In 2025 our typeface designers, Riccardo Olocco and Michele Patane ran three very successful type revival workshops at the University of Reading, UK; Atelier national de recherche typographique Nancy, France; and École cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Switzerland. In each instance Riccardo and Michele worked with students on MA type face design courses to design a digital revival of Baskerville’s eponymous typeface. Below is a summary report of their most recent workshop which was held 17-21 November 2025 in Lausanne.
‘Students were provided with a multiple master file that included two or more original fonts that were to be interpolated to generate other styles, including 16 points, and another style created by the students.
‘The class was divided into four groups, each of which had to revive one size of type between 8 and 12 points, in roman or italic. Each group started with a thorough analysis of the punches; the students were provided with images of the punches alongside enlarged printouts of the same, but the colour was inverted—black instead of white and vice versa—and the characters were flipped horizontally so they were ‘right reading’ that is they were correctly orientated for the direction of reading. Students sketched, notated and inserted measurements onto the printouts. After which, they used tracing paper and coloured pencils to draw details such as serifs, terminals, and the counters of certain letters. Then the students produced digital outlines of Baskerville’s characters, remaining faithful to the original shape of the punches whilst closely following their idiosyncrasies, even when problematic. The students made their personal interpretations of the lowercase characters ‘n’ and ‘d’ based on the images of the printed type. The students were asked to design these characters as working with printed samples requires a great deal of interpretation, especially at such small sizes, because variations in the quality of the ink, paper and impression mean that in every instance the same character looks slightly different. Each group chose the best versions of ‘n’ and ‘d’ as a starting point for designing the entire alphabet.
‘The primary source of the Baskerville type revival project is the printed type, as this is what the reader experiences and what the punchcutter wanted to achieve. However, given the high variability of the printed marks in letterpress printing, the punches are very important to disambiguate design details and avoid guesswork.
‘At the end of the week there was a small exhibition showcasing the work of each group: and we are very proud of and impressed by their work and contribution to Small Performances.