Model kształcenia typografów według Leona Urbańskiego

Abstrakt

Typographer education model according to Leon Urbański

Leon Urbański 1926–1998 was one of the most eminent Polish typographers, winning many awards in Poland and abroad. He was an honorary member of the elite international society of publishers and typographers Double Crown Club, which had ten more foreign members aside from Urbański. He worked as a designer, teacher and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and established the first Typographic Design Studio at the faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy. He understood the need to train typographers in Poland and stressed that a typography specialist needed to have not only talent and intuition, but, more importantly, also erudition. He believed that one could learn book design only through a lengthy, laborious process. In his opinion one could learn painting techniques in two weeks, given enough talent, but books had to be placed in the right context and that required profound knowledge and interdisciplinary education. Urbański said that successful typography needed more than imitation, even of the greatest masters. The quality of lettering, he believed, was equally important. Typography education should begin with sensitizing students to letters, their shape, the connection between signs. Urbański intuitively sensed that there was a connection between typography and bibliography.