Stefanie Schwarz appointed Junior Professor of »Typography and Type Design«
The »Visual Communication« degree programme at the Faculty of Art and Design has gained a new member of staff: Stefanie Schwarz has been appointed Junior Professor of »Typography and Type Design« as of the 2020 summer semester.
Stefanie Schwarz is a graphic designer specialising in typography and type design. She studied visual communications in Germany and the USA and graduated in 2012 with a Master’s in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins College at the University of the Arts London.
Since completing her studies, Stefanie Schwarz has been working as a freelance designer, often in collaboration with other designers and artists. In 2013 she joined forces with Dirk Wachowiak to found the typographic research lab »Open2Type«, where she works on type-related projects in a reciprocal dialogue.
Stefanie Schwarz’s type designs have been published by numerous well-known type foundries such as FontFont (Berlin), the Indian Type Foundry (Ahmedabad), Sudtipos (Buenos Aires) and T26 (Chicago). Her work has also won various international awards, including from the Type Directors Club New York, the »100 Beste Plakate« Association (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and the Tokyo Type Directors Club.
What are your specialisations in teaching?
»In both my practical design work and my teaching activities, experimenting with type and typography in various media and materials is very important to me – from analogue materials and processes to digital type design to animated and interactive typography«, says Stefanie Schwarz on her approach. »I am currently working with the Art and Design Ph.D. programme to plan a lecture series on the topic of Type & Research that will soon be presenting research topics and work from the field of typography and type design«.
What are your current research interests?
»As part of my artistic research, I am examining how various typefaces and type systems are generated by defining rules and parameters and how this can be used to expand users’ potential for typographic expression«, Schwarz continues; »A key element of type projects like this is teaching the concepts and history behind the design. My publications seek to help others access the sometimes hugely extensive world of type design, which the final font file does not initially reveal«.
Before taking up the junior professorship at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Stefanie Schwarz had already spent over a decade teaching at various universities including positions at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Pfortzheim University of Applied Sciences, and the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. She was also a guest lecturer at Kingston University London, the Royal College of Art and the Winchester School of Art.
She initially joined the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as the Acting Professor of Typography and Type Design last semester and has held the post of Junior Professor of »Typography and Type Design« since April.