Events
Alfabeti Modernisti Italiani
with Riccardo Olocco, Valentina Casali, Giulio Galli
Rediscover the bold, geometric letterforms that defined an era of Italian design.
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For many years, Luca Lattuga of Anonima Impressori has been collecting and cataloguing modernist wood type (and some metal type) produced in Italy, which were very popular in the 1930s. Alongside Nebiolo’s bestsellers such as Neon, Italy saw the emergence of a plethora of original wood type designs. Often created by amateurs rather than professional type designers, these typefaces followed the European trend towards geometric lettering and can be seen as a local expression of vernacular typography.
Known today as “rationalist” typefaces (since the term “modernist” has never found favor among Italian critics and historians), they were widely used in advertisements, leaflets, posters, as well as on title pages, book covers, and magazine mastheads. While the Fascist regime promoted geometric letterforms — cunningly adopting the most advanced Art Deco trends in architecture and graphics — these typefaces enjoyed popularity across all levels of Italian society. They were not perceived as symbols of the regime and remained in use well into the 1960s.
Luca will present his findings in a book to be published by Lazy Dog Press in 2026. To support his research into these forgotten types, CAST has created digital revivals of the best designs Luca has uncovered. These revivals, released as Alfabeti Modernisti, are now available as part of CAST’s typeface collection and can also be accessed on Adobe Fonts. The collection was designed by a team of CAST members and collaborators, following a faithful and respectful approach to the original sources.
Three members of CAST will introduce the collection and present their revival work, focusing on the small changes that have been made to the original design in order to produce digital fonts that meet the expectations of contemporary users.
Letterform Lectures are a public aspect of the Type West postgraduate program. The series is co-presented by the San Francisco Public Library, where events are free and open to all.
Riccardo Olocco
Riccardo Olocco, type designer and co-founder of CAST foundry, is a researcher in the history of type and visiting research fellow at the University of Reading, where in 2019 he completed his PhD on 15th-century Venetian romans. He publishes articles and lectures in several countries. His book with Michele Patanè, Designing type revivals, was published in 2022.
Valentina Casali
Valentina Casali works as letterer and type designer in Italy. Her interest in applied arts keeps her hand busy with letter carving and sign painting. She’s a partner at Sunday Büro and in 2023 she joined CAST Foundry as a designer and junior engineer. She graduated from the Type@Cooper in 2021 and with the greatest honor in the EcTd at the Plantin Instituut voor Typografie in Antwerp in 2022. She teaches lettering and type design at ABA Macerata.
Giulio Galli
Giulio Galli is a typeface designer, researcher, and teacher based in Brussels, Belgium. Born and raised in Pesaro, Italy, he earned a BA in Graphic Design at ISIA Urbino in 2019 and moved on to specialize in Typeface Design at the University of Reading in 2021. He is a PhD candidate within the READSEARCH Research Lab at the University of Hasselt, studying parametric typeface design for legibility purposes. He teaches typeface design and typography at PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, Belgium. He has taught and given workshops at Cooper Union, New York; SVA School of Arts, New York; and Cfp Bauer, Milano. Since 2018, he has been an associate typeface designer at CAST Foundry (Cooperativa Anonima Servizi Tipografici), Italy.
