This workshop will provide a basic methodology and theoretical knowledge about typeface design techniques and best practices. It is open to advanced students, professionals and aficionados in the fields of calligraphy, lettering, graphic design, graphic communication and editorial industry. Basic knowledge of bezier curve drawing is advised but not required.

LECTURE

“4-Hand Typography”

The digital era has radically changed the processes of making, composing and printing type. Tasks and projects that, not so long ago, required entire working teams, and different kinds of specialists, can now be tackled by one person with one computer… and enough knowledge, patience and perseverance. The same digital era however also allows for more effecitve and faster teamwork. In this talk, Burian and Scaglione will discuss their collaborative work on type designs conceived for intensive editorial use. They will focus on the complex issues behind technical, historical and theoretical aspects of these typefaces. How they are set, printed and read.

Keywords: editorial design, type design, legibility, newspaper, functionality.

The Adobe Type program has a unique position in the world of type companies, and it has always reflected the character of the people involved. David will talk about the role of type at Adobe, and the people who have contributed over the years – how this role and these personalities affected the program’s direction, as well as some of the nearly 100 new typeface families Adobe has designed over the years.

The rich traditions of type and lettering have been a dominant influence for the Adobe Type program. David will explore different traditions – classic type designs, pre-typographic writing, calligraphy, informal writing, commercial lettering, and non-Western systems – and show a few examples of the ways Adobe’s typeface designs have responded to each of these.

Adobe has been a key player in transforming what people expect from fonts, and how they’re used. David will give a brief overview of how Adobe has changed font technology over the last 30 years. He’ll discuss the interaction between type design and the world of technology, and how the Adobe Type Library has changed as a result.

Finally, David will offer some speculations about trends and new opportunities that seem likely to spark still more changes in the way people use type.

Keywords: Adobe, font technology, type design, history, future.

ISType is proud to screen “Linotype: The Film”. The movie will be screened at the conference venue (Salt Galata) on Sunday, June 17 at 19:00. Due to the space limitation only our conference registrants will be allowed to attend the movie.

www.linotypefilm.com

In recent years the demand for new typefaces to cover the Greek script has grown dramatically. Pan-european character sets have become the minimum expectation for branding and corporate projects, and the migration of publishers to new print-on-demand and online viewing has spurned further development. Job ads for typeface designers increasingly list the ability to design Greek as a requirement for senior posts. So, developing skills in Greek typeface design is good for your career. But there is another good reason to tackle Greek: balancing its variation in forms and low degree of modularity within a brief that may require a very even typographic texture presents a rewarding challenge to any designer. And, when there is room to extend the style, the calligraphic roots of the script present a wonderful opportunity for exploration and invention.

This workshop will pack in one day the basics for starting to design Greek typefaces, particularly for designers who already have completed Latin typefaces and are interested in extending their existing Latin ones. Gerry will give both letter-by-letter advice and paragraph-level comments. We will review some key recent Greek typefaces, and give direct feedback on typefaces submitted by the workshop participants.

LECTURE

A New Bilingual Lexicon

Gerry Leonidas will talk about the forthcoming Greek-English Intermediate Lexicon, a major new publication that he designed for Cambridge University Press, now in its final stages. The Lexicon sought to break with a typographic tradition for reference works going back to the nineteenth century, and take advantage of recent advances in typeface design. The hierarchy of information represented a particularly challenging typographic environment, which in turn offered a unique opportunity to design the Lexicon by taking full advantage of contemporary typeface families. Gerry will explore the typographic problems in the Lexicon, outline the questions raised by the project on the planning of type families, and comment on the differentiation of scripts for parallel use. The talk will underline the role of typeface design in high-end typography, and offer insights into the design of a document that will have a shelf life measured in decades.

Keywords: lexicon, information design, type families, type design, scripts, bibliophily.

Nowadays, type design can be taught better than ever before, but leading a life as a type designer is something completely different and cannot be taught, nor copied. Smeijers will speak about why it is important to step out of the box and why his best works were self-initiated rather than commissioned.

And did he, or not, plan this all?

Keywords: approach, attitude, moral, enterpreneurship, not-making-the-same-mistake-twice.

Keywords: web type, typography, typographic tradition, technological changes.

Keywords: typography, web typography, OpenType, language support, languages, webfonts, fonts.

This talk will present a critical analysis of how well Mühendisoğlu reproduced Mustafa İzzet Efendi’s nesih handwriting, and to what extent he gleaned the generic naskh (nesih) script grammar from it. This analysis will be the basis for a detailed critique of Tetterode alias the Amsterdam Type Foundry’s 1910 copy of the original typeface by Mühendisoğlu, by means of a contrastive analysis of the Tetterode typeface with computer-generated generic nesih (using the DecoType Naskh typeface).

In the quest to understand the Middle Eastern perspective on Arabic typography this petition provided an essential clue. From it followed logically that new technology had to be developed, as none of the existing methods were designed to handle actual script practice.

Keywords: arabic, ottoman, armenian, turkish, script grammar, script practice, font technology.

Keywords: scripts, language, multilingual fonts, global fonts, mobile devices, branding.

Keywords: criminal, minimal, subliminal, fictional.