Exhibition: Same Bold Stories? Type Design by Women and Queers in the 20th and 21st Centuries

photo by Simon Malz

Same Bold Stories? Type Design by Women and Queers in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Exhibition at the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach am Main, Germany
July 19—November 24, 2024

A Quick Intro

In July, I had the chance to attend the opening of Same Bold Stories?, an exhibition that explores the question: Where are women’s voices in type design that complement the existing history?

While conversations about women in type design are becoming more common, exhibitions on this topic are still pretty rare. That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge and appreciate this effort. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the Klingspor Museum (Dr. Dorothee Ader, Valerij Ledenev, Tatjana Prenzel), design studio Turbo Type (Laura Brunner, Leonie Martin), and the feminist collective +FEM (Kristina Mukhacheva, Naomi Rado). The opening took place on July 19, and I was lucky to be there. The feedback has been very positive, with media describing it in fitting words like “Fat, brave, and cheeky!” (hr2-Kultur Review) and “Arial, Bold, Times New Roman – Queer and Feminine Font Design” (Deutschlandfunk Kultur Interview). The exhibition runs until November, with various events planned. You can check the details here.

The Exhibition and Its Themes

The exhibition showcases type design through a feminist lens, connecting it to modern works by FLINTA* designers (Flinta* is the abbreviation for women, lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans and agender persons, commonly used in German language). It begins with the Klingspor Museum’s collection, featuring pieces from the first half of the 20th century. A few women from this period gained recognition, such as Anna Simons, Erika Giovanna Klien, and Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Other designers like Elizabeth Friedländer, Ilse Schüle, Anna Maria Schildbach, and Maria Ballé, as well as students of Rudolf von Larisch (Vienna) and Rudolf Koch (Offenbach), are highlighted for the first time. The exhibit’s historical and modern perspectives are interwoven, presenting a “messy history.” It doesn’t aim to be comprehensive but sheds light on different stories, offering a fresh interpretation of type design history. You’ll find themes like activism, education, gender, and more.

The exhibit also emphasizes collective work, with solidarity-based distribution systems coexisting with traditional type foundries. Sometimes, the lines between craft and art blur, sparking new ideas about type design in the 21st century. For example, I discovered *flint*ype*, a project that acts as both a tool and archive to make FLINTA* designers’ typefaces more accessible. It’s an ongoing project that started in 2022, led by Lilot Kammermeier, Sophia Krayc, Coco Lobinger, and Hannah Witte, with tech support from Laila Kamil.

The exhibit features designers working in experimental fields, like Émilie Aurat, with her installation “Portrait d’une Femme Noire” and Jin-Hoo Park. Artists like Nat Pyper, who calls herself an “alphabet artist,” are also showcased—her project A Queer Year of Love Letters was a highlight. Activists like Golnar Kat-Rahmani also appear, with her project Namal-E Safar displaying knitted sweaters with distances (in kilometers) to different locations. This fits in with the exhibit’s broader theme of cultural interaction, like the Across Borders project. Alphabettes was also represented with the display of Victoria Rushton’s 2015 article, “Type and Gender Stereotypes”.

I was personally involved through a joint interview with Nadine Chahine (conducted by Naomi Rado, available in the publication), a video survey that’s displayed at the exhibition, and the use of my typeface Sisters in both the exhibit and the publication. It was such a thrill to see my work displayed prominently at the entrance.

The Exhibition Design

Walking through the exhibition feels a bit like flipping through a type specimen book. You’ll see real type specimens from both the museum’s collections and young designers, like Lea Johanna Becker’s Nomomono typeface, which I loved. There are panels with questions for viewers, quotes from designers about the gender gap, balancing work and motherhood, and even some physical pieces, like a fridge from the ’80s, pins from Darden Studio, and a striking neon sign by Turbo Type that reads “Suck my p**** Patriarchy.”

A recurring element in the exhibition is the use of comic-style speech bubbles, which show statistical data about the lack of women in graphic design and typography. One cool feature is that each typeface on display is accompanied by a “card” describing it and offering the designer’s contact details. You can tear off the tags and take them with you—another way the curatorial team encourages connecting with others and shows their appreciation for the designers’ work.

There’s also a library with specialized publications where you can dive deeper into the exhibition’s themes.

The Publication

The 240-page bilingual publication (German-English) is thoughtfully designed by Leonie Martin of turbo type, together with Masha Egorova, using a range of typefaces designed by women and queers. It includes only images of people directly involved in the publication process. There is no exhibition image to avoid confusion with an exhibition catalogue (which it’s not—it’s more of a theoretical companion).

It also features essays and interviews with figures in the international type scene, like ALT.tf, Nadine Chahine, myself, Katharina Koch, and Teal Triggs. If you’re into type, I highly recommend picking it up (although unfortunately, it is only available for purchase in Germany). You can buy it here.

For a long time, type design history has been told from a male, cis-gendered perspective, but as you can see, that is changing in bold ways.

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