No Web Without Women is “a collection of innovations by women in the fields of computer science and technology”. The project features short bios of women who were instrumental in the development of everything from wireless transmission technology (Hedy Lamarr) to the web browser (Nicola Pellow ), computer iconography (Susan Kare), and more. There are also downloadable PDF posters for each of the featured innovators.

The single-page website is a Selman project, released for Women’s History Month in March of 2020. The entire page is typeset in Zuzana Licko’s Base series of typefaces, with Base 9 Sans used for headings and captions, and Base 12 Serif used for paragraph text. (Licko is also one of the women featured in the project, due to her role ushering in the era of digital type foundries.) The colorful design makes heavy use of the strike-through as a design element to emphasize how each of the listed innovations wouldn’t exist as they do today without the contributions of these women.

De Beweeging (“the Movement”) in Antwerp, Belgium (1984–2001) was an inventive dance and theater center that organized a yearly festival. In the mid-1990s I designed their festival programs and posters.

An exceptional assignment was the production of two booklets about the experimental choreographer Eric Raeves. The occasion was a unique performance produced for museums. The dancers, undressed, performed slow, abstract patterns, creating a live art installation. As museums and art centers were the main target audience for the publication, its character had to be halfway between a contemporary art catalog and a dance brochure.

I chose the recent Emigre typeface Base 9 Sans (1994). For her design of the whole Base suite, Zuzana Licko had started with the screen fonts (as Matthew Carter had for Verdana). The screen fonts, their pixel widths adapted to the limited resolution of that era’s computer screens, largely dictated the look of the printer fonts. As Emigre wrote: “This was a unique challenge, and generated some very surprising results that we would not have arrived at otherwise.”

The same was true for the editorial design. At the time I found this experimental typeface with a strong personality was ideal for a two-part publication that was to represent a choreographer’s unorthodox approach to dance and art. The task to combine two languages, Dutch and English, in a way that guided readers clearly from one column to the next, was an interesting challenge and a nice excuse for experimenting – using two weights of Base 9 and two colors.

The catalogue covers use Base 12 Serif.

For an urban development-related project in Gironde, France, I worked with agency deux degrés and the architects from the Cancan collectif.

One of the peculiarities of this district is its large main road, overloaded with signs. My mission was to think about this ephemeral identity, taking into account the current context for this district: building work and change. Picking up various ideas (from Las Vegas to butcher’s shops), we worked on a French-American mix of signs, colors and typefaces. In order to make an intervention that stayed in touch with the site, we opted for a graphical continuity with the signs already there.

The design resulted in a number of totems that are reminiscent of French Morris columns or even the industrial Derrick columns. These columns are relevant for both motorists and pedestrians, who will find information and street furniture. For the duration of the project (several years) we made signage that recalls the practices of entrepreneurs in the area.

To evoke a set of French-American signs, a multitude of typefaces have been used. Banco (by the great Roger Excoffon) represents traditional French butcher’s shops; Trade Gothic is an American classic; Bello, more spontaneous and warm, represents the city parks; Knockout is impressive with all its various styles; a kind of collective American image is channeled through Emigre’s Base 12 Sans and Serif; Mr Stalwart is reminiscent of the sign painting for shop fronts.

For the duration of the building work (several years) we made a signage that evokes the practices of entrepreneurs in the area.