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
