Quite a bit has already been said about the first TypeTalks symposium in Brno, Czech Republic. Several colleagues have written some great accounts of the event, so I will be brief here as to not repeat everything. But for more in-depth descriptions you really should check out these posts:

— Florian Hardwig (German Part 1, Part 2) (Translated to English Part 1, Part 2)

— Michael Hochleitner

— Dan Reynolds

The Brno House of Arts, Dům umění města Brna, was the perfect venue.

The man responsible for organizing this one day event was my friend David Březina.

Florian Hardwig’s research on school writing models and local preferences for letter shapes is fascinating – he is also an excellent speaker and always has great images.

I spoke on the same topic as in Cyprus a few days earlier: on typesetting technology history. This talk was significantly reformed from the ICTVC version which told more of a story while drawing more conclusions. This topic needs more than just 30 minutes though to somewhat cover the extensive history. An hour would certainly begin to do it justice, but in this short form it’s still a nice and quick overview – especially for the younger students.

The fun and stupidly hip Michi is quickly becoming a lettering expert. Be sure to catch his talk on this subject (or any other) if possible.

The turnout was pretty good: there were ≥88 paying attendees + the speakers & organizers = all together ≈100.

Tomáš Brousil showed his upcoming type family “Tabac” while David was heroically acting as the microphone stand. Tomáš’ talk was entirely in Czech, but David made a few translations, especially of the funnier bits. I felt lucky to already be familiar with Tabac after writing a review of it in TYPO magazine last fall, so I could follow most of what he was discussing (I think).

Dan Reynolds re-presented his TYPO Berlin talk from this year: “The passion of the young, multi-script type designer.” Last time though it was in German, and I missed it… so getting to see it this time was double great!

The coffee breaks were well-placed on the courtyard terrace, well-stocked with cookies, chips, and drinks, and well-timed.

Dan Rhatigan wasn’t on the schedule, but gave a spontaneous presentation as a free bonus! Up until this point in the day everything was precisely on schedule… it then fell behind, but was worth it. You can see his slides and read a little about his talk here.

Veronika Burian wrapped up the event with her talk on “Typographic Matchmaking.” She gave this one at TYPO Berlin as well, and just as before, unfortunately ran out of time before the last few dozen images.

Florian Hardwig and Fernando Mello are both awesome. If you ever have the chance to have a drink (or two) with them you must take it!

Also in attendance were several students from Poznań and Katowice, Poland. I was thrilled to again see the talented & lovely (now graduated) designers: Aleksandra (Ola) Woldanska, Anna Giedryś, and Viktoriya Gadomska whom I had the pleasure of meeting a few months earlier.

Here is the obligatory shot of the group at dinner. As usual, it was a fun evening full of nerdy type talk.

The Typejockeys drink baby beers (it’s a little hard to see here, but those glasses are miniature). You know the expression “half-pint” – meaning a short person or a kid – well this duo drinks 1/4 pints (Seiterl/Kinderbier)(they are appropriately young and fairly petite though). I shouldn’t talk though, I was actually drinking juice (apparently “cider” in Czech is apple juice).

Dan, Dan, & Florian trying to look bored by Rick Poynor at the opening of his exhibition: Uncanny Surrealism and Graphic Design.

Oded Ezer is the best. He is really one of the friendliest guys you’ll ever meet.

Brno is a surprisingly beautiful and interesting city. Not sure how great it would be to live there, but it is certainly worth a visit for a few days. There’s quite a lot to see and do there – interesting architecture, cool signs, nice cafés, Ali Babba…

So in conclusion: This review might sound a bit too enthusiastic and not critical enough, but truly, I don’t have anything bad to say. TypeTalks was as entirely well-organized and a great time; the whole event ran much smoother than the typical type conference. Surely some of the perceived ease was due to the small scale, but that shouldn’t detract from all the hard work put in by David and his students! I hope he is proud of everything and now has the energy and motivation to coordinate future symposiums!

