In the end, the word symposium refers to drinking party or convivial discussions held in ancient Greece. The two days will include workshop, exhibitions, an evening full of short type presentations (aka TypeShorts), party, and of course a day full of excellent lectures.

The Poznań TypeTalks is organized in collaboration with the University of Arts in Poznań and Association “Na Rzecz”.

Day 1, Saturday (ca. 12:00–21:30)

Exhibition opening

TypeShorts – an evening full shorts type presentations. Type designers and typographers will present their works as brief 5-minute ignite talks.

Day 2, Sunday (9:30–22:30)

Indra Kupferschmid (DE)
Georg Trump’s less-known typefaces

Jacek Mrowczyk (PL)
Who is who in Polish type design

Martin Tiefenthaler (AT)
On the affective implications of good and bad typography

Jasso Lamberg (FI)
Transformer with a daily deadline

Lucas de Groot (DE/NL)
Designing large type families

Adam Twardoch (PL/DE)
Automated high-end typography: a field report

Akiem Helmling, Underware (DE/NL)
Carry-on

Exhibition opening

Party

Information

For information about accommodation, venue or registration fees please visit TypeTalks website.

With increasing frequency, traditional ideas about good design formulated in central areas are confronted with various hybrid approaches which, in most cases, have been designated as non-central. The combination of styles, images and approaches are coming to the forefront, questioning established paradigms regarding the position of the designer, aesthetic qualities and the effectiveness of visual communication.

List of speakers:

Johanna Balušíková (SK/NL)

Conference topic:

The qualitative criteria of design in the centre and on the outskirts.

More information:

http://kupe.1977.sk

International top designers will share their creative processes, on a series of presentations that will cover such different areas as graphic design, new technologies, artistic direction, photography, illustration or animation.

Addressing in particular to design students and professionals, but also to public of other creative areas, this will be a unique opportunity to meet the designers that have set the pace for the international visual culture for the last decades.

Speakers

Abbott Miller, Pentagram, USA
Ahn Sang-soo, South Korea
Bruno Monguzzi, Italy
Cyan, Germany
Étienne Mineur, France
Javier Mariscal, Spain
Marian Bantjes, Canada
Matt Pyke, UK
Michael Bierut, USA
Paula Scher, USA
Peter Knapp, France
Pierre Bernard, France
Stefan Sagmeister, USA

List of workshops

Cyan (Detlef Fielder + Daniela Haufe)
Etienne Mineur
Javier Mariscal
Niklaus Troxler

http://www.agiopen2010.com

Created in 2007 in association with fourteen leading European graphic design magazines, the ED-Festival’s objective is to reward excellence in communication design and to inspire the creative community across Europe. After successful events in Athens, Stockholm and Zurich, this year edition of the Festival will be held in the city of Rotterdam, a highly creative hub by European standards.

Delegates from all around the globe are expected to gather at the De Doelen Congress Center for a three-day conference that boasts an impressive speaker panel with among others, Frenchman Philippe Apeloig, Moving Brands from the UK, Swedish Fantasy Interactive and Dietwee from the Netherlands.
Wrapping up the Festival, the winners of the 2010 ED-Awards will have a chance to receive some exposure and generous rounds of applause at the much awaitED-Award Ceremony, to be held on Sunday 30th May.

The Festival’s program also includes a series of engaging design related activities such as seminars, workshops and guided tours (by water taxis or bicycles) to local design agencies. For those planning a longer stay in Rotterdam, ED-Festival recommends on their website a best of current exhibitions and galleries not to be missed around town.

For the full program of the ED-Festival (Rotterdam, 27th-30th May) and to purchase tickets please visit www.europeandesign.org.

The European Design Festival 2010 is endorsed by the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (icograda), supported by the city of Rotterdam and sponsored by Veer.

Speakers

Opening lecture 14.01.2010 by Krzysztof Lenk (Poland/USA; RISD, Providence); Lectures 14–15.01.2010 by (inter alia): Filip Blažek (Czech Republic, Praha Typo Magazine), Jonathan Barnbrook (UK, London, Virus Studio), Lex Drewinski (Poland/Germany), Marjatta Itkonen (Finland; TAIK, Helsinki), Karel van der Waarde (The Netherlands, Akademia AKV/St. Joost Breda), Design Faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (Tomasz Bierkowski, Roman Kalarus, Justyna Kucharczyk, Justyna Lauer); Workshops 11–13.01.2010 (Krzysztof Lenk, Yadzia Williams, Roksana Jędrzejewska, Kasia Bąk); presentations of new tools by Apple Macintosh, Adobe, Wacom, Sony; around 20 lectures from international speakers over two days on contemporary graphic design; Opening reception of the exhibition (13.01.2010) of student works awarded in ‶Agrafa 2009” International students’ Graphic Design Biennial.

Goals and objectives

The focus of this conference is on the notion of responsibility with relation to graphic design professionals and teachers, responsible attitudes in its practice, and the necessary changes in the scope and methods of teaching the subject. The conference is intended as a means of bringing together an international group of academics, students, and professionals. We invite everyone who is interested in shaping civic attitudes and teaching responsible design to take part in the lectures and discussions. The main objective of the conference is to direct the attention of participants to their own work strategies, curricula and teaching methodology, as well as research and projects characterising the current, socially responsible graphic design.

