Influences

Designers

Elizabeth Friedländer (1903-1984) was a German designer notably active in Great Britain during the inter- and postwar years, after escaping religious persecution as a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany and, later, Italy. A “design prodigy,”[1] she studied under E. R. Weiss at the Berlin Academy and, in 1927, was invited to design a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry on the strength of her work for the magazine Die Dame. This typeface, originally called Friedländer-Antiqua, was eventually renamed Elizabeth to avoid drawing attention to her Jewish surname; owing to the turbulent political situation in Europe, it was not struck until 1939.

Friedländer’s professional history is fascinating, from her immigrant experiences in London as a domestic servant to her work for the Ministry of Information’s black propaganda unit, where she designed forged Nazi rubber stamps and ration books in support of the war effort. A rare example of a woman working in the early contemporary era of typography, Friedländer would continue to define postwar British advertising and publishing thanks to her career at Penguin publishing house, despite her work being “resolutely un-English.”[2] Secure in her sense of self and purpose, Friedländer flourished in the collective spirit that dominated British design at the time, when – according to curator Katharine Meynell — “your job was to do the work, rather than announce yourself in front of it.”[3]

[1] http://www.dorafabrics.com/2018/01/16/12007/

[2] http://www.dorafabrics.com/2018/01/16/12007/

[3] https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/elizabethfriedlander-graphicdesign-internationalwomensday-080318