The question "where are you from?" has always caused problems for me. In winter 1973, I was born in Prague, the 'Golden city of Europe' the capital of the then CSSR, now Czech Republic, and soon part of the European Union. Everybody [supposedly] will agree that it is an amazingly beautiful and poetic city, but back in 1980 it was not the most desirable place to live. Nobody could really imagine that nine years later the Velvet Revolution would take place. My parents decided to escape illegally. Our destination was Munich in southern Germany.

I was brought up in this green and traditional city with beer-loving people spending their summer evenings in the beer-garden or at the Isar, the river. Here I went to school, 13 tough years, and continued studying Industrial Design at the University of Applied Science. We built many models, spending hours and nights at the studio scrubbing blue or yellow foam, plaster, wood or metal. This was before 3D-computer-modelling. We had only ONE very old Macintosh for ca. 100 students and two very expensive computers running the first modelling software.

We had fun, but I was never really convinced of the idea of designing products for the rest of my life. Particularly not in our world of mass-consumption, where the word 'design' became over- and misused. Sure, if I would have been more keen, perhaps I could have been able to contribute to changing this grievance, but I discovered my lack of interest in solving technical and engineering problems.

Still at University and sick of Munich, I went to Vienna for an internship with Gregerpauschitz, a two-person studio, and to do my final university project there. After one year I left and went back to Munich where I tried to somehow make my living, though rather unsuccessfully.

For private reasons and curious to explore the country I love very much, I ended up moving to Milan in nothern Italy, the capital of design and fashion. Here I worked at Makio Hasuike & Co, a studio occupied with designing a whole range of very different products, from household appliances to cutlery. My tasks increasingly shifted from product to graphic design, where I felt more at home. Working together with an Italinized Japanese designer was a strong experience, in both ways, good and bad. Although Milan is a very polluted and industrial city, plagued by mosquitos in summer, I enjoyed living there for three years.

A friend, Andrea Braccaloni, heightened my awareness of type design. He himself a graphic designer and typophile had the idea of initiating a small group of designers who wanted to learn more about type. We called it DKF, die kleine Fonderie. The starting point was an exhibition about Italian type design, held during the AtypI conference in Rome in 2002, where we contributed some work. A book was also published, Italic 1.0. That was the first project where I came into close and intense contact with designing type. And I fall in love! It seemed to me that I finally found my pool.

Since I wanted to become serious about the profession, I applied for the MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading and some time later found myself in a small and noisy student hall in Great Britain. It was a fantastic year, very hard work, intense and at the same time very enjoyable. I learned a lot, not only practically, but also academically. The best reminder are my sketches from the first weeks! With the help of Gerry Leonidas, Gerard Unger, Maxim Zhukov and others, the results are the typeface Maiola, two essays and a dissertation. Maiola had since been published by FonFont and has won several awards.

After my graduation I started working at Dalton Maag in London. It is a relatively small studio (although for a type studio it is big), occupied mainly with custom type design for various international companies. Its great atmosphere, very familiar and relaxed, at least from my point of view, contributed hugely to the quality of the work. If you hate the place where you work, you produce bad results. My projects varied from signage fonts to a typefaces for body and display text, to logo-tweaking and script fonts.

In 2006 my newly wed husband Pete, was offered a postion as scientific researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA. After almost 3 years i had enough of crazy polluted London and so i was very happy to leave for a new and exciting place right at the foot of the Rockies. Bruno Maag, my boss at the time, was kind enough to keep me and i established my work place in Boulder communicating with the guys in London via email and msn. Most aspects of type design are suited for long distance collaboration, so there was no problem.

Times change though and I got invloved with some other projects outside DaMa and realised that i really enjoyed working on my own stuff. So, since 2008 i am now fully self-employed dedicating my time to TypeTogether, an independent type label that i co-founded with Jose Scaglione, who lives in Rosario, Argentina. We collaborate on most typefaces which are then distributed via our website and others, such as FSI, Veer, etc. The variety of requirements are a great motor for not getting bored.

So, tell me, where am I from?

Veronika Burian copyright © 2004