Katharina Walter

Katharina Walter studied Communication Design with an emphasis on typography and book layout at the University of Applied Sciences, Mainz under the supervision of Professor Hans-Peter Willberg and Professor Ulrike Stoltz and worked for several years in the fields of publishing, museums and theatre. During her subsequent cultural science studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, she specialised in the cultural and scientific history of typography and completed a Master's degree with a dissertation on the cultural technology of typography, using the example of Adrian Frutiger's 'Univers' font. In connection with this, Katharina Walter worked on the archiving of Frutiger's pre-mortem bequest at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich from April to July 2013. 

Within her work at the Excellence Cluster, Katharina Walter researches the interdependence of typographic Gestaltung and media carriers, using a materials analytical approach. Her dissertation addresses the historic turn in typography, which involved the progression from the use of lead type to photo composition in the mid 1950s. Phototype technologies, at that time a novel feature and complex processing procedures are analysed as well as subjected to experiments using consolidated typographic structures; current perception patterns of typography are examined and new forms of reading generated. 

Research interests:

Typography as cultural technique; history of the knowledge of typographic media and technologies; theories and discourses relating to typography.