www.jobart.hu
is without no doubt one of the most prominet figures of Hungarian type design. Trained as a traditional graphic artist at the Academy of Fine Art Budapest, Gabor Kothay turned towards typography through the need of using type in his own commercial design. His being unhappy with the existing choice of typefaces just like the wish of creating a type in each different family and in each grat style started him up in his career as a type designer. Besides his interest in art history he is very much influenced by the phenomena of Nature. An organic, often floral disposition is often to be observed in his typefaces. Fine gestures, waving and dancing lines, playful swashes, and light movements are characteristic. In his stylization of Nature Kothay's model is Japanese Art, he admires their fine ability of abstraction. Birdland is also a creation that has organic origins: the childhood memory of finding different bones, skeletons in the sand and the gesture of unwilling mar-making (scribble) with a little twig on the surface was the starting experience for the design. As Gabor expresses: "If you spend your summer in the countryside, moreover if you happen to be a village boy, then you have a close relation to the earth. You and so many amazing stuff. Bones, pebbles, stones, all kind of little gadgets you can use for augury. This is Birdland. Then much later you realize that the same name stands for a club. ...for jazz..., for music I love... the sound of the saxophone in the air..."