Cornel Windlin

Cornel Windlin has been renowned for his typefaces for decades, creating innovative fonts since he was still in art school and used them primarily for his own work. He now works both culturally and commercially, his work having been exhibited in numerous museums and published in design books. Cornel Windlin is originally from Zurich but in 1988 he moved to London to work for Neville Brody. He later became the art editor of THE FACE magazine, published in 1980, before moving back to Switzerland to start up his own design practice in Zurich.

Windlin formed the foundry LINETO for digital font with Stephan Muller in 1993 in order to distribute his fonts in a low-scale way to friend circles. Since then Lineto.com, created in 1998, has developed and evolved to incorporate designers from all over the globe including Switzerland, London, New York and Berlin to create a platform for common interests and attributes. The site has been transformed from a low-scale method of font-sharing into a library of ranging typefaces.

Cornel Windlin has won numerous awards for his innovative typefaces and his works have been widely published in design books and international graphics publications like I.D, Idea and Eye Magazine. Windlin has co-written articles such as Eye 22 volume 6, 'The Dumbing-Down of Design'. When it comes to choosing type for his columns, Cornel Windlin prefers the simpler and less extravagant fonts, adapting alongside modern times where design has been forced to meet with general clarity. Magazine and graphic publications need to be contemporary and Windlin chose a modified version of Adobe Garamond, but in 'organized eccentricity', the headline face alters with each publication, stretching from ITC Clearface Regular (Herb Lubalin) to ITC Gothic Black (Antonio DiSpigna).

Windlin is also a large contributor to Project Vitra; begun in 1957 and now renowned throughout the world for their designs. The project commenced in Birsfelden near Basel with the furniture designs of Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson. Vitra sees itself as a project to 'design the world', driven by their successes and determination. The book 'Project VITRA' was designed by Cornel Windlin and Rolf Fellbaum; a book which provided throughtful insights to the adventure of experimentation and spirit which developed into Project Vitra, dominating graphic design in the 1990s.