Stephen Banham

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Stephen Banham is an Australian graphic designer, writer, and founder of Letterbox, a typographic studio.

Banham was born in Melbourne in 1968. He studied graphic design at RMIT University from 1986–88. In 2003 he completed a Master of Design in design research from RMIT.

In 1991 he printed the first small issue of Qwerty, the first in a series of six experimental spiral-bound issues. His work on the Qwerty series (1991-95) was published in Eye magazine (no. 46, vol. 12, Winter 2002) along with an interview of Banham. [1]

Here is a passage from that interview:

“ It’s hard to believe now, but there was very little happening in Australia in terms of typography in 1990. I began teaching typography at about this time and I would constantly see my students copy entire designs straight from Emigre or other international publications. I knew that we could create our own typographic language here so I began Qwerty. It was a series of six publications – q, w, e, r, t and y – each one a7 in size [74 x 105 mm]. This size wasn’t because I wanted to create a precious art book. It was simply the only way I could afford to have 24 pages up on a single sheet. Things were quite tough then – one week I had only $a300 in my bank account and I had the choice of paying the rent or sending the first issue to press. Over the next five years, I released the other issues. It received a lot of interest in the international design press and showed my students by example that one can create typographic work that reflects aspects of one’s own culture, though now I don’t agree with that early rather nationalistic notion of identity.[1] ”

Banham has also been a contributor to, or featured in, countless design publications including ''Baseline magazine, Emigre, Adbusters, Face, Typo, Eye, Monument, Desktop, Grafik, Comma amongst many others. Perhaps more importantly, Banham has brought discussion of the cultural and social aspects of typography to a wider public, arguing these points in daily broadsheets such as the Age and The Australian newspapers.

Contents

[edit] Professional Research

In 1996 he produced Ampersand the first of a five-part series by the same name. These featured extended texts on the social significance of typography not possible in the small A7 format of Qwerty. This was then followed by Rentfont (1997) featuring an experimental typeface Futures, made entirely from logotypes. In 1998 Banham produced Convoy, a comment on the commodification of graphic design. Assembly (1999) was an exploration of the visual memory of a child in relation to corporate identity. This involved the individual interviewing over 600 schoolchildren. Grand (2001) investigated the relationship between typefaces and socio-economic environments by noting and analysing every instance of typography across a 1000 metre area of the Melbourne central business district.

2004 saw the release of Fancy, a collection of 12 stories based on typographic themes. Edited by Nick Gadd and featuring photography by David Sterry, Fancy explores the themes of fact and fiction in graphic design. Banham prefers not to indicate which stories are true and which are false, highlighting the creative possibilities and tensions fiction creates.

The Character forums, beginning in 2005, have been a live and very public extension of these earlier discussions. Issues discussed in these forums have included the style-guiding of cities, the role of accident in design, politics in graphic design and many more. Many of these events have been expanded with other activities such as type tours of Melbourne and two typographic film festivals, including the only Australian screening of Helvetica in 2007.

[edit] Typographic Design

Letterbox has produced many typefaces over the years including Berber, Terital and Kevlar (with Wendy Ellerton), Morice (with Morice Kastoun) and the most recent Bisque (with Niels Oeltjen).

[edit] Articles

  • The Problem of Koala Sans, Baseline 25, edited by Mike Daines & Hans Dieter Reichert, Bradbourne Publishing, 1998.
  • After the Shouting – The Post-Grapus Generation, Baseline 29, edited by Mike Daines & Hans Dieter Reichert, Bradbourne Publishing, 1999.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Eye, Number 47, Volume 12, Spring 2003.