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If you've ever wanted to study with the best typographers in Italy while eating gelato and overlooking beautiful Italian scenery, then sign up for the 2010 SVA Masters Workshop in Venice and Rome.

For two weeks, students will be immersed in multidisciplinary design: architecture, art, literature, and typography. As the website states, "Our workshop in design history, theory and practice is an intensive period of study that enables students to research and analyze the roots of typography, draw type and letters from the classic models while practicing contemporary design with Italian and American designers and design historians."

2010 SVA Masters Workshop
Design History, Theory and Practice in Venice and Rome
May 30–June 5, 2010: Venice
June 6–12, 2010: Rome
Program Tuition: $6,700
Tuition includes all accommodations, continental breakfast, workshops, transportation for off-site visits, guided tours of architectural and archaeological sites, train from Venice to Rome, receptions.

The application deadline is March 15, 2010.

However, if the $6,700 tuition sticker shock leaves you paralyzed, you can still embody la dolce vita by becoming a fan of the SVA Masters Workshop Facebook Fan Page.

Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione (tipo type, teca case) is a remarkable museum of type and typography, immaculately conceived and designed as a working museum for the presentation of printing and typographical history. Tipoteca is situated in Cornuda, in the Treviso province in the northeastern region of Italy.

When I stepped foot in the Museum, I felt like I had died and gone to book printer’s heaven. It’s a huge manufacturing warehouse that’s been transformed into a modern sleek workshop with different letterpresses of various sizes, and all the accompanying bookmaking equipment and paraphernalia: typecasting machines, book presses, binding equipment, a working Monotype room with a good collection of matrices, paper trimmers, Linotype machines, endless rows of type cabinets containing an amazing variety of wood and metal type, including the largest selection of Italian modernist wood display typefaces anywhere. (This was the kind of large wooden hand-cut type that would have been used to create Futurist and Bauhaus posters and manifestos at the beginning of the last century, and it’s in perfect condition.)


Another treat was seeing the fascinating collection of books and printing artifacts that told the history of printing, type design, and book design in Italy. It takes your breath away to see it all.

The Foundation, launched in 1995 by the Antiga brothers who own and run a modern printing company (Grafiche Antiga), was created with the aim of safeguarding historic printing machinery and promoting the value of printing and of mobile printing types. The Tipoteca opened the Type and Printing Museum to the public in November 2002.

The Museum occupies roughly 23,000 sq feet and houses over 150 printing machines and hundreds of sets of printing types, the public area and a beautiful library (with valuable old books by Aldus Manutius and other). The Museum is housed in a former Canapificio Veneto or hemp mill.

The Museum employs research staff, personnel involved in the purchase of exhibits and technicians in charge of repairing and maintaining the machinery and equipment in its original working order. 

In the history of mankind the invention of printing and movable types led to an immense change in the dissemination of culture and knowledge. Books which had been available in small numbers in manuscript form could now be printed and distributed by the hundreds and thousands of copies. The invention of the movable types is therefore a symbol of the revolution that has accompanied man from the Renaissance to the present day. The handpress improved gradually finally becoming the fast, complex printing machines of today.

Typesetting too has improved with the new technology going from Monotype to Linotype, which has greatly helped to increase the production of printed material. In the 1980s new technology led to the spread of electronic typesetting at a rate that was unprecedented in production technology. The lead and wood movable types came to the end of a brilliant career that had lasted over five hundred years, and left a clear field to the digital age.

Silvio Antiga, president of the Foundation, has been a passionate witness of this evolution in printing and in the crafts and skills that are part of it. The transition has been cause of growing concern and he felt that without prompt action those machines and printing types which had dominated culture and progress for so long would disappear forever under the sledge hammer or at best, recycled in a smelting cauldron.

Mr. Antiga began to collect the printing types and the equipment that were gradually being substituted in his printshop and later began to purchase whatever other printers were discarding. This action soon found supporters in his own brothers, who share the responsibility of managing the Grafiche Antiga printing firm and who were determined to give a solid buttress to his efforts.

Today the museum is an active entity whose importance has been widely recognized and which is visited not only by students but also by an ever-growing number of experts and tourists. All the machines are functioning and workshops and demonstrations are carried out in the Museum while collection and restoration of other items continue undeterred.

One of the things that shines through is a high a regard for the printers themselves, as well as for the tools of their trade. The staff is friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic, and the curator of the Museum, Sandro Berra, is a charming guide who also speaks excellent English. Sandro has a suspicion of much contemporary “cutting-edge” artists’ book/sculpture fabrications, and instead prefers books with clear, legible, classically based typographic composition. He prefers sitting down and getting lost in the writing of a well-printed book, to participating in the materials fetishism of most avant-garde book arts monstrosities.

The place is a must for anyone interested in type, printing and its past. If you're visiting the Venice area, take a day trip to a small town of Cornuda, in the foothills of the Italian Alps, where you'll find Tipoteca to be a very pleasant experience. Click here to view Tipoteca's website

I was recently a participant in the new SVA Masters Workshop: Design History, Theory and Practice held in Venice and Rome. The program was immensely educational and inspiring. Italy is a country with so much history in every turn—every corner has its history preserved and you can’t help but be in awe walking around the enchanted streets of Venice or the imperial ruins of Rome. Studying visual communication in the birthplace of Western typographic tradition was truly an eye-opening experience.

Italians seem unconcerned by the priceless art treasures and ancient ruins which lie casually among the buildings and workings of their hectic 21^st century city, and I’m glad to have been a part of it, even if it was only for 2 weeks.

I toured some of the most impressive studios and met incredible Italian designers and typographers—all of which I will cover in separate posts in the days to come.

The program was an intensive study of typography, history, practice, culture and gelato. In both cities, each participant (there were 11 in Venice, and 13 in Rome) created a personal and unique guidebook to Venice and another to Rome that drew on each person’s journey. Incorporating typography, history, your own photos, etc., each person created their own version of a guidebook through the city. To supplement the project, each day was packed with visits, field trips, guest lectures and classes.

Overall the program afforded me the opportunity to see typography through a completely different lens. I left with an incredible sense of history of type and a greater understanding of where Western typography was born. Every guest lecturer and field trip was filled with so much history and information that I would’ve loved to have a semester dedicated to each person’s lecture. I’m thrilled to have had this opportunity to study the roots of typography with these great masters.

The trip was an unforgettable learning experience. I discovered that I could have gelato 4 times a day, and still not get sick. I learned that “Italian time” means a lecture that starts at 6:30pm will be announced that it starts at 6:00pm because Romans are notoriously late. Finally, I gained an incredible wealth of knowledge on the influence of Italian architecture, fashion, typography and even cuisine on today’s contemporary design that will stick with me for a long time.

Stay tuned for more posts on Italy.

Grazie mille. A presto! Ciao ciao!

Additional photos and daily recaps are on the SVA MFA Design website
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