George D. Matthiopoulos

Occupation:
Lecturer in the Department of Graphic Design and Visual Communication at the School of Applied Arts and Civilization of the University of West Attica and involved in the text based communication and the transfer of historical type forms into contemporary art & education projects.

Professional Experience:
His research work is in the fields of type design, typography and Graphic Arts history. He is also a founding member and type designer for the non-profit organization Greek Font Society and He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Design (California State University, Northridge, 1982), a Master’s degree in Vocational Education (California State University, Los Angeles, 1984) and a Diploma in Printing (London School of Printing, 1985). He has authored the work Anthology of Greek Typography (University of Crete Press, 2009), the textbooks Lettering and Flexography (Greek Open University Press, 2002) and he has translated into Greek the works of: Robert Bringhurst, Elements of Typographic Style (University of Crete Press, 2001), Victor Scholderer, Greek Printing Types, 1465-1927 (Typophilia, 1995), Tim Wu, The Master Switch. The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Gialos, 2012) and John Berger, A Painter of our Times (University of Crete Press, 2002). He has also designed many editions, art catalogues and museum exhibitions and he has contributed papers on Greek typography in several national and international conferences and publications. His design work for the edition of Pindar’s Olympian Odes (Athens, 2004) was awarded the 1st prize at the National Graphic Design Awards (EVGE 2005) and he was member of the designing team who won the Gold Award for Typographic Excellence for the new visual communication of the National Library of Greece (EVGE 2018).

He is currently completing his doctoral thesis on ‘The Development of the Greek Printing Types’ in the Department of History, School of Philosophy and School of Fine Arts, Ioannina University and he acts as scientific and design consultant in the preparation of the Printing Museum at the Ioannina University.

Education and Typography Project:
Leader of the project “The Grecs du roi meet the Cretan literature of the Renaissance in a Street Art performance throughout Crete: a school project”. The goal of the project was to communicate to the public and to involve the younger generations with the rich but largely unknown typographic tradition of the Greek language. By introducing a hypothetical conjecture of the famous mid-16th c. type “Grecs du roi” (designed by Angelos Vergikios, a famous Cretan calligrapher, and engraved by Claude Garamont, the best French type cutter of his generation) with the chivalric poetry of post-Byzantine Crete, we produced couplets stenciled on many different locations in several cities and towns of Crete as Street Art performances involving crews of high school students and their teachers. The project was organized by the Department of Graphic Design (UniWA, Athens), the Museum of Typography at Chania, Crete and the Cultural Activities Administration of the Secondary Education Board of Crete.

reading: 

http://www.aepm.eu/past-conferences/2017-making-history/george-matthiopoulos-the-grecs-du-roi-meet-early-cretan-literature/

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