Fred Smeijers (main tutor)

is a Dutch type designer, educator, researcher, and writer. Among the most versatile contemporary type designers, Smeijers has a whole range of distinctive typefaces to his credit, among which are: FF Quadraat; TEFF Renard; DTL Nobel; Arnhem, Fresco, Sansa, Custodia, Ludwig, Puncho, and Bery series. Smeijers custom type designs include iconic logos and typefaces for Philips Electronics, Tom-Tom, Canon-Europe, Samsung, and Porsche, among many others.

Smeijers is the recipient of Gerrit Noordzij Award for outstanding contribution to the field of type design and type education (The Hague, 2001), and the recipient of the SOTA Typography Award from Society of Typographic Aficionados (Boston, 2016). Smeijers is the author of Counterpunch (1996, 2011) and Type Now (2003) both published by Hyphen Press, London.

Fred Smeijers was formerly a founding partner and Creative Director of the font publishing label OurType (2004–2017). Smeijers is Professor of type design at the HGB in Leipzig, Germany and the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague, and a research fellow at Plantin Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.

Eric Kindel (visiting tutor)

is a designer, writer, editor and Professor of Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, where he is also head of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication.

His programme of research into the history of stencilling has been underway since 1999, encompassing episodes of stencil work across a wide expanse of time and context, about which he has written and spoken extensively. He has assembled a large collection of stencil artefacts to support historical investigation, teaching, publishing and exhibitions.

His other research interests include the graphic design of information, with an emphasis on Isotype. Between 2007 and 2011, he led the ‘Isotype revisited’ project; among its outputs were From hieroglyphics to Isotype (Hyphen Press, 2010), the exhibition ‘Isotype: international picture language’ (V&A, 2010–11) and Isotype: design and contexts, 1925–1971 (Hyphen Press, 2013). He also serves as curator of the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection at the University of Reading.

Since its fifth volume (2003), he has collaborated on Typography papers and co-edited its most recent, ninth volume (Hyphen Press, 2013). He has written for other publications including AA Files, Baseline, Eye and the Journal of the Printing Historical Society.


Riccardo Olocco (visiting tutor)

is a type designer and member of the Italian type foundry CAST – Cooperativa Anonima Servizi Tipografici.

Next to designing type, Riccardo pursues a PhD at the University of Reading, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. His research subject is 15th century Venetian roman types, where Riccardo combines the use of bibliographical knowledge with analysis of letterforms.

Riccardo holds a MA degree in Typeface Design from the University of Reading (2014), where he was introduced to the non-Latin types and fell in love with the Bengali script. Prior to this, from the late 1990s, he practiced type and graphic design in Milan, serving clients in northern Italy. From 2009 to 2013 he lectured typography at the Free University of Bolzano Bozen – Faculty of Design and Art. Riccardo currently lives and works in Bolzano and London.


Luciano Perondi (visiting tutor)

has been practicing typeface and information design since 1998, designing type for prominent clients in Italy. His main fields of interest are writing and reading processes, the history of writing and its non linear use (sinsemia). Luciano is professor of History of Books at ISIA Urbino since 2007.


Roberto Arista (tutor)

is a type and graphic designer based in Milan. His practice is focused on the serial production of images and the development of design tools. Since 2014 he actively collaborates with Fred Smeijers and he is currently teaching Programming for Design at ISIA Urbino. He holds a MA degree from the type]media program of the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and a BA degree from ISIA Urbino.

Jonathan Pierini (course founder)

is a graphic and type designer based in Urbino. He holds a BA degree in graphic design and visual communication from the ISIA Urbino and a MA degree in type design from type]media program of the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, The Netherlands.

In 2010 Jonathan moved to London to work at Dalton Maag Ltd type design office, where he was involved in projects for clients such as Nokia and Vodafone. Between 2011 and 2017, he works at the Free University of Bolzano Bozen – Faculty of Design and Art, as Researcher and Aggregate Professor in Graphic Design. Since 2014 Jonathan teaches Communication and Design for Publishing at the MA course of ISIA Urbino, as well as at the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts. In September 2017 Jonathan was appointed Director of the High Institute for Applied Arts - ISIA Urbino.