Digital type design
Wood type production
with Tiporenesansa
Typographic specimens
Inkjet Print
Serigraph
Letterpress
Variable editions and sizes
Wood type production
with Tiporenesansa
Typographic specimens
Inkjet Print
Serigraph
Letterpress
Variable editions and sizes
Ms. Olga typeface is a modernized version of Olga Höcker’s Yugoslav Script rendered as a display typeface. The resulting letterforms were rendered to be particularly suited for wood-type production.
I saw the name Olga Höcker for the first time in the fall of 2016. I was looking at online design history sources and came across a new website, dizajnerice.com. This was the first database of 20th-century female designers working in former Yugoslavia. There has been almost no documentation of female practitioners in the region. Even in this context, Höcker stood out.
Born in Varaždin, Olga Höcker was an internationally award-winning lettering artist, author, and the first female professor at the Art Academy in Zagreb, Croatia. Nonetheless, little documentation of Höcker's practice exists today. An article written in 2012 by the art historian Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić serves as the primary source of information on Höcker.
In 2018, I acquired a 1951 edition of Höckers handbook on paleography, decorative writing, and ornamentation. It featured a variety of original designs, including Yugoslav Script. Höcker developed this exquisite lettering based on Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin script features.
Fascinated by the hand-lettered forms, I soon began to create digitally rendered drawings of the letters. I modernized and simplified the glyphs and imagined the typeface used in print as a display typeface. During most of Höcker's life, letters were rendered in print as type, using letterpress printing. While her work was used in various applications, Höcker’s lettering had never been cast in metal or cut out of wood as a complete font.
In 2020, I completed the digital design of the font. I worked with a letterpress studio in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to create wood-type matrices based on my designs. Marko Drpic, the studio owner, cut the first production of 22-line Ms. Olga wood type using pear wood. The result is a beautifully rendered wood type that can be used for various applications.
2018 - 2021
I saw the name Olga Höcker for the first time in the fall of 2016. I was looking at online design history sources and came across a new website, dizajnerice.com. This was the first database of 20th-century female designers working in former Yugoslavia. There has been almost no documentation of female practitioners in the region. Even in this context, Höcker stood out.
Born in Varaždin, Olga Höcker was an internationally award-winning lettering artist, author, and the first female professor at the Art Academy in Zagreb, Croatia. Nonetheless, little documentation of Höcker's practice exists today. An article written in 2012 by the art historian Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić serves as the primary source of information on Höcker.
In 2018, I acquired a 1951 edition of Höckers handbook on paleography, decorative writing, and ornamentation. It featured a variety of original designs, including Yugoslav Script. Höcker developed this exquisite lettering based on Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin script features.
Fascinated by the hand-lettered forms, I soon began to create digitally rendered drawings of the letters. I modernized and simplified the glyphs and imagined the typeface used in print as a display typeface. During most of Höcker's life, letters were rendered in print as type, using letterpress printing. While her work was used in various applications, Höcker’s lettering had never been cast in metal or cut out of wood as a complete font.
In 2020, I completed the digital design of the font. I worked with a letterpress studio in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to create wood-type matrices based on my designs. Marko Drpic, the studio owner, cut the first production of 22-line Ms. Olga wood type using pear wood. The result is a beautifully rendered wood type that can be used for various applications.
2018 - 2021