ISTD Premier Award 2009 for FF Mister K

The FF Mister K typeface has received the ISTD Premier Award of the International Society of Typographic Designers, based in London. The winning typeface was developed by Julia Sysmäläinen, a graphic designer and typographer at Edenspiekermann.

The ISTD award is the only European design award exclusively devoted to typography, with participants from 17 countries submitting applications.

Drawing inspiration from Franz Kafka’s manuscripts, Finnish graphic designer and typographer Julia Sysmäläinen developed the Script-Font FF Mister K based on the writer’s unusually calligraphic handwriting. Sysmäläinen, who studied philology, achieved the tricky task of creating a consistent typographic flow out of Kafka’s eccentric letter shapes.

She equipped FF Mister K with a few hundred ligatures consisting of two, three and even four single characters each, plus she integrated alternative characters for different letter connections. That way she managed to reduce the amount of repeated letter shapes that don’t exist in real handwriting, thereby creating a lively rhythm. Julia Sysmäläinen finds that Kafka himself is reflected in the typeface, his complex, emotional personality and ironic wit. FF Mister K is available from FontShop.

More information about the award and the typeface:
www.istd.org.uk
www.fontshop.com