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| 03 |---GRAPHICS INTERNATIONAL-->-->> May 1997. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From London. Carlos Segura seems to have taken the notion of the "designer as rock star" to heart. Away from the day-to-day running of the Chicago-based design company Segura Inc. and the avant-garde digital type foundry [T-26], the bewhiskered Segura assumes the ironic alias of DJ Razorface, laying down mellow ambient grooves with the help of fellow typographer Jim Marcus. His downtown studio is also the home of ThickFace Records, a small but thriving interdependent label, which has a coterie of up-and-coming artists on on its books. Not long ago, the type designer and commercial director Jonathan Barnbrook memorably observed that "people used to talk about forming a band...now they talk about setting up a font company." Segura has gone one better and done both. The rock star analogies certainly don't stop there. When I finally catch up with him, Segura is on the last leg of his whistle-stop UK tour, organized by the typographics circle, which has so far taken place in Glasgow and Manchester. He's having a short breather and doing some press before his final gig - the big one - a sell-out at RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Slightly built, his shoulder-length hair flecked with gray, Segura wears a pair of small rectangular sunglasses throughout the session ( we're indoors, by the way, and it's an overcast day in March). He is chaperoned by his strikingly beautiful wife Sun, who from time to time interjects, prompts him or picks him up on a point of detail. With just a trace of a Cuban accent, Segura kicks off by outlining the genesis of [T-26]: "Segura Inc. was set up in 1991. I'd been working in advertising for ten years and had decided it was time to get out. I started the company as a way of introducing fine art into the commercial arena, but I still found that the client was always standing behind me telling me to make the logo bigger - so I was looking for something which would allow me to experiment more. [T-26] wasn't planned...it was a total accident. I had designed a font for a project and people started calling and asking if they could get hold of it. I considered licensing it to an existing foundry, but then thought "Hey, why don't I do my own thing?" Word got out on the streets that I had started a foundry and soon people from all over the world were faxing us stuff and submitting things...it just got totally out of control." In three years, the [T-26] catalogue has grown exponentially. It now comprises over 400 fonts, submitted by designers from as far afield as Europe, India, Singapore, South Africa and Puerto Rico. Segura himself has contributed around ten typefaces; these include Neo, featuring post-modern letterforms made up of upper and lowercase shapes with juxtaposed curved and squared off edges; Time in Hell, which combines Times and Helvetica; 26 Faces, a pictogram font made up (as the title would suggest) of 26 comic book-inspired heads, and a collection of runic-style dingbats called Dingura. With the world and his wife apparently knocking at [T-26]'s door, exactly what are Segura's criteria for eligibility? "Thats simple, He says, "I have to like them. Other than that, I'm looking for fonts that are experimental in nature not only in the way they are drawn, but in the way they demand to be used. Some fonts are so experimental that they can behave almost as typographical paintings. I like fonts that have a sense of their own body language, that paint a page and turn it into something else. We do carry various traditional faces, but they don't tend to sell very well. Basically, our audience want the experimental stuff. Perhaps it's because he's self taught - he was asked to design fliers as a young drummer in a Miami Latin/disco band duing the 70's that Segura has a refreshingly magnanimous attidude to other typographic practitioners. He is certainly devoid of the snobbishness which has been known to raise its head in the industry: "A lot of contributions to [T-26] are by people who aren't trained in the craft. I realize there are a lot of people who find this offensive, but I don't see it like that. In fact, I believe these contributions have energised the industry. Some of our font designers are bartenders; some don't use a computer at all, they hand render the letters and then we'll digitize them and make a font out of them. Artists like Basquiat and Keith Haring would never have seen daylight if we had all been of the mind-set that art should only be done by classically trained people. Typogaphy is no different." Another factor which sets [T-26] apart from its rivals is it unique pricing and licensing policy. Students are entitled to a forty percent discount; users are offered ten printer licenses instead of the usual two; the service bureau dosen't have to own the fonts to output the work; and fifty percent of the royalties find their way back to the designer. " A lot of the policies in our industry have been based on greed rather reality," observes Segura, his halo aglow. As well as these highly favourable terms and conditions, the canny marketing of [T-26] has undoubtedly contributed to its success. Segura regulary releases limited-edition "T-bags' , screen printed muslin sacks containing the latest suppliment to the type collection plus quirky promotional items: golf tees, napkins, stickers and postcards. "People love them," he says. "They're more like a gift item then a catalogue." He has also developted a series of short QuickTime animations which showcase the characteristics of various [T-26] typefaces using a deft combination of sound and movement - these proved to be one of the major highlights of Segura's RIBA lecture. In fact, the promotional work for both [T-26] and Segura Inc. he showed on the night was staggering - but there was plenty more besides. Brochures for fashion houses Karl Lagerfield and Krizia, on-screen work for MTV, ads for local radio stations and AIDS charities, an array of work for mainstreams and indie records industry, material for extravagent ad agency pitches and last but certainly not least, a range of impossibly funky snowboards. Come to think of it, the effect of having sat through this two hour bombardment of images was not unlike having been on an exhilerating snowboard ride. And all this, remarked a triumphant Segura to his RIBA audience, was a mere eighteen months' output. With that, the rock star in him rose to the surface once more and he milked the audience applause like a seasoned performer.  >> return to "articles" section :-) SEGURA INC. 1110 North Milwaukee Avenue. Chicago, Illinois 60622-4017. (t) 773.862.5667 (f) 773.862.1214 (e) info@segura-inc.com |
