During type projects, many specific parts can be automated to support the design process, such as live spacing/kerning, feedback, filling details, QA, and proofing. But much of this is so closely related to a particular design that these functions will never become an application. The aim of assistants is to support those tasks during sketching and drawing in order to make design cycles as short as possible, giving as much feedback as possible, while still allowing flexible alterations to the code and the design where needed. Petr van Blokland explains how to make this happen.

Revivals or inventions of scripts today is a complex issue. While this is a hot idea for the present and future, David Berlow explains how what we can learn from the past, from sleeping, awakening and existing scripts, is priceless, and in the presenter’s opinion, should be thoroughly explored by those involved.

The talk will be the first public presentation of the latest typeface designed by Underware (Sami Kortemäki, Bas Jacobs, and Akiem Helmling): Scribo. It was designed from 2019 — 2023 and it is Underware’s most complex font designed until today. The typeface consists out of a set of static, variable, and color fonts. It can be used for typesetting as well as writing a piece of text. While designing the font, Underware investigated into chirographical dynamics like speed, velocity, interruptions which were incorporated into the Variable Fonts. To get an impression of the complexity: this resulted in a design space with over 100,000 unique locations. In the talk, Underware will give insight into the process of the design and development of the font, present the outcome of their investigations into chirography and explain why it took them nearly four years to finish and release the family.

This is a combined presentation and panel with Laura Meseguer and others looking at the present and future health of the font industry. The presentation will start off by taking a look at the structures of power upon which the font industry is built and will analyze the forms of power that are available to actors within the industry, from designers to foundries to distributors. The panel will then discuss the factors that influence the balance of power within our industry, taking an intersectional view of race, gender, wealth, and entity size.

Join the breakout session and discussion on Saturday, too.

Cyrus Highsmith reflects on the relationship between a typographic letter and a handwritten one. His thoughts have been shaped by his own career as a type designer, training new designers at Font Bureau, Occupant Fonts, and Morisawa, as well as 20+ years of teaching at Rhode Island School of Design.

Can typography be feminist? Who do we design for? How do we speak? What form of representation do we choose? What messages and images do we generate? What discourses do we validate? What is our function, our social role? And the most important: What does it mean to be a feminist designer with gender perspective today?

Fernanda Cozzi’s lecture is presented as a space for questioning, reflection and an invitation to think about certain aspects of making and using typography from a gender perspective.

It is not about presenting concrete answers or ways of doing things, but rather a series of questions and postulations that put into crisis and distort the hegemonic discourse of design focused on production, functionality and the rhetoric of neutrality.

What does it mean to design with a gender perspective? What does it mean to be a feminist when tackling a design project? Addressing any area with a gender perspective implies denaturing the contexts and recognizing the bias with which we handle ourselves.

Dan Rhatigan’s overview of the production of transfer type between the 1960s and the early 1990s will look at the most prominent brands (Chartpak, Letraset, Mecanorma, Zipatone, et al.) and the various licensed and original typefaces that they distributed. Details will include the challenges and advantages of working with transfer type, the prominence of certain typefaces across multiple brands, the development of original designs by certain brands, and the spread of designs and genres across international markets.