The Emotional Type
3.45pm - 5.00pm
Bruno Maag was born near Zurich in 1962. After an apprenticeship as a typesetter for the Tages Anzeiger, Switzerland's largest daily paper, he fell in love with the smell of ink and the clatter of printing machinery. His passion for letterforms led him to study typography at Basel School of Art. Bruno cut his professional teeth designing type at Monotype, both in the UK and in the States, where he designed fonts for the New Yorker magazine.
He established Dalton Maag in 1991 with his partner Elizabeth Dalton, painter and illustrator. Over time, Dalton Maag has grown from a one man show to a relatively large foundry with studios in London and Brazil, and a sales office in Switzerland. Today, the cream of type design and type technology professionals work for Dalton Maag.
Bruno and the design team create fonts for companies and organizations such as Tesco, Toyota, Burberry, Southampton City Council, and Puma. A speciality of the company is its expertise in non-Latin scripts, including Arabic, Cyrillic and Greek.
A font is always a collaborative process between the type designer, the graphic designer or brand guardian, and the commissioning client. Bruno has the respect of many eminent designers and works with companies such as North Design, Elmwood, Pentagram and The Brand Union.
Bruno is passionate about type and sees himself as a craftsman rather than an artist. As well as designing, Bruno is a travelling evangelist for good type. He contributes to graphic design titles and is regularly called upon to comment in the design press.
A lucky delegate at Bruno Maag's talk will receive one set of a run of only 50 Limited Edition sets of screen prints. These two colour prints (70 x 100cm) were created by Hamish Muir for Dalton Maag to celebrate the launch of the Tephra font in Spring of 2008. All the prints are numbered and signed by Hamish Muir and Bruno Maag.
Photographer credit: Vincent Connare
