Somehow I never got around to posting my photos and summary from this TypeCon. So now 10 years later (and during TypeCon 2015 that I’m sadly missing) it seems like the perfect time to finally post a bit of the memories.
This was a major event for me. Not only was it my first type conference, but I was participating with a solo exhibition of my ceramic sculptures, and it was held in my favorite city! Honestly I can’t recall so many of the talks, but do I remember meeting many great people that would soon become good friends.
First and foremost, I met Dan Reynolds in person – I had known of him online from his prodigious amount of comments on Typophile and for being “the Linotype Guy”. (I learned several years later that during TypeCon he had only just began his Linotype internship!) He did soon become a legit Linotype Guy tho, and he was the reason that I ended up at Linotype for a year myself – and that in turn lead me to start Mota Italic and stay in Germany for six more years, AND Dan is responsible for Kimya and I meeting… (so I owe quite a lot to meeting Dan!). Dan’s no longer a Linotype Guy; he has moved on to be part freelance type designer and part educator. I hope he can channel some of his former self-marketing prowess to make it big on his own. Go checkout his freshly updated website, and hire him to do something for you!
I was also fortunate to get to meet with Gerry Leonidas. I spoke with him about the possibility of attending Reading’s MATD program the following year (he actually tried to deter me from it)(he later said he uses that technique to get more hardcore applicants). I did end up at Reading University from 2006-2007 and it was an incredible, life-changing experience.
Yves Peters was another Typophile star that I still clearly remember meeting. We didn’t speak so much then, but I did say enough clearly demonstrate I was a silly American. The first conversation started something like: ME: (spoken with a sense of awe) “Oh, hi, you are Why-Ves!” YVES: “Hi, yeah I’m Yves.” (actually pronounced Eves (don’t be ignorant like me)). He is a wonderful friend that I am lucky to gotten to know better in the last decade.
I didn’t actually meet Dan Rhatigan during the conference, but I did get to see him topless and hear a lot about him during a presentation about typographic tattoos. Little did I know then that we would be roommates for the next year in Reading! He’s a great guy – even though he works at Monotype.
For much of the conference I was occupied with an exhibition of some of my ceramic sculptures. Once I heard the conference theme was “Alphabet City” I immediately contacted SOTA about the possibility of showing some of my work. I created a series of sculptures called “Alphabet Cityscapes” made of pixel typefaces extruded into 3D, city-like structures. The show was a lot of fun to do and I am still honored that they invited me to participate. Thank you again to Tamye and Shu for all the help in making this happen!
I have been lucky to attend six TypeCons in the last ten years – and hopefully I’ll get to see many more still! If you are ever considering going, I can highly recommend it. There are so many great people there and you never know who you will meet there or what may become of the friendships. That is true of anywhere of course, but TypeCon has an especially fun and inspiring atmosphere that you certainly won’t ever regret being a part of.
