Type as Context in T Magazine with Christian Schwartz, Berton Hasebe & Patrick Li
Channel: The Cooper Union
Date: 2020-01-07

This talk took place on July 9, 2018 in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union as part of Type@Cooper's Lubalin Lecture Series. This event was co-presented by the Society of Scribers and the recording is made possible by our generous sponsor, Hoefler & Co. For more information about Type@Cooper, visit http://www.coopertype.org.

Commercial Type has specialized in crafting custom typefaces for many of the world's leading publications since even before the company was officially founded in 2008. The studio's relationship with T: The New York Times Style Magazine has been particularly fruitful, resulting in seven custom typefaces over the past 11 years. Together with T's creative director Patrick Li, Berton Hasebe and Christian Schwartz will chat about the typefaces created for the two most recent incarnations of the magazine. They will share the development of three specific typeface families and discuss typography's intrinsic role in enabling unique editorial voices.

Christian Schwartz is a partner, with London-based designer Paul Barnes, in the type foundry Commercial Type. Schwartz has published fonts with many respected independent foundries and designed proprietary typefaces for corporations and publications worldwide.

Schwartz and Barnes began an ongoing collaboration in 2005 with their extensive typeface system for The Guardian, which led to honors from the Design Museum and D&AD. The two have completed custom typefaces for clients including Esquire, the Empire State Building, Bosch, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek. In 2007, Schwartz was awarded the prestigious Prix Charles Peignot, given every four or five years by the Association Typographique Internationale to a designer under 35 who has made “an outstanding contribution to the field of type design”.

Berton Hasebe is a type designer living in New York. From 2008–2013 he worked at Commercial Type, helping to develop typefaces for retail release, and custom typefaces for clients including Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times, Nike, and Wallpaper*. Through Commercial Type he's released the typefaces Druk, Portrait and Platform. Since 2013 he's worked independently and teaches typography at Parsons The New School for Design and type design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Berton received his bachelors degree in graphic design from Otis College of Art and Design in 2005, and moved to the Netherlands in 2007 to study type design at the Type and Media masters program at The Royal Academy of Art in the Hague (KABK). His typeface Alda, designed while attending Type and Media, was awarded the 2008 judges pick from the Type Directors Club in New York and was released by Emigre in 2011. Berton's work has been recognized by the ATypI, BRNO Biennale, TDC, and Tokyo TDC. In 2012 he was featured as one of Print Magazine’s New Visual Artists.

Patrick Li is the founder and creative director of Li, Inc., a multi-disciplinary design studio founded in 2000. Mr. Li is also the creative director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, a post he’s held since 2012.Li, Inc. has developed brand and image strategies for some of the leading references within the fashion, beauty and art industries. Clients and projects include advertising design for Givenchy, Clinique, and H&M to brand identity projects for the Hirshhorn Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, Garage, Frédéric Malle and Jason Wu.Li, Inc. has designed numerous monographs and artists' books, including "Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion, Architecture" published by Rizzoli; "Rodarte Catherine Opie Alec Soth" published by JRP; “Kaws" published by Rizzoli and the Aldrich Museum of Art; and “Francesco Vezzoli” published by Rizzoli.Mr. Li was also the Art Director at Large for Vogue China from the magazine's inception through 2013. He studied architecture at the University of California at Berkeley.