Designer and editor: Rudy VanderLans

Emigre Fonts: Zuzana Licko

Bill Gubbins, thinkinkinkink (short story).

J. Smeaton Chase, Our Araby: Palm Springs and the Garden of the Sun (from a book first published in 1920; presented as type specimen, photographs: VanderLans).

Elliott Earls, (portraits of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters)

The Readers Respond, (mail).

Emigre Product Catalog, (introducing Vendetta typeface family by John Downer, and Cholla typeface family by Sibylle Hagmann)

Darick Chamberlin, Brand of the Century (essay on Shawn Wolfe and Beatkit)

Martin Venezky, Notes on the West (visual essay)

Deborah Griffin, Lemon Chiffon Cadillac with Buttercream Interior (introducing Cholla typeface family, interview with Sibylle Hagmann and Denise Gonzales Crisp)

From 1984 until 2005 Emigre published the legendary Emigre magazine, a quarterly publication devoted to visual communication. Emigre created some of the very first digital layouts and typeface designs winning them both world-wide acclaim and much criticism. The exposure of these typefaces in Emigre magazine eventually lead to the creation of Emigre Fonts, one of the first independent type foundries utilizing personal computer technology for the design and distribution of fonts. 

Complete sets of Emigre magazine are in the permanent collections of:

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

The Design Museum, London

The Denver Art Museum

The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

The Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich

Emigre was a (mostly) quarterly magazine published from 1984 until 2005 in Berkeley, California, dedicated to visual communication, graphic design, typography, and design criticism. Produced by Rudy VanderLans (editor and art director) and Zuzana Licko (type designer and typesetter), Emigre was known for creating some of the very first digital layouts and typeface designs. Exposure to Licko's typefaces through the magazine lead to the creation of Emigre Fonts in 1985.

Emigre was a graphic design magazine founded by fellow Dutchmen Marc Susan, Menno Meyjes, and Rudy VanderLans who met in San Francisco. The first four issues were edited by Susan and art directed by VanderLans, with Meyes mostly in an associate publisher role. By issue 6 (1986) Susan and Meyes had left, and all subsequent issues were edited and art directed by VanderLans. In 1985, VanderLans started incorporating the bitmap typefaces designed by Zuzana Licko in his layouts. Licko’s type designs became a prominent feature of the magazine for its entire run. By 1986, Emigre began selling commercial licenses of its digital fonts under the name Emigre Fonts.

The magazine was always self-funded, initially through commercial design work performed by VanderLans and Licko under the name Emigre Graphics which became Emigre Fonts. Additional income came from sporadic advertisement sales and subscriptions. Later issues were funded primarily by licensing of digital typefaces.

When the magazine began in 1984, it featured work by and topics important to émigré artists. The first eight issues were concerned with boundaries, international culture, travel accounts, and alienation (as the issues' titles suggest). These eight issues also incorporated a dynamic aesthetic that caught the attention of other designers.

As the publication grew in popularity (and sometimes notoriety) it gained collaborators. VanderLans invited guests such as Gail Swanlund, Anne Burdick, Andrew Blauvelt, and Experimental Jetset to edit dedicated issues, and readers began to recognize Jeffery Keedy, Kenneth FitzGerald, Lorraine Wild, and Diane Gromala as recurring contributors.

A notable content shift started with issue 9, which featured the art of Vaughan Oliver at 4AD. About this time, Emigre's articles began to explore contemporary design practice more intentionally, catalyzing the magazine as a kind of analog discussion forum. Later issues would be devoted to Cranbrook, the Macintosh, type design, and occasionally individual graphic designers. Increasingly, Emigre's content centered around design writing and critical essays.

Design discourse became primary to Emigre's publications by 1994, and the magazine transitioned in 1995 from its oversized layout to a text-friendlier format that debuted with issue 33. The magazine remained this size until issue 60, released in 2001. Issues 60–63 were accompanied by additional media: three compact discs (featuring the music of Honey Barbara, The Grassy Knoll and Scenic) and one DVD (Catfish, an experimental documentary film on the work of designer and performance artist Elliott Earls). In its fourth and final incarnation, the last six issues of Emigre (64–69) were co-published by Princeton Architectural Press as small softcover books. The last issue, The End, was published in 2005.

Emigre was one of the first publications to be designed on Macintosh computers, and their work heavily influenced other graphic designers in the early digital era. Its variety of layouts, use of guest designers, and opinionated articles broke away from traditional design practices, making Emigre leaders in Postmodern design and landing them squarely in the middle of controversy. They were equally lauded and criticized for this work. Licko's response that "You read best what you read most," to an interview question about the legibility of her experimental bitmap fonts published in issue 15 (1990) incited what would later be known as the "Legibility Wars." Her statement indicated that fonts such as Helvetica and Times New Roman are not intrinsically legible but become so through repeated use, and it was not entirely well received. In 1991, the prominent New York designer Massimo Vignelli criticized Emigre's work, calling it "garbage" and "an aberration of culture" in an interview published by Print magazine. This brought much attention to their work and sealed Emigre's reputation as design radicals. Six years later Licko and VanderLans were named AGIA medalists and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art staged a solo exhibition of Emigre's work. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art (New York) exhibited all 69 issues of Emigre as part of the exhibition "Digitally Mastered."

The magazine changed formats several times. It was originally published quarterly in a large format where each page measures 285 mm × 425 mm (slightly shorter than 11 × 17" or US ledger/tabloid size). Starting with issue 33, each page was about 8.5 × 11" (US letter size). It changed into a multimedia format (a booklet where each page was 133 × 210 mm, plus a CD or DVD) starting with issue 60. And finally, starting with issue 64, the magazine became a book format, published semi-annually, where each page measured 133 × 210 mm. The issues in the book format were co-published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Please see and examine all pictures for details, they are considered part of the description 

 

Items are sold “AS IS” and NO RETURNS unless otherwise listed with conditions 

 

We used recycled boxes to help keep shipping rates as low as possible, we will always try to use suitable boxes for your item, but may have company logos, writings, or markings. 

  

CHECK OUT OUR STORE, Burman's Basement, FOR MANY UNIQUE TREASURES, WE ARE HAPPY TO COMBINE SHIPPING WHEN POSSIBLE