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Susana Carvalho (1979, Porto, Portugal) studied communication design at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon (FBAUL). In 2004 she moved to the Netherlands to complete the TypeMedia MA programme at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK). Recently her interest in education led her to pursue a MEd in Education in Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam where she researched the potential of space as a pedagogical tool in the graphic design classroom. She defended her thesis “Counterspace: Classroom Space as a Pedagogic Tool” in March 2019. She founded Atelier Carvalho Bernau in 2005 with her partner Kai Bernau. Тhe studio focuses on reading experiences, from printed matter to screen based media, from typefaces to intricate typographic structures. She was a founding member of the design collective Open Work in 2014. Apart from the studio practice she has been teaching at KABK since 2002 and has been a guest tutor, leading workshops and giving lectures throughout Europe.

Kai Bernau (born 1978) Born 1978 in Germany, came to The Hague to finish his studies in 2004. Has not managed to leave. Married to his business partner Susana Carvalho. Started Atelier Carvalho Bernau in 2005. The couple have a kid, she’s five. Since 2011 Kai has been teaching at MATD in ÉCAL, he has also been a guest teacher at HFBK Hamburg. Kai makes pretty good cocktails.

Atelier Carvalho Bernau designs reading experiences, from typeface to graphic interface, for culture and commerce. Research projects lead us to new starting points for our self-initiated work and for commissioners. Any assignment is an opportunity to question the role and understanding of design, each project is a tight-rope walk between applied realism and free-form optimism.

Christian Schwartz, a type designer and one of the founders of the type foundry Commercial Type, lives and works in New York. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., he worked for a time at MetaDesign in Berlin. After returning to the United States, he worked at type studio Font Bureau, going independent in 2001. In 2007, he and London designer Paul Barnes founded Commercial Type. The studio’s projects include typefaces for The Guardian, Esquire, T (The New York Times Style Magazine), the Empire State Building and Sprint. Also in 2007 Schwartz was awarded the prestigious Prix Charles Peignot, given to designers under 35 years of age for “outstanding contributions to type design.” He has been on the short list of the Museum of Design, in London, as Designer of the Year and was rated among the top 40 most influential designers under 40 years of age by Wallpaper* and on Time’s list of top 100 designers.

Typefaces by Christian Schwartz: FF Bau, Farnham, Graphik, Guardian, Neue Haas Grotesk, Kommissar, Neutraface, Produkt, Stag

Based in New York and London, Commercial Type is a joint venture between Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz, who have collaborated since 2004 on various typeface projects, most notably the award winning Guardian Egyptian. The company publishes retail fonts developed by Barnes and Schwartz, their staff, and outside collaborators, and also represents the two and their team when they work together on type design projects. Following the redesign of The Guardian, the team headed by Mark Porter, including Barnes and Schwartz, was awarded the coveted Black Pencil by the D&AD. The team was also nominated for the Design Museum’s “Designer of the Year” prize. In September 2006, Barnes and Schwartz were named two of the 40 most influential designers under 40 in Wallpaper*.

Ilya is a type and graphic designer and teacher, lives and works in Barcelona. He is a graduate of the Moscow State University of the Printing Arts (2002), where his graduation project was done under the supervision of Alexander Tarbeev. He has a MA degree in type design from the Type & Media program at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague (2005). After completing the program, he returned to Moscow, where he has collaborated for a number of media: Kommersant, Afisha, Moskovskiye Novosti, Bolshoi Gorod and Men’s Health Russia. In 2005-2007 he was art director for Afisha’s city guidebooks, following which he was art director for RIA-Novosti, a news agency, for several years. In 2007–2015 he has also supervised the curriculum in type and typography at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow. He has been very active as a consultant on Cyrillic since 2008. In 2014 he founded CSTM Fonts with Yury Ostromentsky.

Typefaces by Ilya Ruderman: BigCity Grotesque Pro, Kazimir, Kazimir Text, Navigo, Permian (a typeface-brand for the city of Perm) and Cyrillic versions of: Austin, Dala Floda, Graphik, Marlene, Moscow Sans (as a consultant), Typonine Sans, Thema.

Ilya Ruderman and Yury Ostromentsky (CSTM Fonts)

They are both graphic and type designers. Founders of CSTM Fonts (2014) type foundry and a new font distributor type.today (2016).

Graduated from Moscow State University of Print (Graphic Design Department), where they took Alexander Tarbeev’s classes. Later Ilya Ruderman graduated from Type & Media (Royal Academy of Art), the Hague, the Netherlands. After graduation he was a tutor of Type&Typography course at British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow (2008-2015), was an art-director of information agency RIA Novosti. He is an author of cyrillic versions of such typeface as Lava, Graphik, Neutraface and others, that was made for such studios as Typotheque, Commercial Type, Typonine and House Industries. He is an author of: Permian typeface, Big City Grotesque and several other corporate typefaces.

Before 2013 Yury Ostromentsky worked mostly as an editorial designer and art-director of BigCity Magazine, where he used his personal lettering, that was the base of the Pilar typeface, released by CSTM Fonts last year. He is an author of several book series designs and logotypes.

Both typefaces of Ilya Ruderman and Yury Ostromentsky were the winners of such type design competitions as Modern Cyrillic 2009, Modern Cyrillic 2014, Granshan 2011, European Design Award 2012. Kazimir typeface and Tele2 Typefamily, the CSTM Fonts’s latest releases, were among the winners of Granshan 2015.