Roger Black

Roger Black is known for his sense of typography, which he’s applied in the design of has worked with magazines like Rolling Stone, newspapers like The Washington Post and web sites like the first MSNBC.com. He was a founder of one of the early desktop type design studios, Font Bureau (1989), and is now chairman of Type Network, an agency and distributor for type designers.

Many publications designed decades ago, such as the Los Angeles Times, continue to use his typography. He was an early adopter of desktop publishing, and then of web sites, for his clients.

Roger has advocated using distinct type for each title. Many original fonts and revivals of classic faces have been produced by him and his teams over the years. Some of the interesting case studies were gathered in a digital brochure at Type Network’s site, “The Roger Black Collection.”

Clients have included Reader’s Digest, Esquire, Scientific American, Premiere, Fast Company, Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong Tatler (and the other Tatler magazines in Asia) Panorama (Italy). Semana (Colombia) and The Nation (Thailand). Newspaper work includes the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Toronto Star, Tages Anzeiger (Zurich), Kompas (Jakarta) and the Straits Times (Singapore).

In 1968 he was editor of The Maroon, the student newspaper at the University of Chicago. After serving as chief art director of New York, The New York Times, and Newsweek, he started his own design firm in 1987. He’s been recognized with top awards from the Society of News Design and the Society of Publication Designers.

Roger lives in St. Pete Beach, Florida, and in the Texas Big Bend. Now 72 and working fulltime for Type Network, he’s active in building communities of people who love type. He organized the first big conferences for the Type Directors Club (TDC), Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), and started TYPE magazine, an online publication that has produced four print editions, and is planning No. 5 for later this year.