Tipoberba 2012. Cyrillic Type Design Workshop.

TipoBerba 2012 was the second cyrillic type design workshop organized by Tipometar, and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Serbia. The workshop was held from the 13th to the 21st of September 2012, in the village Tršić – located 9 kilometers southeast of Loznica and the birthplace of Serbian linguist/language reformer, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. The village is an ethnographic park and we stayed in a guesthouse owned by Mišić family, which enabled us to enjoy the pleasant rural setting as well as the delights of local cuisine. Yummm!

Led by mentor Vedran Eraković, the workshop consisted of nine participants – mainly former students of the Faculty of Applied Arts; Marija Rnjak, Ilija Lazarević, Nikola Stojanović, Sanja Grbić, Tamara Pešić, Tanja Stevanović, Ivana Ćirović… and me!
This year, the event was once again organised by Ivana Ćirović, who found the perfect place for Tipoberba.

The goal of this year’s workshop was the creation of original cyrillic typefaces and improving our knowledge of the basics of advanced programming and work with multiple master fonts. During the workshop, I continued working on my type family Nioki – which has expanded to include 5 weights with true italics.

We also had the pleasure of hearing talks by Jana Oršolić, assistant professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts and Borut Vild, professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications. Their lectures were an inspiring exchange of experiences and knowledge related to typography. The booklet below is a type specimen for Balkan, a new typeface system by Nikola Djurek and Marija Juza, which consists of Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

When we weren’t working, we spent most of our time drinking coffee, walking around the woods and fearing for our lives (the woods of Tršić are home to one of the Serbia’s most notorious serial killers – Tkač). Ha!

This year, we also had a chance to participate in the 78th Vuk’s Fair with an exhibition of typographic posters created during last year’s workshop. This year’s font presentations are exhibited at the 57th International Belgrade Book Fair, from 21st to 28th of October.