{Memoirs Disclaimer: This entry is posted 5 years late, backdated for timeline continuity sake.}
{Therefore, the summary will be extra short and possibly rose-colored.}
Attending the University of Reading and being under the wing of Gerry Leonidas, many of the MATD students took opportunity to attend the ICTVC conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. It was a great weekend! Our main group (consisting mostly of current & past Reading students (but there were also a few other cool people like Rich Kegler)) was comfortably shuttled around by several Greek natives. There were never any issues of getting lost in the foreign script or having serious communication problems. The food was generally amazing – again thanks to our chaperones we’d sit down at a restaurant and 20 minutes later piles of food would just appear on the table without us having to even look at a menu.
The conference was held in the University of Macedonia. The place was disgustingly hot, humid, and full of smokers, but the main hall was refreshingly frigid. There were many fascinating talks full of inspiring work and research. I’ll never forget getting to hear Paul Stiff speak about his fascination with hand-drawn maps. He was an incredible man. We finally had the chance to see the Helvetica film, complete with Gary Hustwit! The low point of talks was for sure Neville Brody… He hypocritically ranted for well well over his time slot and into dinner. Luckily I’ve erased from my memory exactly what he was rambling about, but I recall there being a strong anti-corporate message supported by a backdrop of his large portfolio of corporate work. I mostly remember wanting to leave.
I can absolutely recommend the ICTVC conferences (see a more substantial post about the 2010 conference) to anyone interested in type and design. They are not always completely organized or ran so smoothly, but many talks are guaranteed to be good, the locations are topical and beautiful, and you will certainly meet a lot of cool people.
