JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAPPO - TYPE SCALE, NICHE TO MAINSTREAM

François Rappo (1955) lives and works in Saillon, Switzerland. Rappo studied graphic design in the mid-1970s at the École cantonale des beaux arts (ECBA) in Lausanne, where he specialized in typography. After years of graphic design practice in both the cultural and the corporate fields, he became active in design education. From the mid-1990s, he taught editorial and type design at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), where he established the art direction master’s degree program in 2009, which became the type design master’s degree program in 2016. Additionally, Rappo frequently lectures about his typographic practice in Europe, Russia, and the USA. From 2001 to 2007, he was the president of the jury for The Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition. He was awarded the prestigious Jan Tschichold Prize in 2013 for his outstanding achievement in editorial design through his influential typeface designs.

François Rappo started designing the font in 1998 and since then he has worked with Optimo type foundry and designed fonts such as Didot Elder, Theinhardt Grotesk, Genath, Antique, Plain Grotesque, Practice, Apax, and many more.