Emigre No. 70, the Look Back Issue
REVIEWED BY JAMES PUCKETT
In 1983 Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko, Marc Susan, and Menno Meyjes began Emigre, a magazine about “…the global artist who juggles cultures, travels between them, and who is fluent in the cultural symbols of the world. An émigré.”[1] Early issues meandered through essays, interviews, fiction and poetry. VanderLans directed wild layouts that ignored the so-called rules instilled by modernist design pedagogues. After four issues Susan and Meyjes had left the magazine, allowing VanderLans and Licko to steer Emigre toward being a design magazine that explored experimental and usually computer-driven work like their own.
In the early days of desktop publishing the selection of digital fonts available to designers was very limited. Licko started designing bitmap fonts on the Macintosh and VanderLans used them in Emigre. To support the magazine they sold these fonts, establishing Emigre Fonts as one of the first digital type foundries. Emigre now followed in the footsteps of The Monotype Recorder, functioning as both design journal and type specimen.
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