Not a dangerous Štorm or typeface design in Prague
Ewa Pluta

František Štorm is the founder and main typeface designer of the leading Czech “manufacturer” of fonts, including Andoulka (2004), Lido STF (2001 free font) or Monarchia (www.stormtype.com). Štorm, a great authority in the profession, turned out to be an exacting but accessible teacher who never spares time for his students. Students of the typographical workshop at the Graphics Faculty of the Prague Vysoka Škola Umělecko-Průmyslova do not need to be forced to work: they know that they had been chosen from among a great number of candidates who each year try to get accepted at the faculty. I happened to join this small group of lucky people during my ten-week stay at the CEEPUS scholarship.

In František Štorm’s typography workshop the same importance is attached to the knowledge of traditional, classical letter shapes and typesetting and to the familiarity with fresh trends of the street. It is in the street that most things happen in typography, according to Alan Zaruba, Czech designer, author of the experimental font “Cogito” (2004), and frequent guest to the workshop. It is in the street that new trends are created.

I was given a hard task. First, workshops in an old traditional composing department, richly equipped with classical typefaces, where students learn the traditional typesetting. At the same time, first conversations with Štorm and his assistent Luboš Drtina, also professionally active graphic designer and illustrator, author of PesDog font (1993). The theme of these conversations was the conception of a typeface for a musical project – that was our first task.

Already at the beginning František Štorm won my heart because he looks with equal attention at a wrinkled napkin with a loosely sketched conception of a few letters and at professional printouts from FontLab – the most popular program used for designing fonts in the workshop. Because he knows that a good idea for an “abced” (it is how the Czech call the alphabet ;) may start from one interestingly drawn curve.

There are many schools of creating a typeface. If it is a typeface based on geometrical rules, you can start work immediately on computer (but the inspiration with a circle belongs to the past, as Prof. Štorm says;). If a beautifully drawn curve is to be the soul of your “abced”, it would make most sense to start from sketches on paper, since – as the professor writes – “The working out of a drawing technique equals introducing graphic design into the field; although new media and marketing are crucial for modern design, they will never replace human primary instinct of creation”.

I had bad luck.

Of all my sketches, it was the most “curved” one that interested Štorm. At that time I did not realize yet that I voluntarily chose the more difficult variant. After sketching the key letters such as _o_, from which c, d, b, q, p and e can be worked out, or _n _, which facilitates the “finding” of m, h, u or r, the sketches are scanned and pasted in the form of bitmaps as the background into the FontLab.