TypeTalks2 Symposium In Poznań, Poland

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 symposia were founded by David Březina as a collaborative activity designed to raise awareness of the power of typeface design and typography among both graphic design professionals and students. TypeTalks2 – the second edition of the symposium – will take place this year at the University of Arts in Poznań (Poland) on 18–19 June 2011, and is organized together with Anna Giedryś in collaboration with the University of Arts in Poznań and the Foundation of the Academy of Fine Arts.

David Březina:

The theme of our conferences is type and typography. That is not going to change any time soon. This year we aim to accentuate the social aspect of the symposium. In the end, the word symposium refers to drinking party or convivial discussions held in ancient Greece. The two days will include exhibitions, an evening full of short type presentations (a.k.a. TypeShorts), a party, and of course a day full of excellent lectures.

There is an early bird discount if you register before this Friday, June 6, 2011. The talks will be given in English. There will not be any translation provided. The programme is subject to change.

Programme

Indra Kupferschmid

Indra Kupferschmid(DE) |Georg Trump's lesser-known typefaces

You probably know Georg Trump's most famous typeface, also partly carrying his name. Maybe you also know his first design, which he later did not like so much anymore but had a huge influence on many other typefaces around that time and after. But do you also know this, this, these two and those? Thanks to a folder with proofs I accidentally bought as a first semester student I can show you now, while focusing on his last design which remained unfinished but fascinates me the most. All of this embedded in a short biography of this most sedulous German type designer of the 20th century.

Indra Kupferschmid is a German designer and teacher at HBK Saar, Academy of Fine Arts Saarbrücken, where she holds a professorship in typography and heads the department of design and Masters program "Lettering & Type". Alongside this she is researching the classification of typefaces, the history of Grotesks (see "Helvetica Forever"), legibility (for the DIN), low-cost housing, and, less academically, coffee preparation methods, sleep deprivation, and track systems for railways and urban traffic.

Jacek Mrowczyk

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

Even though Poland does not have as rich type design tradition as its Slavic neighbours, e.g. Czechia and Slovakia, one should not forget about it. The talk will review the most important Polish type designs starting from the early 30s with the works of avant-garde designers, through the Polish traditional old-style serifs (Antykwa Połtańskiego, Antykwa Jeżyńskiego, Antykwa Toruńska) to the 70s. It was then when the Printing Types Centre in Warsaw (Ośrodek Pism Drukarskich) released a whole range of designs such as Hel, Helikon, Bona or Alauda. At the same time the Polish School of Poster brought a lot of original typographic solutions. Also nowadays, there are several Polish type designers worth mentioning. Artur Frankowski, Francis Otto, Łukasz Dziedzic, Gregory Klimczewski, Wojciech Janicki are among them.

Jacek Mrowczyk is a graphic designer, lecturer, co-creator and editor of the Polish design magazine 2+3D.

Martin Tiefenthaler

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

As reading is a highly complex process on many levels (e.g. muscular, perceptional, neuronal, cognitive) and as it is a mainly subconscious activity‚ emotions sneak in not only in reference to the text content but also to the form the content is presented in. Experiments show that typography has a clear effect on the experience of a text, a fact that people who have to communicate definite content should consider before not paying attention to its design.

Martin Tiefenthaler teaches typography and semiotics at "die Graphische" in Vienna/Austria and has been running his studio ID IID IIIDesign for 25 years, is co-founder of the Typographic Society Austria (tga), and currently works on his PhD on the implications of capitalization in the Latin writing system on European thinking.

Jasso Lamberg

Jasso Lamberg(FI) |Transformer with a daily deadline

Designing news graphics for a daily newspaper is a constant race against time. No matter how complex the issue, how wide in scope, the design must be ready by the deadline. Nevertheless, it must always be done with the reading public in mind. It doesn't matter how stylish or ambitious the graphic is if it doesn't communicate the right things to the reader instantly. This presentation discusses how the work in newspapers is different from other fields of visual and information design. What kind of limitations constrain it, both technically and socially. It combines examples from real-life situations and theoretical thought. Can established design theories be applied to visual journalism or it is just too different?

Jasso Lamberg is an independent lecturer and designer dividing his time between Finland and the United Kingdom. He teaches courses on typography and visual communication theory at the Lahti Design Institute in Finland. He is also studying for a PhD at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. Previously he worked as a graphic journalist for Helsingin Sanomat, the largest subscription based paper in the Nordic region.

Luc(as) de Groot(DE/NL) |Designing large type families

TBA

Berlin-based Dutch type designer Luc(as) de Groot has worked with and for many well-known companies and publications. He has made custom fonts for prestigious newspapers such as Folha de S.Paulo, Le Monde, Metro and Der Spiegel in addition to creating corporate type for international companies including Sun Microsystems, Bell South, Heineken, Siemens and Miele. He designed two font families for Microsoft: the 'monospaced' font family Consolas, the new alternative to Courier; and Calibri, the new default typeface in MS Word. De Groot founded his own type foundry, LucasFonts, in 2000. Graphic designers across the planet have discovered the special qualities of Luc(as)' fonts. They are attracted by their functionality and friendly appearance and love the enormous range of possibilities that each family offers.

Adam Twardoch

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

In 2010, the Nowoczesna Polska foundation asked me to help them improve the typography of their Wolne Lektury project – an online library of out-of-copyright Polish literary works. All works are presented in PDF, HTML and EPUB, and are mainly intended for reading on-screen. The goal of the project was to improve the automatic creation of all the formats, starting with the PDF. Defining typographic rules and automating the typesetting process while maintaining high quality was something that I have been interested in for quite a while. This talk will discuss the technological process and the design decisions involved.

Adam Twardoch. Works in the field of font technology, multilingual typography, CSS webfonts, Unicode and OpenType. Product and marketing manager at Fontlab Ltd. Works as font technology and typography consultant for font and software vendors worldwide. Member of the Board of Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). Lecturer at the AKT typography course in Warsaw, Poland, visiting lecturer at the MA typeface design program at University of Reading, UK. Regularly speaks and publishes about typography and font technology. Adam lives in Berlin.

Akiem Helmling

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

TBA

1971 born in Heidelberg, Germany. 1994–1998 study of Graphic Design at the Fachhochschule Mannheim. 1998/2000 postgraduate study at the KABK Den Haag. Runs Galerie West with his girl-friend Marie-José. Lives in Den Haag, the Netherlands.