Julia Sysmäläinen

Julia Sysmäläinen is a designer and a philologist with Finnish-Russian cultural background. She works in corporate design, visual identity and type. Her typeface FF Mister K, inspired by the manuscripts of Franz Kafka, won several awards. On the last picture you can see rustedjewelry formed from glyphs and icons of the FF Mister K family. • My typefaces, FF Mister K is a complete type family based on Franz Kafka’s manuscripts — sometimes closer to the original, sometimes a few steps away. I proceeded in a similar way when developing Emily in White and my most recent typeface for the Lebedev Studios, ALS FinlandiaScript. For the former, the starting point was a series of poems by Emily Dickinson, written on slips on paper sewn together (she called them “fascicles”). For the latter, letters written by the composer Jean Sibelius. Even my ALS SyysScript (Finnish for “Autumn Script”) had a model — a Soviet postcard that my Aunt Katri sent me long ago to invite me to go mushrooming. –MyFonts