Tony Fahy
Tony Fahy, born in Ireland, is a type designer and typographer living and working in Carrigallen, County Leitrim, Ireland.
Having studied at St Josephs CBS, Fairview in Dublin, he graduated from the London College of Printing with a BA Hons in Media & Production Design, specializing in typographic design. He studied type design under Fred Lambert and information design under Martin Ashley, Brian Grimbly, and Antony Froshaug.
His first type creation was a Gaelic typeface called Pádraig which won a Chartpak competition back in the eighties. His next design, while working in London at Pauffley & Co, was a customized corporate typeface for the BOC Group (formerly known as British Oxygen and known as AIRCO in the US) to commemorate their 100 year anniversary, released as BOC 100 in 1985.
In 1999, the Irish transport group CIE commissioned Tony to design a customized corporate typeface for the CIE Group of Companies: Iarnród Éireann, Bus Éireann, and Dublin Bus. Part of the brief was to cater for the bilingual nature of the company. All of their literature, signage, etc. is presented in both English and Gaelic languages. Accordingly, many extra Gaelic characters were incorporated. This typeface, CIE 2000, was to commemorate the forthcoming millennium and was part of CIE's contribution to the festivities; it features on the CIE web site: http://www.iarnrodeireann.com.
Tony's first typeface for Bitstream Inc., Artane Elongated BT, has a specific philosophy at the core of its creation. He decided he would try to create a Roman sans that would have the elegance of a serif italic such as Stempel Garamond, Bembo, or Baskerville etc. Artane is the result!
[Tony Fahy, May 2002]
