Finding a creative jump-start.
For the past couple of years, a small town near the foothills of the Italian Alps has welcomed a dozen-or-so passionate typographers who have chosen to spend their holiday not on a beach or by a pool, but rather immersing themselves in Italian type history. Summer in the Veneto has plenty of charms for the typical visitor – incredible food and wine, sunny skies, beautiful vistas – but this is a group more likely to get emotional about vintage wood type, ornate printing presses, and rare type specimens.
The 1895 journal of the Nebiolo type foundry, in the collection of Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione, Cornuda.
All this inspiration is part of TipoItalia, a two-week residency at Tipoteca, a museum of type history in Cornuda, about an hour north of Venice. Tipoteca holds an extraordinary collection of material gathered from printers and typefounders all across Italy, and it serves as the home base for a creative getaway. Participants of TipoItalia get to see all kinds of type and lettering – inside the museum and out – and work together in the museum’s print studio to transform what they see around them into new work, experimenting with letterpress printing, bookbinding, and digital type design.
Left: TipoItalia participants working on their letterpress projects. Right: The TipoItalia group reviewing the pages they designed and printed for a collaborative book.
Alongside the days in the studio, TipoItalia engages with the typographic culture of the entire region. Andrea Carrer of Fonderia Serena takes the group on a walking tour through his hometown of Venice, sharing the history and techniques behind the eclectic range of signs found throughout the city’s twisting streets, alleys, and canals. They travel to the hillside town of Rovereto to visit the former home and studio of Fortunata Depero, the futurist painter and designer who created iconic work for Campari. Last year featured a walk through Milan’s Monumental Cemetary to explore inscriptions with type historian James Clough. This past June, there was a visit to Parma for a close look at Giambattista Bodoni’s punches and printed works.
The group viewing some vintage Art Deco lettering during the walking tour of Venice.
Signage painted on wood and cut into marble at Rosa Salva in Venice.
A residency like TipoItalia offers a chance to do so much more than simply visit historical sites and take pictures, although all that is part of the process. The real opportunity is the chance to take yourself away from your routine, immerse yourself in new influences, and then have space to create something – or many things – new, even new to yourself.
I attended TipoItalia last year, and returned this year to assist with the program. Each time, I learn more from the experience and from the other designers and printers who have shared it with me. I am still a novice letterpress printer, but I found chances to design posters directly on the press bed, learning from others’ experience and in turn challenging them to shake up their own techniques. As I helped fellow residents learn to draw new typefaces inspired by Venetian lettering or the type they chose for their own letterpress projects, their questions and new perspectives changed my own approach to the missing characters of some tricky Art Nouveau wood type I was struggling to reimagine. All of this collaboration and exploration renewed me, as it did for the others alongside me both last summer on this past one.
Left: Digital interpretation of vintage wood type by Ian Farnham. Right: Prints left by previous visitors hang in the studio at Tipoteca.
TipoItalia is a rare experience, but not a unique one. You might find similar chances to stretch yourself printing typographic posters in Switzerland, working with wood type in Wisconsin, or taking a type walk in India. Even closer to home you can find ways to work with your hands and your eyes in ways that will expand how you think: you can look for sign-painting workshops, chances to do some risograph or letterpress printing, or try some linoleum carving. A design career thrives on such chances to blow the dust off our routine and try new ways of making things, or new sources of inspiration. Just about any creative process can become a habit, and taking time to break your habits allows you to discover what else you might have within you.
About The Author:
This article was written by Dan Rhatigan, a type designer, educator, and design archivist who has worked with Adobe Fonts and Type Network before rejoining Monotype in 2024. Dan also runs the foundry Bijou Type. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he enjoys exploring town on his scooter and spoiling his dog.