

typeset Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random H ...

in order to bring the typeface more original and timeless feeling. Such differences were: * vertical stem outlines were softly slendered in the middle rather than being completely straight. * italics quietened * uppercase proportions brought closer to antique principle The new name, "Academica" distinguishes the present digital transcription from the original idea. It comprises Týfa’s initial concept to create a typeface for scientific application with versatility to other genres of literature.Storm Type Foundry – Academia
/ref>

Juvenis

Juvenis is a contemporary typeface originally intended for children's literature. It was digitized by Josef Týfa and František Štorm in 2002 and conceived half a century ago. Despite its original purpose as a contemporary typeface for children's literature, it can now be applied to posters, periodicals and longer works. Distinguishing characteristics include a large

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...

and semi-

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

s on lower case letters.Storm Type Foundry – Juvenis
/ref>Eye Magazine , Feature , Storm: living history
/ref> On Týfa's attitude during the making process Štorm said: "it would not be Josef Tyfa, if he did not redesign the entire alphabet, and to such an extent that all that has remained from the original was practically the name".

Other

* Kolektiv (1952), a transitional

roman typeface In Latin script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 15th century, based on the pairing of inscriptional ...

designed with S. Duda and K. Míšek, foundry: ''Grafotechna''. * Amos (1982)Typotheque: ''Czechoslovak Typography Connections'' by Johanna Biľak
/ref>

References

External links

Typefaces by Josef Týfa
at

MyFonts MyFonts is a digital fonts distributor, based in Woburn, Massachusetts. It was created by Bitstream Inc., launched in September 1999 (during the ATypI conference in Boston), and started selling fonts in March 2000. In November 2011, Monotype Ima ...