Evening Lecture | Change is Good???
Thursday, May 31st

Making a change in any part of your life sounds like a good idea, but is actually pretty scary stuff. Come listen to a designer who’s trying to shake things up a little – while clinging desperately to the familiar. Take a peek at Gail Anderson’s sources of inspiration and recent work, including wonderful projects from her students at The School of Visual Arts. It’s an evening of honest discussion about the very slow process of reinvention (and cool type).

Gail Anderson is a New York-based designer, writer, and educator. From 2002 through 2010, she served as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, creating artwork for Broadway and institutional theater. From 1987 to early 2002, she worked at Rolling Stone magazine, serving as designer, deputy art director, and finally, as the magazine’s senior art director. 

Anderson is co-author, with Steven Heller, of the upcoming New Modernist Type, as well as New Ornamental Type, New Vintage Type, and several other design and illustration books. She is a contributor to Imprint and Uppercase magazine. Anderson teaches in the School of Visual Arts MFA, undergraduate, and high school design programs, and is the recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Medal from the AIGA.

Workshop 1 | Type Play at TDC
June 1–3

Jealous of those wonderful “type videos” you see in the TDC annual year after year? Spend a long weekend with SVA instructor Gail Anderson and her always-cheerful co-teacher, Josh Hester, and create your own short motion piece in After Effects. A basic understanding of the software is helpful, but you can amaze your colleagues and children just by making a letter move across the screen, so don’t worry!

Evening Lecture | Keep Dreaming
Monday, June 4th

Underware is a pan-European design collective that has been creating versatile fonts for more than ten years, blazing its own trail in the design world. The company was founded in 1999 by Akiem Helmling, Sami Kortemäki and Bas Jacobs, and is based in Den Haag, Helsinki and Amsterdam. With a unique approach to style and technology, Underware has earned a fantastic reputation with its extraordinary font designs, genre distorting workshops and media such as Typeradio.

Workshop 2 | Keep It Straight
June 5

If you think you’ve got enough energy to be part of this internet-free ants’ nest for one day, you’ll experience that type design can be a thrilling experience if everybody kicks the same ass. We’re gonna make 1 font together, and that can be as electrifying as Sylvester Stallone in a B-movie. Especially when there are 20 captains on board and when the real KISS principle will be executed: Keep It Straight, Stupid.

Evening Lecture | The Future of the Font Formats
Tuesday, June 5th

What do graphic designers, web designers and font designers have to look forward to in their typography, as the result of the continued evolution of font formats?

David Berlow entered the type industry in 1978 as a trainee in New York City at Mergenthaler Linotype, a leading manufacturer of typesetting equipment. In 1982 he joined the newly launched digital type supplier, Bitstream, where he developed fonts, font tools, and marketing strategies.

 In 1989 he formed The Font Bureau with Roger Black, where he has developed custom type designs for The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Hewlett Packard. His type designs include Charcoal, Gadget, and Techno for Apple Computer, ITC Franklin Gothic Condensed and ITC Franklin Gothic Compressed for ITC, Dow Text for the Wall Street Journal, and the Giza family for Font Bureau.

Workshop 3 | Web Fonts Dissected
June 6th

• We will start by designing a small number of glyphs and taking them all the way through hinting to browser specimens. (1.5 hours)
• Then, we will break up into two groups: those who want to design and/or hint; and those who want to get up-to-speed on use of non-default web fonts. (1.5 hours)
• Everyone makes a little web site (2 hrs)
• Critique & Review (remainder of time): we look at the designed and/or hinted glyphs online; we look at the non-default font selection and use online.
• Everyone gets a WebType goodie.

Images from the first Type Masters Week, June 6–10, 2011.

Type Masters Week 2011 Workshop – Erik Spiekermann | What makes a good typeface?

Type Masters Week 2011 Workshop – Cyrus Highsmith | Thinking in contours

Type Masters Week 2011 Workshop – Alejandro Paul | Lettering for the masses

Type Masters Week 2011 Workshop – Luc(as) de Groot | Perceiving Type – Optical Mathematics

One characteristic of Batman was the frequent use of onomatopoeias during the fight scenes. An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound associated with the object or the action it refers to, like buzz or murmur, customarily used in comic books and strips. The Batman television series went one step further, visualising them in lettering. In total 84 different word overlays were used during the fight scenes. In the first season they were overlaid on the image but due to the cost they were simply inserted in brightly coloured screens from the second season on. Today a tweet by Underware led me to an overview of the word overlays on Batmania, the fan website by Martín Zamorano & Walter Armada. The Onomatopeyas page neatly lists them alphabetically in all their eclectic splendour. The website even lists what word overlays were used in which episodes, both per word and per episode. Below I did a summary research on some of the lettering styles.

Most of the word overlays were executed in the typical “cartoony” freehand sans caps style. However a few stand out.

Gothic/blackletter inspired letters were rather atypical and unusual for comic book lettering.

Two different lettering styles –“Glipp!!!” in a Latin with triangular serifs, and “Urkkk!!” is a casual slab serif.

Why not add some stars or concentric circles in the counters to spruce up the design?

Speed lines can add dynamism in both vertical…

… and horizontal direction.

Water-related word overlays benefit from wavy letter forms and splashes.

What better way to evoke an explosion than by having the counter explode, or zig-zag character outlines for a jolt of electricity?

It can be taken even further by having the letter shapes visualise the action that is represented by the onomatopoeia, for example actually ripping in half the letters that spell out “Rip”, or cracked characters creating a “Krunch” sound. How meta can you get?

