Show Notes
Today's guest is Naoise Ó Conchubhair, someone whose entire career has been shaped by an obsession with type, the Irish language and the conviction that the best design always comes from understanding your context before you touch a single letterform.
We go way back to Naoise’s childhood, a furniture designer father, a grandfather who founded an Irish language publication, and a mother who was involved in the founding of TG4, the Irish language broadcast channel, here in Ireland. We get deep into Insular the Gaelic typeface Naoise designed for his final year project at NCAD, a project that grew from a mystery tour through Irish banknote lettering, a 1976 typeface competition, and the extraordinary stone cutting lettering of Michael Biggs at the Garden of Remembrance and Arbour Hill.
We talk about Song of the Sea and the joy of watching your handwriting appear on the Lighthouse Cinema screen as part of the film, which was nominated for an Oscar. About more modern and recent work MGNÉ, where a fada became a brand device about Free Market, the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Wonder Cabinet in the Dead Zoo, the National History Museum, and the maddening precision of brass letters that were too perfectly made to fit together.
Naoise gives incredible detail of not just the process, the projects, but the people whom he deeply respects and collaborates with, the joy of teaching the new wave of design students and the changing landscape of operating in design right now.
This episode is available to listen to on Apple, but there are so so many projects to see, I highly recommend watching the video of the podcast which is available on Spotify, YouTube or over on our Patreon. I can't thank him enough for his generosity of time and his work shows a new modernity for Irish identity and the future of Irish design. Enjoy.
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Rough Drafts is a podcast from BOUNCE for anyone who's ever stared at something unfinished and wondered if they were on the right track. Designers, artists, and thinkers talk about the messy, uncertain, deeply human process of making things.
Rough Drafts – Where ideas are still forming.
Episodes drop regularly. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. Listen on Apple // Listen or Watch on Spotify, Patreon and YouTube
More from Rough Drafts from BOUNCE
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In today’s episode. I speak with Sarah Moloney, graphic designer and illustrator based in Dublin.
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