Every few years there is a special conference down in the Mediterranean: the “International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication”. The fourth installment of the ICTVC was moved from its previous home in Thessaloniki, Greece to Nicosia, Cyprus. Just like the previous events, this was a memorable and jam-packed three days, full of stimulating typographic talk with old friends.

Size-wise it felt like an intimate event. There were some 300 attendees, but if I had to guess I would have thought more like 200 were actually ever around. Most were either from Cyprus or Greece, with only a handful of ‘others.’ Practically all of these non-Cypriots or Greeks were presenters.

As far as the presentations went, there was a wide variety of topics and quality. A few of my personal highlights were by Wolfgang Homola (showed his custom typeface for a signage system), Bas Jacobs (on Underware’s process, a few typefaces, and their new book printed in blood), Santosh Kshirsagar (on Devanagari letterforms), Girish Dalvi (issues in contemporary Devanagari), Myra Thiessen (discussed her research methods of teaching dyslexic children to read), and Titus Nemeth (on his Arabic typeface Aisha). This is already more than a few talks, but I haven’t even gotten yet to Jasso Lamberg, Dan Reynolds, or David Březina who were all also excellent. Rich Kegler wrapped up the event with a new, extended cut of his “Making Faces” documentary about Jim Rimmer’s design process.

The conference was held in the Hilton Park hotel down the road from the University of Nicosia. Everyone was thankful to be indoors in a decently air-conditioned building since it was stupidly hot outside. Unfortunately though, the hotel and university are not exactly central, so it was difficult to find food and entertainment nearby. Fortunately the “Hypermarket” provided an ideal lunch spot, and in the evenings we migrated to some more lively parts of town for socializing.

These conferences are always perfect to meet up with old friends, but this time was particularly great to meet so many new people. I was lucky to get to meet and hang out with Walter Bohatsch – an incredible designer from Vienna, super nice guy, and smooth conversationalist. There were also several designers from India present to spread their research, teachings, and interest in Indian scripts. Due to an unannounced schedule change I missed Udaya D. Kumar’s talk on palm leaves and the Tamil script (they moved his presentation up 30 minutes, so he was finishing when many of us arrived). (His wasn’t the only talk that this happened to, several talks were moved earlier due to other presenters not showing up… A note to conference organizers: Please don’t reschedule talks earlier than listed in the programs. Just leave a break if someone is missing and proceed on as planned later.)

Being my blog I should probably mention that I was also one of the speakers. Rather than repeat my TYPO Berlin talk on Devanagari type I chose a completely new topic. This time I discussed type technology history and how it affected type design. This topic proved to be a challenge as I tried to pack in 34,000 years of history into a 30 minute show. It began with cave paintings, moved on to cuneiform, to inscriptions, then to manuscripts, then to the printed era (where the most attention was given). Here I showed examples and talked about the design process for cold metal type, then hot metal (mostly on Linotype and Monotype machines), then into the photo-type era, then finally to digital fonts. It was a rather brief overview of some of type design history’s highlights, mostly as an introduction to many of the young students.

I’ll wrap this up by saying thank you again to Dr. Klimis Mastoridis, Gerry Leonidas, and all the organizers and helpers for inviting me and extending your hospitality. Thank you also to the lovely Ioanna Stavridi and Matthew Norton for graciously hosting me in their sweet apartment in Nicosia. I hope to see you all again in a couple years at the next ICTVC!

Update:

If you’d like to read more about the conference, Dan has made a great recap at TypeOff. (It’s more in depth and interesting that this one.)

