Questions by Adriana Bareikyte, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, Germany
01. Could you introduce yourself and your studio?
I am Thomas, and i am the co-founder of Studio Mut. Our studio is small, only 4 people are working here, and they are all graphic designers. We are based in the mountainous region of South Tyrol, Italy.
02. How, when and why did you start working in the editorial, graphic and typography design fields?
I loved symbols and letters as a child, and I don’t remember wanting to do anything different from studying graphic design and then working as a designer.
03. How can language be transformed through typography and how can typography support the visualization of language?
There’s the spoken language and the written language. One is sound, the other is typography. Not more, not less. Typography is a code for representing language.
04. What do you associate with typography? How would you describe the recent typography to past decades? How would you describe the 21st century design?
Technology allows us to do a lot of things with typography, and to do it fast. Sometimes that speed is bad, but most of the times it is great: you can experiment so much more.
05. How would you describe your own usage of typography in your projects? How do you work with typography?
We never really set out to do “typographic” work, but it seems that we do now. We do care about what we communicate, not so much about how.
06. How would you like typefaces to change and expand in the future? What do you think of the recent movement and digital development towards variable fonts, animated typefaces or typefaces in virtual reality?
I don’t really care about variable fonts at the moment, they are all ugly as hell. Animated typefaces are fun. And people should care more about the real reality then the argumented one.
07. What was personally your favorite typographic project you worked on? Could you describe it and send some photos of it?
Always the last we do. That was Innsbruck International. Done with one style of one font.
08. Who or what inspires you the most on a daily basis?
Working. Arguing with clients. Red wine.
09. Make a statement about typography. What does it mean to you personally? How would you describe your relationship to typography?
Have you noticed that all fonts have sharp contours? That’s just the most wonderful thing. Please, let’s keep it that way.