Henrik Mnatsakanyan

Designer of Armenian types

A very sad news: one of the judges of bukva:raz!, the great Henrik Mnatsakanyan, died on 12 May in Yerevan. It is a terrible, irreplaceable, loss. Henrik was the leading master of type design in Armenia, the world authority in Armenian lettering and type design, and the author of many articles and books on type. Poor Henrik. He did not live to judge bukva:raz!, and he was looking forward to it.

Henrik Mnatsakanyan has been designing typefaces for more than fifty years. He developed more than one hundred Armenian typefaces, including Sovorakan Nor, Astch, Mnatsakanyan, Ibbenaran, Anragitaran, Lragrayn, Ararat, Grakan, Dprotsakan, and Roslin. His design skills were formed in the studio of the well-known Armenian artist Akop Kodjoyan.

From 1954 to 1960 Henrik Mnatsakanyan worked at the Type Design Laboratory of the All-Union Printing Research Institute (NIIPolygraphmash). In 1962 he founded the Type Design Laboratory in Yerevan, and directed its work until 1984. He is a veteran of World War II and a member of the Armenian Artists Union.

from Maxim Zhukov