Zoran Kostic

Born in 1947 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Graduated from the Faculty of Geodesy of Belgrade University and completed post graduate studies of photogrammetry at ITC Enshede, The Netherlands. Started professional career as a programmer for geodesy and photogrammetry and continued working in the Research and Development Department of the Institute of Photogrammetry in Belgrade. At that time I felt that this field held no more challenges for me.

In 1986, inspired by articles written by visionaries describing DTP as the job of the future, I and a friend decided to start a private DTP business. So we raised US $ 8,000 and set off. We acquired our first Macintosh SE and LaserWriter in 1987 and established Studio B&Z, the first DTP studio in Yugoslavia.

I had no intention of becoming a type designer. But at this time there were no Cyrillic PostScript fonts on the market nor were there any YU letters in Adobe Latin fonts, so, out of necessity, we had to become font making experts ourselves. We designed the first PostScript Cyrillic font already in 1987, in fact the first one in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Only veteran users of Macintosh and Fontographer 2.4 which provided exclusively Type 3 fonts, without hints, can appreciate the difficulties we were up against in seeking to make the PostScript font. Even remodelling Latin fonts by adding YU letters was nasty, until Adobe opened the Type 1 code.

While designing the first font I discovered a whole new world whose beauty and complexity wove such a spell over me that I am under its hold to this very day. It was love at first sight, and, I think, for ever.

Since then, whenever I have a free moment I make a Cyrillic font as a counterpart of the existing Latin fonts, for there is still a great shortage of the former. Also I made some original fonts like: Batke, Beograd, KosticSans, KosticSerif, Lapidarna Kapitala, Why Square, Just Square and DesignerRound and about ten others, designed on the basis of old scripts. The last one typeface is “HilandarskiUstav” reconstructed on the basis of handwriting gospels “Tetraevangelion of Patriarh Sava IV”, Monastery Chilandarios, Mount Athos, 14 century. OT font with 4.356 glyphs and symbols which use only one keyboard layout. To conclude Old Slavic scripts I also made Monah (6.400 characters), Glagoljica and Gradjanica.

In cooperation with the Belgrade typographer Djordje Zivkovic who designed them, I made: FlahScript, Garamond, LepiScript, Manasija, Naisus, Ravanica, Traian.

Born in 1947 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Graduated from the Faculty of Geodesy of Belgrade University and completed post graduate studies of photogrammetry at ITC Enshede, The Netherlands. Started professional career as a programmer for geodesy and photogrammetry and continued working in the Research and Development Department of the Institute of Photogrammetry in Belgrade. At that time I felt that this field held no more challenges for me.