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(art director: Dennis Koot)
2008Sonia Gagarin

De Lettertypes Voor het Portfolio van Sander Plug is het lettertype Gagarin van Mark van Wageningen gebruikt en zoals bedoeld, gemodificeerd door onze pro-actieve vormgever. Gagarin is de naam van de letterfamilie vanwege Van Wageningen voorliefde voor Russische typografie. Schatplichtig aan Gustav Majakovski, Sternberg, mannen die hem inspireerden, heeft de moeder van het alfabet: Anna Gagarin vier liefdesrelaties gehad met deze vier heren. (Gebaseerd op een zeer eenvoudig 5-delig stramien is het uitgangspunt een lettervorm geworden waarmee ik mijn liefde en bewondering getuig voor een viertal Russen die op de familie van zeer grote invloed zijn geweest. Deze vier, Gustav Klucis, Vladimir Majakovski, Alexander Rodchenko en Gregory Rasputin hebben met de moeder van de familie, Anna Gagarin zeer gepassioneerde liefdesrelaties mogen beleven.) Daaruit zijn Boris, Christa, Dimitri, Elena, Fjodor , Gregor, Hektor, Igor, Jouri, Kurt, Leonora, Magda, Nina, Ossip, Petrov, Quirina, Rudolf tot aan Sonia aan toe, voortgekomen, legt de typograaf de 'stamboom' uit. "Behalve de italics, de bolds en de verschillende varianten daarvan zijn typografische families vaak saai", vindt Van Wageningen. "Van deze Russische familie heb ik een echte typo-soap opera gemaakt met een leuke oom maar ook een crimineel neefje." Bovendien is het een alfabet voor de pro-actieve ontwerper: "Daar waar anderen het over intellectueel eigendom hebben, vind het juist interessant als andere ontwerpers met dit alfabet aan de haal gaan. Daar is deze letter met een onaffe vorm geschikt voor gemaakt."


zie ook de NRC van 14 mei 2004.

Handboek biedt vijf eeuwen ogentroost

door Peter Yvon de Vries

... soms is er echter heuse ontroering door geslepen amateurisme (Mark van Wageningen)...

Zie ook Dutch Type, pagina 278, - Mark van Wageningen's Russian deconstructivism - door Jan Middendorp, uitgeverij 010.

Mark van Wageningen’s Russian deconstructivism
The development of Mark van Wageningen (1969) as a type designer is typical of his generation. Having graduated from the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy in 1994, his early typefaces were derivative and grungy; but his interest in letterforms deepened and culminated in an extensive family of constructed typefaces, Gagarin, still expanding at the time of this writing.
Van Wageningen’s motives for making type are those of a restless graphic designer who wants new and unusual alphabets to give his book jackets, magazines and posters a more personal touch. He began selling his fonts because fellow designers asked for them, and because he enjoyed playing around with their packaging and specimens. Several of them were later licensed to international foundries.
The Ärst font issued was a graduation project called Stavba (1994). Van Wageningen described it as ‘a laserprinter print-out of Futura Bold, each letter cut up in a consistent manner and the pieces pasted up again and returned to the computer.’ Cerny (1995) looks equally destructive, but was not derived from an existing typeface. Using a technique practised by fellow Amsterdammer Willem Sandberg, Van Wageningen tore each character out of black paper, then digitized the result without much alteration.
Cerny, a rough-and-tumble caps-only alphabet with no counters, is an amusing experiment of limited use. It was judged interesting enough for inclusion in the TakeType 2 collection published in 1998 by the Linotype Library. Two more fonts by Van Wageningen were on that CD: Laika and Sjablony (from sjabloon, the Dutch word for stencil). Of his ‘rough’ fonts, the stencil type Zkumavka is the most interesting. It has rather original forms that are vaguely reminiscent of 1920s display lettering, and is surprisingly legible in smaller point sizes. Zkumavka dates from 1995 but was not published until 2002, when it was released by 2Rebels in Montreal.
Van Wageningen was Ärst brought into contact with 2Rebels by FontShop Benelux. He had long been playing with the idea of a typeface family structured in an unusual way. In an article presenting the Gagarin family, he wrote: ‘Compared to a real family, a typographic family is usually a rather dull show. Where is the criminal nephew? Where is the uncle who knows all kinds of tricks? A type family usually goes from roman to italic and from thin to thick ... These boring series allow very limited space to the individual freedom of their members. ... The Gagarin family is a real family, like life itself, in good times and bad times.’ This last phrase is a reference to a well-known Dutch tv soap.
As his font names indicate, Van Wageningen is fascinated by Russian culture, especially by Futurism and Constructivism. Gagarin is the Ärst typeface for which he has actually taken clues from that period: it is partly based on the geometric principles apparent in the lettering of Rodchenko and the Stenberg brothers and copied in a lot of vernacular lettering from the Soviet era. Each variant is drawn on the same simple grid. The basic fonts are rectangular, with rounded angles; some are roughened or blurred. The structure of the family is an open system, allowing for foreign inÅuences. When Van Wageningen wanted to add two ‘female’ Gagarins with a more calligraphic streak, he invited a young Flemish designer named Nele Reyniers to participate in his project. Being left-handed, she incorporated the inversed stress of a left-handed broad-nibbed pen in her two contributions to the Gagarin family, Leonora and Magda. A serif version of Gagarin drawn by Reyniers is on its way.

Boven: Enkele mooie voorbeelden van de lettertypes Gagarin, Zkumavka, Laïka en Sjablony in gebruik.

Met dank aan Randoald Sabbe, Brordus Bunder, Jan Middendorp, Jurgen Flick, Max Kisman, Hannie Pijnappels, Nele Reijniers, Dennis Koot en Joop Braakhekke.