For me the funniest one is the counter of the “O” mimicking the mouth that produced the sound.

There’s more; discover them all on the Batmania website.

Lars Müller | The Book – Sustainable avant la lettre

Martin Lorenz & Lupi Asensio | It’s all about the process, or
How to make a tortilla de patata / Wie macht man ein Kartoffelomlette?

Reviews of many of the presentations can be found on the TYPO Berlin Blog.

Bernd Kolb | Opportunities resulting from consequent thinking and acting
Deutsch

Daniel van der Velden | Memes, Jokes, and Jesters –
Political Design In An Age Of Turmoil
English

Kirsten Dietz | The future belongs to the brave.
Seven hypotheses concerning sustainably successful design
Deutsch

Nat Hunter | How did that happen?
English

Matthew Butterick | Reversing the Tide of Declining Expectations
English

An overview of the exhibitions of this past year:

Capital: Berliner Buchstaben

Capital: Berliner Buchstaben celebrated the diversity of Berlin’s surprisingly large type community. Mota Italic paired the typefaces of 27 Berlin-based type designers with the work of 27 local illustrators/designers/artists. This relatively small collection featured the work of a wide variety of individuals – from life-long designers to recent graduates and from design “celebrities” to students. Most participants are employed full time as type/graphic designers or illustrators, but for some, their work represented was more of a passionate side project. Through these images, one could easily appreciate the diversity of the local design scene and get a taste of the current visual gestalt.

Was on display May 19th – July 22nd, 2011.

Type Masters

Type Masters gave a sneak peek at 24 new typefaces from the 2011 graduating master classes at the University of Reading (UK) and the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (NL).

Was on display July 26 – September 08, 2011.

Photo-Lettering

Photo-Lettering had the audience marvel at the magnificent creations of House Industries’ Photo-Lettering collection. These anal-retentively produced prints, by master screen printer David Dodde, were a true wonder to behold in person. 22 beautiful designs illustrated the pinnacle of what is possible when the right people combine fantastic letters, clever ideas, and luminous inks with the perfect paper. Limited quantities of the prints were also available for purchase.

Was on display October 4th – October 29th, 2011.

Blacklecker: Tasty Fraktur

Blacklecker: Tasty Fraktur comprised of 22 unique, modern typefaces that interpret the blackletter style in new and exciting ways. Through these designs, common stereotypes and connotations often associated with traditional blackletter types were severed, allowing this genre to advance with the times and serve new and interesting roles in contemporary design.

Was on display November 5th – December 23rd, 2011.

Rotation, Reflection, Repetition, Repetition.

Rotation, Reflection, Repetition, Repetition appropriately started off the year with some of the basic concepts of visual design. Using the foundational ideas of rotation, reflection, and repetition, students in the Visual Communications program at the Universität der Künste Berlin created beautiful patterns and textures using a selection of blackletter typefaces. The students were participants of Simone von Eldik’s typography seminar (assisted by Tanja Kapahnke), inspired by Judith Schalansky’s book Fraktur mon Amour. In contrast with the ever-present stereotype of blackletters as being symbols for Germanism and patriotism, a multitude of patterns emerged with surprisingly modern, contemporary aesthetics.

Was on display January 4th – 29th, 2012.

New Vintage Digital Vernacular Letters

Thanks to digital cameras, smart phones, nearly unlimited storage space, and online social sharing it is easier than ever to capture, collect, and share images. Particularly exciting is the now relatively mainstream pursuit of photographing interesting found type and lettering. Whether it is encountered in one’s neighbourhood or stumbled upon while travelling, there is seemingly no end to unique letters to be collected. This phenomenon is illustrated through dozens of blogs dedicated to found letters, to Flickr’s countless tagged images of type, and by sites like we love typography – currently with 12,000+ curated images.

New Vintage Digital Vernacular Letters was modestly comprised of just under 600 images* from 120 participants from all over the world. These photos depicted the letters as shiny and new, dilapidated and old, incredibly beautiful, incredibly ugly, mundane, idiosyncratic, everyday, unimaginable, local, and exotic. The images were shot in more than 40 countries and the variety of letter forms indicated just how special letters and typography can be.

Was on display February 1st – April 7th.

{It’s a Font!}

The current exhibition {It’s a Font!} showcases Mota Italic’s latest type family “Gemma”.

On display since April 24th.

Tina Roth Eisenberg | The Power of Side Projects and Eccentric Aunts

Joshua Davis | Work & Play

Mike Monteiro | What Clients Don’t Know (… And Why It’s Your Fault)

Here’s a number of examples of what I a looking for. However I would like to also have some extreme close-ups of overhangs and kerns.

24pt Civilité with 6pt floating accent (Stempel) cut in by hand. Photo © Justin Knopp

72pt Reiner Script capitals with overhang. Detail from photo © Interrobang Letterpress

24pt Berthold Boulevard with fractions. Photo © Interrobang Letterpress

:: UPDATE ::

Thomas Gravemaker sent me images of English-style copperplate scripts; a series on rectangular body and a series on slanted body.

Stéphane De Schrevel sent me these superb combos, showing both the type and the back side of the body, of two English-style copperplate scripts – one on rectangular and one on slanted body – and one wood type script on slanted body.

Sander Pinkse sent me these images of letterpress Mistral.

Header image: 30pt unidentified English copperplate script. Photo © Humberto Aste

With only ten days to go the conference is almost sold out. Only 60 Pro Tickets are still available at full price. However there is a unique opportunity for students. From Monday, May 7th, 10 am CEST an additional block of 20 Student Tickets at more than 40% off the full price will become available for 24 hours.

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