{"id":114,"date":"2012-10-14T18:29:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T01:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slantedhall.wordpress.com\/?p=114"},"modified":"2025-08-12T22:51:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:51:40","slug":"typecon-2012-conference-trip-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/14\/typecon-2012-conference-trip-report\/","title":{"rendered":"TypeCon 2012 Conference Trip Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time on artwork and design,\u00a0both for Slanted Hall<\/a> projects and dance related work. This included posters, programs, and tickets for\u00a0Danse Libre<\/a>‘s theatrical show Ghostlight Tango<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and a tribute presentation for\u00a0dance historian Richard Powers<\/a>.\u00a0All of this design work, and seeing all the quality fonts by\u00a0independent designers, reminded me how much I enjoyed the detail work\u00a0and of my own typeface projects from the mid-to-late 1980s. One such\u00a0project was a music symbol font, using Metafont<\/a>\u00a0during\u00a0its early days, along with building tools to help the process. This\u00a0and other typeface projects eventually were put aside while I focused\u00a0on different things.<\/p>\n

While I was researching new design resources, after having been away\u00a0for 20+ years, I ran across TypeCon<\/a>\u00a0(@typecon<\/a>). The feel of\u00a0the conference, from descriptions and other past conference reports, reminded me of\u00a0USENIX Conferences<\/a>\u00a0back in the\u00a0early 1990s: small conferences with a regular group of folk who\u00a0attended and became friends over the years. Early bird registration had\u00a0been extended by a week, ending two days from when I found out about\u00a0the conference. Perhaps that meant I should attend? So, at the\u00a0beginning of August 2012, I attended TypeCon 2012: MKE Shift<\/a>\u00a0in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I also joined SOTA (The Society of Typographic Aficionados)<\/a>\u00a0@typesociety<\/a>; they organize TypeCon each year.<\/p>\n

My gut was correct. It was a great conference with lots of good folk\u00a0and generally very welcoming. Thanks to David Sudweeks<\/a>\u00a0(@nondescriptes<\/a>)\u00a0of FontShop<\/a>\u00a0(@fontshop<\/a>), I met a number of other bay area type folk. It didn’t\u00a0occur to me to have that\u2014meeting local<\/em> type folk\u2014as a goal. I’m\u00a0glad he made the introductions. They’re all good folk and people I’d enjoy hanging out\u00a0with. Thanks to all of them for letting me tag along (since I didn’t\u00a0really know anyone, yet). I hope to keep in touch with the variety of\u00a0folk (from all over the world) I met, and see them again, at least at\u00a0TypeCon, next year.<\/p>\n

Here are some highlights from the conference. I had originally hoped to post\u00a0this trip report before a trip to Paris and Moscow for dance workshops<\/a>\u00a0in August and September,\u00a0but my schedule was overly full. So, this narrative may be missing details more easily recalled closer to the event.<\/p>\n

Since I had started playing with Glyphs<\/a>\u00a0(@glyphsapp<\/a>) for typeface design, I attended\u00a0Eric’s (@mekkablue<\/a>) Wednesday workshop. It’s the program I plan to\u00a0continue using while I work on some ideas.<\/p>\n

<\/a>On Thursday, instead of working on one typeface, whose initial purpose was solely to\u00a0get used to working in Glyphs, I attended the Type & Design Education Forum<\/a>.\u00a0This was a great decision. Some random notes from the forum:<\/p>\n