Vladimir Yefimov R.I.P. (1949–2012)

[twardoch]

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Today, the co-founder of ParaType, prolific type designer and teacher Vladimir Yefimov has died in Moscow.

Both his original typefaces and his masterful Cyrillic extensions of existing Latin faces were truly impressive. He even attempted multi-script extensions such as that of ITC Avant Garde.

Among my favorite text faces (or actually, serif screen faces) is Vladimir’s Octava. Matthew Carter praised Vladimir’s Cyrillic version of ITC Charter, which I think is one of the finest Cyrillic alphabets ever designed. I was also very fond of Vladimir’s Cyrillic extension of Kis, which John Hudson described as “one of his favourite Cyrillic text types as well as a remarkable exercise in historic imagination”.

Vladimir often collaborated with other designers, many of them were his former students. One of the last projects that he participated in was the monumental PT Sans and PT Serif project.

But he was not only dedicated, skillful and artistically refined — but also kind, generous, modest, warm and funny. I first met him in 1998 at the ATypI Lyon conference, and greatly enjoyed all the subsequent occasions that I could spend some time with him.

It's been a great pleasure and a true privilege knowing him (a bit).

Goodbye, Володя.

His biography at ParaType and on his own Google+ account (now sadly orphaned). And some of his typefaces at MyFonts.

[5star]

Sad loss.

Thanks for posting, I learnt quite a bit.

[speter]

He will indeed be missed. I had the pleasure of spending some time with him at ParaType when I was in Moscow a couple of years ago.