We discuss the origins of Cyrillic, it’s quirks and peculiarities and of course, what one can expect at Aleksandra’s upcoming workshop on June 25th at The Cooper Union.

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Ulrik Hogrebe: Hi Aleksandra — welcome to TypeThursdays and thanks for taking the time to chat with me. I was thinking for this interview, I want to dive straight into discussing your upcoming workshop on Cyrillic at Cooper Union and kind of see where the discussion takes us.

So with that, maybe tell us a bit about your workshop?

Aleksandra Samulenkova: Hi Ulrik, thank you for having me here!

My “Introduction to Cyrillic” workshop will take place on Sunday, June 25 at The Cooper Union.

As you can guess from the workshop’s title I am going to familiarize the participants with the Cyrillic script.

Even though Cyrillic has lots in common with Latin, it is a very different system. Peculiarities of the Cyrillic script might surprise Latin type designers. So I will teach how to evaluate letter proportions, contrast axis, serif placement and other type aspects from the Cyrillic point of view.

We will look at the differences in the letter construction between upright, italic and the distinct handwritten Cyrillic styles. The existence of the latter might be one of those unexpected concepts for a Latin type designer.

Another “weird” thing about Cyrillic is that construction of certain letters can differ drastically depending on the language where the script is used. I will pay special attention to such cases during the workshop.

UH: OK, so it sounds like it’s a pretty deep dive into how to construct cyrillic letterforms and I want to get into some of the details of that. Maybe a good place to start is with you yourself. If I am not mistaken, you are Latvian? I thought Latvian uses a variant of the latin alphabet? How did you get into designing cyrillics?

Aleksandra’s Background

AS: Yes, I am indeed from Latvia and the Latvian writing is based on the Latin alphabet with an addition of a few diacritical marks. By the way, Latvian diacritics is an exciting topic, too. I’ll actually be talking about it during TypeLab.

Historically in Latvia there are quite a few people with Russian origins. I am one of them: I grew up speaking Russian at home and speaking Latvian everywhere else. I started to read early in both languages and I ended up being native in both scripts—which was quite handy when I became interested in type design.

I got fascinated by the idea of producing not a finished design work, but a tool, that other people can use to produce their designs.

UH: When did you get into type design? What attracted you to it?

AS: I was studying visual communication at the Art Academy of Latvia and did graphic design jobs for a living. The crucial impact of type in any graphic design work very soon became obvious to me. Later I went for an exchange year to Berlin where I took a type design course with Luc(as) de Groot. That was a pivotal moment. I got fascinated by the idea of producing not a finished design work, but a tool, that other people can use to produce their designs.

UH: And you did Type and Media in Den Haag too right? You have quite a distinguished background with some impressive mentors. Can you tell us a little bit more about how working with Lucas de Groot has shaped your approach?

AS: My type design experience is indeed notably Dutch-flavored. Working with Lucas helped me develop a natural sense for important details; like curve quality or subtle optical corrections, and taught me to spare no effort or time taking optimal decisions. Sometimes it costs you hours of work and tons of printouts to determine that stem widths should be exactly 2 units thinner: no more, no less.

To an extent I share Lucas’ great sympathy towards Bulgarian Cyrillic letter shapes. Bulgarian lowercase constructions are more distinct from the uppercase and feature more ascenders and descenders, which formally benefits the readability when compared to the rigid and “fence-like” appearance of the Russian Cyrillic. Though, I wouldn’t force the Russian readers to use Bulgarian shapes: habits are also an important factor in readability.

The development of the Cyrillic script shifted in to Russian territory, where in the early 18th century Peter the Great conducted radical changes in the appearance of Cyrillic, trying to bring it closer to Latin.

Variations in Cyrillic

UH: That’s fascinating. So can you talk a bit about the origins of the variations? Are the sounds different, necessitating different glyphs and diacritics? Or is it like in Arabic scripts, where differences in styles often stem from different calligraphic traditions? Do you know?

AS: Pronunciation of some letters differs slightly between Bulgarian and Russian, but these differences are not consistent with the discrepancies between the letter shapes. The discrepancies are rather caused by the turbulences in the development of the Cyrillic script and the fact it was evolving in its own way in different regions.

Cyrillic was born in Bulgaria in the 9th century and evolved there until the end of the 14th century when Bulgaria became part of the Ottoman Empire. The development of the Cyrillic script shifted in to Russian territory, where in the early 18th century Peter the Great conducted radical changes in the appearance of Cyrillic, trying to bring it closer to Latin.

This Cyrillic was barely related to the letter shapes that naturally evolved in handwriting through the centuries. Contemporary Russian Cyrillic is derived directly from Peter the Great’s revised version of the script and even though it was later adopted in Bulgaria as well, Bulgarians retained more sympathy towards handwritten shapes. This sympathy flourished in the 1950s when professors of the Bulgarian National Academy of Art adopted the idea of Bulgarian Cyrillic and started promoting it among their students.

Learning the principles of Cyrillic will not only help to design Cyrillic, but also to evaluate and select typefaces containing Cyrillic.

Bulgarian designer Krassen Krestev gave a great talk on Bulgarian Cyrillic at TYPO Berlin 2015. You can find more details about Bulgarian Cyrillic in this report I wrote on his talk.

Who Should Attend Aleksandra’s Workshop?

Ulrik Hogrebe: I am always awestruck by how type is this weird mix of craft, aesthetics and technology — and then often with a smattering of geopolitics on top. So who would you ideally like to see attend the workshop? Do you have to be a fairly good type designer? Do I need to have some familiarity with a language that uses Cyrillic?

AS: Indeed, so many factors were involved in shaping the appearance of contemporary Cyrillic, and the process is still going on!

Anyone who is making type, is welcome to the workshop. Moreover, anyone who is actively using type is welcome, too. Learning the principles of Cyrillic will not only help to design Cyrillic, but also to evaluate and select typefaces containing Cyrillic. I am not counting on any prior Cyrillic experience or familiarity with the languages using this script though. We will start from scratch.

UH: Sounds fun! I guess it’s an interesting challenge in terms of type design in general. I am always astounded how much you learn that’s broadly applicable when you dive deep into a script.

Are you attending Typographics yourself and if so, who are you looking forward to seeing?

What to Look Forward to at Typographics

AS: Yes, I will be at Typographics! The entire schedule is exciting, but in particular I am looking forward to seeing Lara Captan’s and Ilya Ruderman’s talks. I have enjoyed Lara talking about Arabic type design before and I am curious about Ilya’s views on contemporary Cyrillic and his type.today project.

UH: And finally, can you shed any light on projects you are working on currently?

At the moment I am working with Bold Monday on Cyrillic for a big project I can’t talk about yet. I am also enjoying solving the Cyrillic puzzle for Petr van Blokland’s Bitcount pixel type family. We will talk about it during TypeLab, on Saturday June 16!

UH: Fantastic! Looking forward to it! Thank you again for taking the time to talk to us.

AS: Thank you!

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