1855 Paris saw the appearance of La Colombe du Massis, a bilingual publication in Armenian and French. This made use of newly designed Armenian types bearing Western features.
While traditional Bolorgir types have continued to exist, latinised typefaces have gradually become integrated into Armenian culture. Attachment to tradition and openness to modernity have both contributed to the expression of Armenian cultural identity.
To discuss the modernisation of the Armenian typographic script and its impact on the development of subsequent Armenian typefaces, this talk is visiting three major moments in time and space.
The first one, as we said, took place in Paris in the 1850s when the Armenian printer and publisher Čanik Aramean (1820–1879) introduced latinised Armenian types in La Colombe du Massis. The second instance happened in Beirut in 1968 with artist Onnik Awetisean (1898–1974) publishing his New lowercase letters for printing in Armenian. Our last move takes us to twenty-first-century Yerevan and examines recent typographic trends.
This event is held in collaboration with St Bride Foundation.
About Dr. Elena Papassissa
Dr Elena Papassissa is a type designer, type consultant, independent researcher, and a Lecturer in Graphic Design and Typography at Oxford Brookes University. Since 2013 she has been running her own practice, collaborating with international type foundries and type designers, and graphic design studios in London. Notable clients and collaborations include Monotype, Dalton Maag, Google, Tiro Typeworks, Jeffery Keedy, and Fraser Muggeridge studio. Beside typefaces in the Latin script, Elena has designed several Armenian fonts such as: Noto Armenian, Avenir Next World Armenian, and Jaguar Armenian.
The topic of her doctoral thesis was ‘Conventions, traditionalism, Latinisation, and modernity in Armenian typefaces across type-making technologies from 1512 to 1977’. Elena presented her research at international conferences, such as: Colloque ‘Orient typographique’ (Paris 2023), Future Graphic Language (Warsaw, 2019), the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) (Paris 2023, Montréal 2019, Amsterdam 2013), and the 5th International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication, University of Nicosia (ICTVC) (Cyprus, 2013). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Visual Communication and an MA in Communication and Design for Publishing from the ISIA Urbino (Italy), and an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading. She was awarded her PhD in Typography and Graphic Communication from the University of Reading in 2020; her PhD research was funded by (AHRC) Design Star.
www.elenapapassissa.it
