Virtual Typography

4.2

4

matrix

Emperor

OAKLAND

Emigre

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Swiss Punk and the Pacifi c Wave

Digital typography: 4.2 Swiss Punk and the Pacifi c Wave

4.1 The digital revolution 4.3 New trends in Europe

Matrix, Emperor, Oakland and Emigre – Zuzana Licko

In retrospect, technical possibilities have not always

been quite as generous as postmodernist design solutions

suggest. These graphics were often the result of a tough

battle against the much restricted processing power of

the fi rst generations of Macintosh computers. Some type

designs such as Zuzana Licko’s Matrix from 1986 showed

how the design of vector-based PostScript fonts could be

tailored towards the low-memory capacities of the early

128K Macs. Other fonts, including Licko’s Oakland, Emigre

and Emperor from 1985, could be seen as a tribute to

the technological limitations of the early stages of

digital typography.

In Matrix, Licko defi ned the shape of the individual letters

according to the number of pixels used vertically by the

upper case letters. This resulted in a variety of versions

for each font, all of which were dependent on type size

and named in accordance to their pixel resolution.

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