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Sibylle Hagmann

Awarded

Sibylle Hagmann

Font 'Odile'

Graphic Design

Jury report

No fear of the ornament
De­signer Sibylle Hag­mann – one of the few fe­male rep­re­sen­ta­tives of her dis­ci­pline – can look back to a var­ied in­ter­na­tional ca­reer; today she lives, works and teaches in the US. First trained at the Schule für Gestal­tung Basel she ob­tained a mas­ters' de­gree at the Cal­i­forn­ian In­sti­tute of the Arts. In a very re­fresh­ing way her work dif­fers from the tra­di­tion of Swiss type­face de­sign, yet with­out deny­ing its roots. Look­ing back she says that at the Basel school Adrian Frutiger's 'Univers' was all but om­nipo­tent. Today, Sibylle Hag­mann has an eclec­tic ap­proach to ty­pog­ra­phy which is prob­a­bly due to the much younger and less tra­di­tion-ori­ented prac­tice of type­face de­sign in the US. Skil­fully, Hag­mann uses the nar­row space for in­no­va­tion in­trin­sic to the medium. In­vent­ing a new type­face, she says, is about as dif­fi­cult as de­sign­ing a gen­uinely new type of chair. 'Odile', how­ever, com­bines in­no­va­tion and tra­di­tion, al­lud­ing as it does to 'Char­ter', an Amer­i­can type­face cre­ated, but never com­pleted, in the 1930's by William Ad­di­son Dwig­gins. Hag­mann's aim for her fur­ther de­vel­op­ment was to cre­ate a type­face that proves reader-friendly for longer texts as well. The re­sult of sev­eral years of de­sign work is vi­brant and at the same time agree­ably dis­creet. In­no­va­tion in type­face de­sign is pos­si­ble here be­cause a con­vinc­ing con­cept is com­bined with a strong sense of form. 'Odile' comes as nine-part type­face fam­ily, avail­able from reg­u­lar to italic up to ten­driled ini­tials. Its ninth most play­ful form it does not show any fear of or­na­ment: it con­sists com­pletely of ten­drils or ab­stract signs. It is thus not sur­pris­ing that the artist cou­ple Gerda Steiner and Jörg Len­zlinger, who have come to be known for their flo­ral in­stal­la­tions, al­ready used the type­face for their ex­hi­bi­tion in­vi­ta­tions.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Sibylle Hagmann
Born in
1965
Education
Grafikerin, MA of Fine Arts

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