TypeCon Washington D.C. 2014

This is not a proper review of the conference, but just my few highlights:

• Kimya and I gave a workshop on Devanagari type design on the first day. Unfortunately we didn’t take many pictures because we were a little too busy cramming in 2 days of material into one. We began by giving a few different presentation on Indian scripts and on the current state of lettering and type design in India. Then we unloaded a huge bag of books, specimens, newspapers, and ephemera (a la Fiona Ross) and the participants poured over them for a bit longer than we had budgeted for. Then once they had a better idea of how Devanagari looks and works they got into handwriting practice followed by calligraphy training. Finally the day was concluded with about an 1-1.5 hour demo and explanation of Glyphs 2 and how you can easily generate Devanagari fonts.

Tobias Frere-Jones gave the opening keynote presentation and it was really wonderful. Especially nice to see everyone’s support for him (but that was by no means a surprise).

• The famous Type Quiz was hosted by Stephen Coles and Nick Sherman. Thank god it wasn’t Allan Haley again. These guys did a great job, and I really hope they will do it again.

• Fiona Ross received the SOTA Typography Award. Congratulations, it’s much deserved!

• Had a great time :)