Signs found in Rome – Part 1

]]> http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/showcase/nice-signs/more-signs-from-rome/feed/ 0 http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/showcase/den-haag-house-numbers/ http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/showcase/den-haag-house-numbers/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:25:13 +0000 Rob http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/?p=1633   The Netherlands is quite famous its typography and design. Travelling around the country, one will notice how it seems every aspect of life has been controlled and manipulated in some way. My theory is this is related to the basic foundation of the country – the land is literally man made and reclaimed from the sea. Little is left in its natural or default state giving the place a very special quality.   On my last trip to Den Haag, during the Robothon conference, I was struck by this "ultra designed" feeling everywhere. Enjoying photography, one of my new hobbies is collecting images of house numbers. Den Haag is the 3rd major city in my collection (the first to be posted here, others will follow) and it is incredible. There is such a wide variety of numbers and styles, almost every house or building is unique.   Sit back, enjoy, and get inspired by these Dutch numbers!   See the gallery here...]]>

 
The Netherlands is quite famous its typography and design. Travelling around the country, one will notice how it seems every aspect of life has been controlled and manipulated in some way. My theory is this stems from the basic foundation of the country – how the land is literally man made and reclaimed from the sea. Little is left in its natural or default state giving the place a very special quality.
 
On my last trip to Den Haag, during the Robothon conference, I was struck by this “ultra designed” feeling everywhere. Avidly enjoying photography, one of my new hobbies is collecting images of house numbers. Den Haag is the 3rd major city in my collection (the first to be posted here, others will follow) and it is incredible. There is such a wide variety of numbers and styles, almost every house or building is unique.
 
Sit back, enjoy, and get inspired by these Dutch numbers!
 

More signs found in Rome – Part 2

Intro:

For those of you not able to make it to Robothon 2009, here are some thoughts, recollections, and images from the great event. A good deal of the conference has already appeared online thanks to the readily available Wi-Fi throughout. During the talks, 1/2 of the attendees were pecking away at their laptops and providing some nice Twitter coverage. Plus, as you hopefully heard in time, Erik and crew graciously provided live streaming of all the events! The recorded footage will (probably) be released as podcasts so it can be watched over and over. (I will update with a link when available.)


Robothon was held at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (KABK) in The Hague. It is a beautiful old city that also has some great modern architecture; I would highly recommend a visit. As a tourist, there is plenty to see and do, contrary to some of the TypeMedia students complaints of it being too small. Compared to Reading, England it is a major upgrade!

The Talks, Day 1:

Day one of the conference was chiefly product demos and illustrations of possible workflows using various tools. Miguel Sousa from Adobe gave a nerdily exciting talk about the AFDKO 2.5; there are many significant new features. Personally, some of the most interesting include: the abilities to handle one-to-many substitutions (even though most application do not support this yet), the naming of stylistic sets (also not yet supported in other software), and most importantly – the ability to generate TTF fonts!


For the remainder of the day, Erik van Blokland and Tal Leming presented a variety of their cool apps. I won’t get into them here, but you can check them out in depth from their sites: Erik van Blokland / LettError & Tal Leming / Type Supply

The Party:

The evening ended with a party hosted by Petr van Blokland + Claudia Mens. Their building and studio is incredible and they were generous hosts. The drinks were plenty and the space:people ratio led to a comfortable density for socializing. And of course the nerd conversations never ended. The highlight may have been the demo and resulting passionate discussion regarding the new UFO versioning system Antonio Cavedoni is developing. Geekiest party ever!

The Talks, Day 2:

Day two began too early with an excellent report by Ben Kiel about kern table overflows. This is complex and mysterious topic, but this problem can completely break your font and it proves very difficult to remedy.


Just van Rossum presented TTX and FontTools – this was another hardcore topic – perfect for the audience but it might have been under-appreciated if given at a different conference.


Georg Seifert is developing his own font editor called Glyphs and it has some brilliant concepts. He will be setting up a website and forum for it in the next months to help get user input and feedback. This is an exciting project – to put it lightly.


Yanone showed his Autopsy plugin… it might be useful for you when working with multiple master fonts.


FontLab’s head programmer, Yuri Yarmola, was on hand (Adam Twardoch was ill, yet he made a brief Skype video appearance) and he outlined the roadmap for the next two versions of FontLab! Version 6 should be released this year, sometime, and will contain many upgraded features. These updates include: it will (finally) be a universal binary for OSX, have native UFO2 reading and writing, incorporate FDK 2.5 fully built in, automatically generate OT features, and have simpler font naming options. While they are busy working on FL6 they are also beginning work on FL7. Word is that will be out in 2010, but I am not counting on it. Version 7 is being 100% rewritten and will be a radical departure from what we now know as FontLab. One of the Yuri’s major dreams for v.7 is that it will contain no toolbars or palettes!


