Civil Type and Kis Cyrillic

In 2002, an Eng­lish-lan­guage col­lec­tion of art­icles about typefaces and al­pha­bets from around the world was pub­lished un­der the title Lan­guage Cul­ture Type: In­ter­na­tion­al Type Design in the Age of Uni­code (com­piled by John Berry). The book, which came out in the wake of the AtypI buk­va:raz! com­pet­i­tion, con­tained an es­say by Vladi­mir Ye­fimov on the his­tory of Civil Script and mod­ern Cyril­lic type based on his­tor­ic­al forms—Civil Type and Kis Cyril­lic. Today, 10 years after re­lease, the art­icle is not only still rel­ev­ant, but more cap­able than ever of rous­ing both pro­fes­sion­als and those read­ers who are in­ter­ested in the his­tory of Cyril­lic and Civil Type. Those who knew Vladi­mir will re­mem­ber his tal­ent for quietly and pa­tiently, time and time again, talk­ing about our let­ters as an as­set, rather than the oner­ous leg­acy of Peter the Great. Al­low us to in­tro­duce you to the first part of the es­say on the con­tro­ver­sial re­form.