‘Do you have at hand a list of women type designers?’ ‘can you give me a list of typefaces designed by women?’ ‘Is there a bibliography about works related to women in type?’ We all have received this kind of questions at one point or another, but here in Alphabettes we didn’t have a page or a blog entry listing this kind of material. This is an un-organised list of resources all related to women in type that anyone can use.
Linking them here does not mean necessarily that we endorse or support them.
If you have other suggestions please add them as a comment.
Typefaces designed by women
Typequality, a non-curated list of typefaces designed by women
Victoria Rushton’s selection of fonts by women
Design Research’s list, a badass list of libre typefaces designed by womxn
Fonts by Women, a list curated by Ellen Lupton for Adobe Fonts
Fonts in use: ‘women type designers’ set, a selection of uses featuring typefaces by women type designers compiled by the Fonts in use staff
Eye on Design guide to women-designed contemporary type, a list compiled by Angela Riechers in 2019
Fonts by Women, a collection compiled by Indra Kupferschmid for Fontstand
Women designers on Typekit, a few highlights for International Women’s Day, a list compiled by Sally Kerrigan in 2018 for the late Typekit
Typefaces designed by Asian women: an open-source list of typefaces designed by women type designers from Asia.
Women type designers/type researchers/ type related
A list of Spanish and Portuguese women type designers, typographers and type educators started in 2019
Alphabettes members, our own list of members, organised alphabetically
First/early female typeface designers, a list compiled by Indra Kupferschmid
10 Women Type Designers, a list compiled by Shelley Gruendler in 2016
10 Brilliant Female Creatives Creating Letters Today, a list compiled by Rebecca Bedrossian for Print magazine in March 2020
Recent books featuring women in type
TypeFaces: women in type, Yulia Popova’s MA project and hopefully a published book any time soon
Femmy Type, a book celebrating women in the type industry
Bibliographies
A bibliograph of books, articles, interviews, focused on women in type, printing and design (work in progress)
Women in type’s reading list, a list of books regarding women in type, printing, design, but also history and social history, compiled for and by the Women in type research project
Academic publishing , a list of peer-reviewed academic publishing on typography compiled by Indra Kupferschmid in 2016
Type Culture, Amy Papaelias featured a few research papers written by women and held in Mark Jamra’s site Type Culture
Designing women’s resources: a list of web resources exploring women’s impact on design.
General resources
List of resources on designing diacritics compiled by Aleksandra Samuļenkova
Women in type a post-doctoral research project with Prof Fiona Ross, Dr Alice Savoie and Dr Helena Lekka, led at the University of Reading (UK).
Women in type, Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie’s opening talk of the annual ATypI congress in Antwerp, 13 September 2018.
Unseen hands: women printers binders and book designers an exhibition, Princeton University Library, 2003
Designing women :an enlightenment project exploring the impact of women in design. It also aims to raise awareness of an ongoing gender imbalance in the design industry. It is focused professional women from all categories of design.
Mujeres impresoras, siglos XVI–XIX: the Spanish National Library (Biblioteca Nacional de España) has created a mini-site with devoted to female printers from the centuries XVI to XIX. Includes history and detailed bibliography.
Margo Chase was a pioneer in type and logo design during the 80s-90s