The Board of Directors of Association Typographique Internationale announced its support to the initiative of a world-wide campaign in commemoration of the typographic reform of Czar Peter the Great. The year 2008 marks three hundred years of the typographic reform of Czar Peter the Great of Russia. The reform had a profound, long-lasting effect on the development of Russian culture, science, education, politics, economy-practically, all walks of life.
Peter the Great introduced a new style of printing type, featuring simplified letterforms. It was called Civil Type because it was designed for non-ecclesiastical publishing: official issuances, periodicals, technical literature, academic and educational print, fiction, poetry. The use of the older style, poluustav, became limited, restricted to clerical print.
The tercentenary of Civil Type is expected to be widely celebrated across the academic, publishing and typographic communities, in Russia and world-wide. A global campaign is in the works, initiated and spearheaded by a group of font design professionals affiliated with ParaType, a Moscow-based digital type foundry. Major events are being planned as part of this campaign: conferences and seminars, exhibitions and competitions, presentations and publications, educational and research projects. October 2005
