Lecture

The Liberated Letter

Bio

Upon leaving school Colin Brignall's first five years of employment involved working in various fields of commercial, advertising and fashion photography. In 1964 he joined Letraset International as a darkroom technician allied to the company's typeface artwork and design studio. Here he developed an avid interest in letterforms which quickly attracted the attention of the studio manager. He was soon relieved of his darkroom duties in order to undergo exhaustive training in finished artwork and design creation for typefaces the company were in a hurry to add to their hugely popular dry transfer system. Brignall left Letraset for a short period to gain experience in the newly emerging photo typesetting industry but returned in 1974 to take control of the creative content of Letraset's type development programme. In recognition of his work he was promoted to Type Director in 1985 with the responsibility for all Letraset's dry transfer ranges as well as overseeing the conversion of their exclusive typefaces into digital formats. This resulted in the creation of Letraset Fontek, the award winning range of digital display typefaces.

Colin Brignall's typeface designs include Aachen Bold, Revue, Harlow, Retro, Epokha, Italia, Romic, Corinthian, Edwardian, Figural and ITC Rennie Mackintosh. In recognition of his services to typography he was awarded the prestigious Type Directors Club TDC Medal in 2000. The very first recipient to be awarded the medal outside of the USA. Although now retired, he retains a keen interest in all things typographic and often undertakes lectures on the subject.