Émilie Rigaud

Émilie Rigaud is a graphic artist, typeface designer and historian of Japanese typography. She also teaches at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique in Nancy. In 2010 she founded the A is for Fonts type foundry. Having obtained a Master’s in graphic design from École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris, Rigaud went on to specialise in typeface design at Reading University. It was here that she designed the Coline font family, winner of the 2011 Tokyo Type Directors Club Type Design Prize and acquired by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques for its collections. Rigaud’s typefaces combine remarkable visual expression with immense technical precision. Her Master’s thesis, supervised by Emmanuel Lozerand, in Japanese language and culture at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) focused on the history of Japanese typography; a topic relevant to her twin activities of graphic designer and teacher.

During her residency, Émilie Rigaud continued to research the history of Japanese typography, and more specifically the tension between the cursiveness of Japanese script, elicited by calligraphy, and the process of mechanisation imposed by typography and reproduction. Rigaud’s project aimed to create a family of Japanese typographic characters that would connect these two seemingly antinomic characteristics, and ultimately achieve a balance between hand movements and a more mechanical means of producing shapes.