Frederik Berlaen demonstrated his UFO Rounding tool as well as several other scripts and applications he is working on. This guy is seriously smart and is doing some incredible work (plus he is quite friendly and interesting to boot). I really wish I had that rounding tool two years ago when I started Vesper. Now I have about 8,000 glyphs all with hand-made rounded corners! This could have saved weeks of work and headaches.


Last up came my friend Tim Ahrens. His Font Remix Tools are some of the best FontLab plugins out there now – try them, they will change your life. He explained some of the backend of these tools and showed several new, radical things he is developing. He uses “dumb” math in genius ways to help type designers get their letters just right and faster.


Frank Blokland gave a bonus talk at the last minute to show his OTMaster application. It seems to do some powerful things, and should be useful in batch processing, but I had a hard time imaging it my workflow. But maybe it will work for you…


This was the official end to the Robothon conference, but there were still more related events!

The Gerrit Noordzij Prize:

The Gerrit Noordzij Prize was bestowed on Wim Crouwel this year. Tobias Frere-Jones was the previous winner, so he was there to hand over the crown (so to speak) to Wim. The tradition of this prize is that it is not a monetary award; instead, there is a gift presented by the previous winner to the next. Tobias reported a short biography and slideshow of Wim’s work then gave him a plaque of sorts featuring the Gotham type family for the gift. (Hopefully someone closer in the audience snapped a photo of this, I wasn’t able to get a good look…)





Another award was given out to honor Mr. Gerrit Noordzij himself. SOTA was on hand to present him with the SOTA Award for his typographic achievements and contributions. They also put together a nice retrospective of some of his works that was on display during the conference.





Tobias Frere-Jones had a significant exhibition of his typefaces and some inspirations in a large KABK gallery. The rooms were packed with Robothon attendees, locals, and distinguished guests.








The evening was rounded out by a lovely dinner at the Juffrouw Ida Zaal. A few of us were not able to get tickets to the event, but were luckily rescued by a few others who had tickets but were not able to attend. In the end it seemed to work out – thanks very much to Nicolien van der Keur and to Jos Buivenga!

Almost Over – One More Seminar:

Saturday had an afternoon seminar for the occasion of the Noordzij prize. Paul Barnes was first up and he spoke about some of his many type designs.


Next came Rich Roat from House Industries. He is always entertaining and can never be accused of going too slow or covering too little content. His talk detailed House’s history and some of their work philosophies. I have seen this talk four times now, but each time there is something new to it.


After a short break came Tobias Frere-Jones who spoke about the design of Archer. (The talk and typeface are both excellent.)


And the last presenter of the week was Piet Schreuders. I had previously only known of Piet because of his publication De Poezenkrant, but he has had many other fascinating projects. He has had a long career as a graphic designer, however for this occasion he spoke little of design. The main theme of his talk was about recreating the unique music of LeRoy Shield – specifically from the Laurel and Hardy films. He discussed his, and others’, research into this music and the labor of love this project demanded for many years. Eventually, a musical group called the Beau Hunks was formed. Their repertoire was to faithfully reproduce the exact composition and sound from the 1930’s films. The afternoon climaxed with a rousing performance by 3 (or 4*) saxophonists of the Beau Hunks. They played several classic Laurel and Hardy songs and really gave quite a show. Following the performance, there were a few more drinks and socializing in the galleries.



*one musician was a stand in

Final Thoughts:

The content summarized here illustrates only the tip of the iceberg of how much work went into this conference and week. It was truly organized precisely and went off flawlessly. Many many thanks to Erik van Blokland, Tal Leming, Paul van der Laan, and the students of the TypeMedia program for their excellent work! You were all wonderful hosts, presenters, and friends. I am looking forward to the next Robothon – just make sure to expect even more attendees next time! 2012?