More information and registration form could be found at conference.aspkat.edu.pl/2009

Two morning lectures were about Brazilian vernacular typography. Priscila Farias took scientific approach to analyze and classify diverse lettering found on shops or signs. The hand lettering tradition is still alive in Latin America, compared to Europe where self adhesive foils are used everywhere. In Brazil, a brush or spray is the tool. Crystian Cruz then introduced his font Brasilêro based on shapes typical for Brazilian hand lettering. He also announced upcoming OpenType version of this font enhanced with many alternatives and special features.

Brasilêro

Gonzalo Garcia Barcha described the process of creating an unique book, a journal/sketchbook by contemporary Spanish artist Miquel Barceló.It was a great presentation about a birth of a bibliophil book printed many different techniques, about searching of an appropriate form, binding, paper or typefaces. One of the few lectures about typeface in the context of graphic design.

A presentation by an Austrian typographer Wolfgang Homola was short but inspiring. Homola talked about his task at design studio Walter Bohatsch — to design a typeface for signage system in the Arbeiterskammer building in Vienna. He collected all the existing signage letter by letter, digitized it and sorted. Then he added missing capital letters followed by carefully drawn lowercase ones. The result is surprisingly superior typeface sharing some attributes with Futura or Avenir, but far more universal. It works well in signage as well as in smaller text sizes. I hope Wolfgang will release the font one day.

The official program of ATypI ended by the third day. During Thursday and Friday, lectures, workshop and discussions continued in special track focused on type on web, non-latin typography etc. And of course, the debates and parties continued in downtown bars and restaurants, Lucha Libre fights enchanted many of us and so did the trips to the ancient places around Mexico City.

The Typ09 conference was great. The astonishing atrium with 16 screens in the Centro Histórico, brilliant lectures, tasty luncheons at the platform with the Zócalo view… Anyway, I find myself thinking about the future of the ATypI conferences in the internet era. We should focus on discussions. Unfortunately, the program was so dense, almost without breaks, so we didn’t have a chance to ask questions. I would rather get over the loss of some talks summarizing known facts or information one can quickly find on the net to get more time for the discussion. The main reason of the ATypI annual meatings is to meet and talk to colleagues, isn’t it? Next time, we should add more time for the debates. I will do my best to push this change ahead.

José Scaglione & Andreu Balius

The second day started by a lecture by David Shields. He introduced huge collection of wooden letters from Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. It includes almost 150 different fonts from the years 1828 and 1900. All typefaces are carefully organized and digitalized. You can enjoy the beauty of all the Tuscan, Italian or Slab Serif letter forms at the project website developed at The University of Texas at Austin.

Fabio Haag represents Dalton Maag (!) company in Brazil. This global company offers type related services. Haag’s brief lecture was intended mainly for students, he tried to motivate them and convince them that even in a country without deep typographic roots one can become a successful type designer. Unfortunately, there were not many students in the hall, although dozens of them registered at the conference. (Proofed by the number of tags waiting for the registered students on the front desk.)

The highlight of the second day was a lecture by Gabriel Martínez Meave who discussed general questions related to globalisation and the SPRV of this process. Meave pointed out that every global phenomenon was once local: Latin script was in the beginning the Roman type before it became the dominant global script which replaced all the local form of writing in Latin America — because “Letters are weapons. Beautiful weapons“.

Meave at AtypI Mexico from Tipocracia / Henrique Nardi on Vimeo.

As usual, some of the lectures attracted me more, some of them less. I wish some of the speakers could properly set the screen resolution on their laptops to avoid deformed letters on slides about legibility…

For some photos visit Flickr, short comments are on Twitter. In TYPO #38, we will feature more detailed and insightful view of the event.

Gangster “e”! It is not an ordinary “e” at all, it is a Latin capital E, unusually stylized, used by Mexican gangs in Los Angeles in their graffiti since 1930s. François Chastenet presented examples of graffiti style “Cholo” typical for Los Angeles and explained the links between this style and broken letters, popular in Mexico. Chastenet wrote a book about this phenomenon.

Do you need legible typeface, perfect for books for children for free? Then try Andika. Annie Olsen, author of this SIL International project, presented a solution for fighting with illiteracy. Individual glyphs are designed with respect to readability and local ways of writing. Font contains many alternatives you can freely mix using an online application Type Tuner to fit your needs. Olsen announced more styles of this font will be added soon.

Dutch typographer Boudewijn Ietswaart,who designed many fantastic book covers, was featured in the current issue of TYPO Magazine by Feike de Jong. Ietswaart spent two years in Mexico and his work significantly influenced book production there. Jan Middendorp who discovered this artist presented the sources of hand lettering in Dutch typography. I recommend to Google works by following typographers: Sjoerd de Ross, Jan van Krimpen, H. Th. Wijdeveld, Fré Cohen, Stefan Schlesinger, Henri Friedlander, Betram Weihs, Susanne Heynemann, Helmut Salden, Chris Brand, in 1950s and 1960s also Hermanus Berserik, Jan Vermeulen, R. D. E. Oxenaar, Gerrit Noordzij, Nicolaas Wijnberg or Theo Kurpershoek. In the evening, an exhibition of Ietswaart’s works was opened showing not only his book covers but also font based on his lettering digitalised by Mexican typographers (soon to be available at FontShop).

(Updated version)