Irene Vlachou: get to know our senior type designer
- Date
- February 2019
- Interview with
Go to Irene Vlachou Irene Vlachou
We continue our interview series with the TypeTogether team. It’s time to meet Irene Vlachou, our senior type designer, variable font queen, and Greek expert.
Irene is our senior type designer and has been designing Greek and Latin typefaces with TypeTogether since May 2013. After trying life as an artist and a violinist, Irene found her vocation in creating alphabets. Her terrible handwriting and horror of olives turned out to be no obstacles for her becoming a type designer specializing in Greek. She studied type design from 2003–2004 at the University of Reading and was named Miss Fontlab 2004 due to her assistant role. Besides being TypeTogether’s variable fonts master, she is totally into icons and will be the last woman standing at any decent font party.
After several years, in 2019 Irene continued her career as a freelance type designer and font engineer.
Where is your office located?
Bristol and when I’ve had enough of the rain, I hurry back to Athens.
In what countries or cities have you lived?
Greece and UK.
What kind of music do you listen to, if you do, when working?
Depends on the mood, the project, and the time of the day. Things from post-rock, punk-rock, psychedelia, avant-garde and electronic, and when I get stuck on designing Greek, some rembetiko tunes always help me focus. My future plan is getting into jazz, but I’m still too young. :)
Can you name 3 fonts you love (designed by others)?
It has to be Bello Write by Underware (my HOI love), Beowolf by LettError (my first love) and Contrast Foundry’s Chimera (my new crush).
What are your love/hate glyphs when designing fonts?
I like designing a lowercase Greek zeta ‘ζ’. I also have a very vivid memory of Gerard Unger during a critique in Reading when he transformed a “zeta” into a diver. I don’t really hate any glyphs, some are just more boring than others.
Who is your everyday hero?
I guess people who haven’t lost hope yet.
What is your hobby when not designing fonts?
I like travelling a lot, so I have started loving the idea of planning trips. It has become an obsession of mine to discover the most interesting ways to go from place A to B.
You have one opportunity to do something different in your life. What do you choose?
A mathematician I think. Of course my dream since I was five years old to be a figure skater is still at the top of my list.
What is your favourite word?
‘Ghastly’ in English and ‘φεῦ’ in Greek, which means ‘alas’ in English.
What is the most amazing script you have worked with and why?
Latin, the most exotic and versatile of all!
Home office.
Gerard Unger’s zeta diver and alpha fish drawing.
From a, Vienna
to B, Cyprus
Greek font ad from 1964 PAP catalogue.
