The Belwe family has recently been added to the Letraset range. Its development illustrates the emphasis that Letraset places on producing its own designs, as well as relying on outside sources. Alan Meeks describes the evolution of his design. ‘My first design based on Belwe was called ‘Elizabethan’ designed in 1971. With this face I aimed to tidy up and modernise the original as much as possible. The curved top bars on the ‘r’, ‘v’ and ‘y’, for example, were cleaned and straightened up. The original ‘g’ was more or less totally reformed to make it more up to date.’

Mike Daines

Wolff Olins, London, a leading international design group describe the development of a new typeface as an integral part of a corporate identity programme. This is the first in a series of articles exploring the part played by typeface design in corporate identity. It examines the development of the BfG typeface, the final artwork for which was produced in the TSI studio…

Wally Olins

There are good reasons why graphic designers should know about the Arabic script, which is one of the most important in the world, used by nearly 600 million followers of the Islamic faith in many countries from Morocco to South-East Asia…

Walter Tracy

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was born in Brighton in 1882 and apprenticed as an architect of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1900. He married Ethel Mary Moore in 1904 and, three years later, joined a community of artist craftsmen in Ditchling, Sussex, where he did some printing and illustration. He left Ditchling in 1924 and lived in Capel-y-ffin in mis-Wales. No type designed by Gill was cut until 1925 (Perpetua) and most of his work in type design was done in collaboration with The Monotype Corporation. He was also a sculptor, and his work in this medium can still be admired in many places, such as Ariel and Prospero above the main doors of the BBC in Portland Place, and the stations of the, cross in Westminister Cathedral…

Roy Brewer