Shortly after the collapse of the communist regime, a revolutionary atmosphere culminated at the studio of typography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. The 1990s were characterised by the deconstruction of traditional type design. The construction of typefaces didn't conform to established proportions anymore — the frame was often self-supporting, and if not, it became a mere framework in which a narrative was told. On the one hand designers attempted to grasp and interpret the atmosphere of freedom of the 1980s, represented by David Carson and Neville Brody. On the other hand they feverishly attempted to appropriate anything that surrounded them in their daily lives, moulding those everyday elements into shapes that would vaguely resemble type. Most of these typefaces only appeared briefly on posters, sometimes just once. Only a few were applied in other design projects, which ensured their longevity. But for most of them their ephemeral lives quickly came to an end. More…

One of the platforms where these typefaces were showcased was the Zivel magazine. In its sixth issue, which came out in spring of 1997, a face Vafle by Marek Pistora first appeared. The inspiration for its name was pretty straightforward — the face originated from the digitisation of an insignia found on Luftwaffe airplanes, where it originally would have conformed to some Deutsche Industrie-Norm. Vafle is soulless, purely utilitarian, plain. Two versions were created - Vafle round and angular.

In 2001 Marek became art director of Reflex. He struggled his way through fleeting typographic creations, and installed an authoritarian rule of simple planes and geometric sections. Here, the new titling face Wafle Two came to life, followed by Wafle Stencil, the latter being some sort of interpretation of the original Vafle spirit. The two concepts met in the form of a rectangular sans serif with pleasantly rounded curved strokes. The face included a lower case, and although charactersÕ proportions were well balanced, the occasional threats remained. In the course of five years of use the face convincingly demonstrated its simple force, and it helped define the graphic identity of the magazine.

At the turn of 2005 and 2006, we decided to give Wafle Two a facelift. It was necessary to carry out some minor corrections in the proportions and and weight of the upper case, lower case and numerals. Missing glyphs were added to the character set, along with accented characters for most Latin script languages. The resulting face was named Vafle Classic. Similarly its stencil version Vafle Stencil adopts the new and complex morphology. Furthermore the family was augmented with a number of new members. Vafle Blindy has filled out counters, Vafle Scratch features scratches and Vafle Shadow casts an elegant shadow. This last variation can be used independently or in combination with Vafle Classic. In the monospaced version Vafle Mono all the letters take up exactly the same width. Vafle TapeÕs corners are angled instead of rounded, as if the characters were constructed with folded tape. Vafle Small Caps enhances the family with a set of small caps which have the exact same x-height as the lower case, thus allowing unicase setting by combining it with the Vafle Classic lower case. Vafle Condensed and Vafle Extended are — typically — condensed and extended iterations of Vafle Classic. Vafle Egyptienne features square slab serifs, adding a serif variation to this sans serif family. Arrows, frames and other assorted glyphs are accomodated in the Vafle Picto font.
The Vafle family is a versatile companion for the design of magazines, books, posters, or complete corporate systems.