Stylogenyin the style of Emigre & Early Digital Type

Postmodern · 1984–1998 · North America

Emigre & Early Digital Type

Also known as Emigre magazine, Early Macintosh typography, Bitmap type

Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko's magazine and type foundry, launched in 1984 alongside the first Macintosh, turned the computer's low-resolution constraints into a new typographic idiom. Licko's bitmap and modular faces, VanderLans's shifting, layered layouts and the magazine's showcase of Cranbrook and CalArts work made Emigre the laboratory and mouthpiece of digital postmodern typography.

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Oversized, distorted letters spell “DATA NOiSE” in black, red and blue on an off-white background. Pixelated edges, dotted textures, scattered squares and intersecting rules surround and interrupt the lettering.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Design typefaces for the technology at hand, building letters from the pixel grid of screen and printer.
  • Treat each issue or spread as a new layout experiment rather than a fixed template.
  • Mix many new digital faces at different sizes on one page.
  • Layer, overlap and run text at varied widths to make long-form writing visually expressive.
  • Work in black and white or one spot colour and let typography carry the expression.

Berkeley and Sacramento, California

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Central symmetry, Floral & vegetal, Skeuomorphic material, Gloss & highlights, Painterly illustration, Luxurious & glamorous

Palette

  • #f4f2ec
  • #111111
  • #8c8c8c
  • #e03c31
  • #2b59c3

Typefaces

  • Oakland

    Zuzana Licko, 1985

  • Emperor

    Zuzana Licko, 1985

  • Matrix

    Zuzana Licko, 1986

  • Lunatix

    Zuzana Licko, 1988

  • Template Gothic

    Barry Deck, 1990

Known for

  • Rudy VanderLans

    Emigre magazine, 1984–2005

  • Zuzana Licko

    Oakland, Emperor, Matrix, Lunatix

  • Emigre Fonts

    foundry, from 1985

  • Barry Deck

    Template Gothic, 1990

  • Jeffery Keedy

    Keedy Sans

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Emigre & Early Digital Type’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleEmigre & Early Digital Type1984–1998 · North America

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Rudy VanderLans & Zuzana Licko, Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm (1993)
  2. https://www.emigre.com
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.