Summer 2021
Gender imbalance
How Many Female Type Designers Do You Know?
Written and designed by Yulia Popova. Published by Onomatopee, €22, £24
Within the design publishing landscape, type-focused titles abound, yet type designed by women remains proportionally under-represented within their pages. With How Many Female Type Designers Do You Know? Yulia Popova moves to redress this imbalance, through a concise yet thorough reader on the subject of women in type. ‘My objective’, she states in the prologue, ‘is to make the work of women more visible.’
Cover of How Many Female Type Designers Do You Know? (Onomatopee), designed by its author, Yulia Popova. Top. Book spread taken from Chapter E, ‘Showcase of Typefaces’, which features specimens of Legilux by Antonia M. Cornelius and Lionz by Roxane Gataud.
Presented in a narrow hardcover format, this book expands upon research begun by Popova for her Master’s thesis at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin. Its conversational title belies the rigour exhibited within, and to an extent undersells the scope and ambition of her endeavour. Writing in an affable, accessible tone throughout, she presents a search for ‘possible social, cultural and historical factors that might have had an influence on the careers of women in type design.’
The book comprises three key sections, beginning with research-driven exploration and documentation of gender issues within the discipline …
Spread from How Many Female Type Designers Do You Know? (Onomatopee), designed by its author, Yulia Popova.
Anna Lisa Reynolds, writer, editor, London
Read the full version in Eye no. 101 vol. 26, 2021
Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.