December 31. There are 8 hours left in the year, but I think it’s soon enough to declare my favorite image of the year. It was taken by Dave Foster of ‘current KABK student’ fame. The pic is from a powerpoint presentation by Linotype…

Source

If you’ve made it this far through the post, I should add that these animations in no way represent all German Christmas markets. These images were taken at a particularly tacky market that concerns itself more with drinking and rides (vs. those focused on drinking, eating, and shopping). You can find this crazy light show behind the Alexa shopping center for basically all of December (and maybe a bit into January) each year. For a considerably nicer/calmer/quieter experience simply walk a few hundred meters to the Fernsehturm/Alexanderplatz and check out the market in front of the Berlin Rathaus.

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

I visited Israel for the first time this summer to meet up with my friend Oded Ezer (more on our reasons for this visit later…). It was July, outside was a million degrees with a million percent humidy, but there were unlimited typographical treasures, plentiful air conditioning, and hummous that would blow your mind. Aside from the 10kg of weight I lost through sweating, it was an incredible trip and a great place to visit – maybe you’d like go during the slightly cooler months though.

I shared my “costume” via twitter:

Celebrating Halloween today: http://flic.kr/p/8PoeW4

A couple hours later Florian responded with this:

@rnkeller Here we go. http://twitpic.com/32ktag

He pulled off recreating my profile pic in a matter of minutes.

Florian is amazing, funny, talented, and an all together great guy. Check out some of his work here and his prolific Flickr stream.

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.)

Typefaces: Various from Underware

About P.D.A.: Public Displays of Art:

Following guerilla style advertising campaigns – identifying the days and locations of the “art shows” – a series of small spontaneous, public, exhibitions of sculptures was held. The locations were heavy trafficked, often tourist hot-spots, and full of people taking photos. Part performance, part discrete operation, the ceramic sculptures were setup and documented with photographs. They were then left in place to be discovered, appreciated, kicked over, taken home, or thrown away depending on who interacts with them.

I am very excited to report about the TypeTalks conference in Brno this summer. It comes just after the ICTVC conference in Cyprus and directly before the 24th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno. Three design conferences in a week, this might be some kind of record.

Organized by David Březina, this one day TypeTalks symposium will be on June 21st, 2010, in scenic Moravia. The daytime will be filled with talks by an eclectic mix speakers and topics, and the evening festivities (will probably) include entertainment provided by the students of FaVU.*

For my part, I’ll be presenting an overview of some landmark shifts in font technology and how they affected type design and typography. It is a similar talk to the one I’ll give at ICTVC a few days earlier, only that in this case it will be 40 minutes instead of 20. Meaning, I’ll be speaking really fast in Cyprus, then going extra slow in Czech.

Hope to see you at what will certainly be a great event! There are a limited number of tickets though, so get them fast. And as an added bonus, it’s practically free!

Here is more information from the official press release:

Typefaces and textual information in general, despite their crucial importance to our culture and development, are often neglected when it comes to visual communication and graphic design. This problem is particularly acute in the Central European, post-communist environment. TypeTalks is a collaborative activity designed to raise awareness of the power of typeface design and typography among both graphic design professionals and students.

Our one-day symposium will take place in Brno, Czech Republic in the House of the Lords of Kunštát on 21 June 2010 at 10:12.

The theme or topic for this conference is type. This is a broad area embracing the history of type, the design of type, type education, the use of type (typography) and much more. The key criteria for the acceptance of a talk is that it have educational value. It is not enough to simply show work, knowledge must be shared as well. Indeed, TypeTalks’ reason for existing is the pleasure taken in learning and in sharing knowledge. Furthermore, we have excellent speakers this year!

Tomáš Brousi (CZ): Tabac

Veronika Burian (CZ/D): Typographic matchmaking

Florian Hardwig (D): Localize! The dialects of handwriting in type design

Michael Hochleitner (AT): A contemporary view on the relationship of lettering & type

Rob Keller (US/D): Font technology is crazy!

Dan Reynolds (US/D): The passion of the young, multi-script type designer

For more information and to register, visit TypeTalks.com.

You can also follow @TypeTalks on Twitter!

* Those plans failing, there will still be many type nerds to hang out for a fun night of eating, drinking, and socializing.

Typefaces: Various

About P.D.A.: Public Displays of Art:

Following guerilla style advertising campaigns – identifying the days and locations of the “art shows” – a series of small spontaneous, public, exhibitions of sculptures was held. The locations were heavy trafficked, often tourist hot-spots, and full of people taking photos. Part performance, part discrete operation, the ceramic sculptures were setup and documented with photographs. They were then left in place to be discovered, appreciated, kicked over, taken home, or thrown away depending on who interacts with them.

Typefaces: Various from Jean François Porchez | PTF Typofonderie

About P.D.A.: Public Displays of Art:

Following guerilla style advertising campaigns – identifying the days and locations of the “art shows” – a series of small spontaneous, public, exhibitions of sculptures was held. The locations were heavy trafficked, often tourist hot-spots, and full of people taking photos. Part performance, part discrete operation, the ceramic sculptures were setup and documented with photographs. They were then left in place to be discovered, appreciated, kicked over, taken home, or thrown away depending on who interacts with them.

Typefaces: Various

About P.D.A.: Public Displays of Art:

Following guerilla style advertising campaigns – identifying the days and locations of the “art shows” – a series of small spontaneous, public, exhibitions of sculptures was held. The locations were heavy trafficked, often tourist hot-spots, and full of people taking photos. Part performance, part discrete operation, the ceramic sculptures were setup and documented with photographs. They were then left in place to be discovered, appreciated, kicked over, taken home, or thrown away depending on who interacts with them.

Typeface: Platelet

About P.D.A.: Public Displays of Art:

Following guerilla style advertising campaigns – identifying the days and locations of the “art shows” – a series of small spontaneous, public, exhibitions of sculptures was held. The locations were heavy trafficked, often tourist hot-spots, and full of people taking photos. Part performance, part discrete operation, the ceramic sculptures were setup and documented with photographs. They were then left in place to be discovered, appreciated, kicked over, taken home, or thrown away depending on who interacts with them.

This booklet was made for TypeCon 2008 in Buffalo. It is A7 when folded (meaning it is 2.8″ x 4″) with 16 pages + 8 different cover options. The pronouncement of “World’s Smallest Specimen Book” was not confirmed (or looked into at all for that matter), so there is a handy disclaimer*

* Possibly. Maybe.

Specimen book size not actually verified.
Well, this is for sure the World’s Smallest Specimen Book made in July 2008 featuring the typefaces Gemma, Vesper, Unicase Monospace, Aurora (codename), Chef, and Beefeater.

[Update] Here is one tiny specimen book that has firmly knocked me off my throne: Types in the Cases of William M. Cheney – from 1961. This is an incredibly hard to find book (finder’s fee for anyone who can pass one along to me!) but Typesticker has some nice photos of it up on Flickr.

These little cards, created for TypeCon 2006, feature a motif based on some wire sculptures I was working on at the time. To make these more interesting, there are 2 different patterns for the youshouldliketypetoo.com logo, 4 colors for the ‘I Like Type’ statement, 4 different spray painted icons, and 4 different colors of paint! They are in a numbered edition of 300 and every card is totally unique with random combinations of colors and designs.