Year Designed: 1995.
Firm: Words + Pictures for Business and Culture.
Published By: Emigré.
Currently Sold by: Emigre.com

About Dead History.
According to the designer, Dead History signals the end of an era of traditionally produced fonts. It personifies a new attitude in type creation marked by the design of hybrid typefaces which are largely the result of the computer’s capabilities to function as the perfect assembling tool.

Started by P. Scott Makela while studying in the graduate design program at Cranbrook, the font was originally based on Linotypes’s Centennial and Adobe’s V.A.G. Rounded. It went through numerous stages of assembly and disassembly before it was licensed to Emigre Fonts in early 1994. There it was finally redrawn from scratch and completed by Zuzana Licko. Dead History was used by Makela in a variety of award winning graphic design pieces including the Audioafterbirth CD packaging and the 1991-93 MCAD catalog, to name but a few.

About the Designer:
P. Scott Makela (1960-1999)
P. Scott Makela, a groundbreaking graphic designer and multimedia artist, studied at Cranbrook, where he also served as designer-in-residence. His work with wife and partner Laurie Haycock was a dynamic blending of his unique design vision and her deeply nuanced lyricism developed from her book typography. Many of the themes in Scott’s work came from the synergy between them.

Scott’s typefaces, including Dead History, were made for what he needed to say at the time. He took great delight in making for the moment, and type design allowed him to create a voice for expressing the now.Design and life were an integrated continuum for Scott, each enriching the other. Scott passed away in 1999.