{"id":379,"date":"2014-09-12T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slantedhall.wordpress.com\/?p=379"},"modified":"2025-08-12T22:34:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:34:31","slug":"typecon-2014-conference-trip-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slantedhall.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/12\/typecon-2014-conference-trip-report\/","title":{"rendered":"TypeCon 2014 Conference Trip Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Jun 2015 Update: <\/strong>Registration<\/a> is now open for TypeCon 2015: Condensed<\/em>, 12\u201316 August 2015 in Denver, Colorado, USA. Save $50 by first becoming a member of SOTA<\/a>. Check out the great workshops<\/a>\u00a0and a preview of the program<\/a>! Hope to see you there!<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong>\u00a0TypeCon 2015: Condensed<\/a> will be held 12\u201316 August 2015 in Denver, Colorado, USA. Videos from 2014<\/a>\u00a0are added as SOTA<\/a> releases them and linked throughout this post and in the Links<\/em><\/a> section.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that time of year: another type design conference. TypeCon<\/a>\u00a0(@typecon<\/a>\u00a0\/ @typesociety<\/a>)\u00a0was held in Washington, D.C., 28 July 2014 through 4 August 2014. Though a number of friends (and regular attendees) were not in attendance this year, it still managed to be a great conference. Lots of great folk, past attendees and ones at their first TypeCon.<\/p>\n

\n

Jump to: Wednesday<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Thursday<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Friday<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Saturday<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Sunday<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Type Crit<\/a>,<\/span>Fiona Ross SOTA Award<\/a>,\u00a0Independent Type Designer Business Workshop<\/a>,<\/span>
\nKeynote<\/a>,\u00a0Education Forum<\/a>,\u00a0Links (write-ups, presentations, photos)<\/a>,\u00a0Feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I arrived on Tuesday<\/strong>\u00a0afternoon into DCA, took the Metro to the hotel. It\u2019s been over 20 years since my last visit to D.C. Nice to have a good metro, again. A large group of us walked along H Street to find dinner, for a long while. The place we attempted to eat had a 1.5 hour wait. So, a few split off to head to the south asian place that smelled good. I joined them at Cusbah<\/a>\u00a0(Yelp<\/a>). Indeed, it was quite tasty. Another group of four showed up a little while later.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Wednesday<\/strong>: <\/strong>I\u2019d signed up for the Devanagari: Simplifying the Complex<\/em><\/a>\u00a0workshop by Rob Keller<\/a>\u00a0(@rnkeller<\/a>) & Kimya Gandhi<\/a>\u00a0(@KimyaGandhi<\/a>), partially due to input from Erin McLaughlin<\/a> (@HindiRinny<\/a>). Unfortunately, the buses left very late from the hotel to head to the\u00a0Corcoran College of Art + Design<\/a>\u2014I heard that at least one went to the wrong location, first\u2014so, the workshop started 45 minutes late.\u00a0The best part was the 44-page\u00a0booklet they put together<\/strong> for us as an overview and reference to Devanagari. Though OpenType & Unicode are finally being used more, there are still lots of proprietary font formats and encoding in use. Though we practiced handwriting and reviewed features useful for Indic scripts in Glyphs<\/a>\u00a0(@glyphsapp<\/a>), we did not get to working on any exercises designing\/digitizing Devanagari glyphs with Glyphs. They probably needed another hour or two to cover everything they wanted. I had hoped to do some work designing digitally in the class. Still, a useful class, especially due to the booklet. A good group of folk in the class, including Eben Sorkin<\/a> (@ebensorkin<\/a>), Lisa Maione<\/a>\u00a0(@lisamaione<\/a>), Lila Symons<\/a> (@daycalligraphy<\/a>),\u00a0Amit Patel<\/a>\u00a0(@apatel314<\/a>), James Puckett<\/a>\u00a0(@Dunwich_Type<\/a>), Chris Lozos<\/a> (@dezcom<\/a>), and others.<\/p>\n

The Glyphs.app for the Pros<\/em><\/a>\u00a0class had a good group in it. It sounded like some good discussions occurred, though I was not in the class to hear. This workshop was aimed for those coming from another type design software program, such as FontLab<\/a>. I\u2019d been using Glyphs<\/a> for the past couple years, but I always like to hear about other folks\u2019 workflow and how they\u2019ve chosen to use Glyphs. Now, to get back to some of those type design workflow tools projects.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night: <\/strong>Dana Tanamachi<\/a> talked about her path to chalk lettering and design. She graduated from the University of North Texas (@UNTnews<\/a>), Denton, TX. Also created the posters for Roundabout Theatre<\/a>\u2019s (@RTC_NYC<\/a>) production of Bye Bye Birdie<\/em>. (As an aside, Roundabout\u2019s archivist Tiffany Nixon was helpful in getting a photo of Bill Irwin & Mary Bond Davis from Scapin<\/em> for the 2012 tribute presentation & 6-piece dance performance I put together for Stanford University dance historian Richard Powers<\/a>\u00a0at the New York Baroque Dance Company<\/a>\u2019s Santa Barbara Historical Dance Workshop<\/a>\u00a0[Tribute videos<\/a>]; Richard was choreographer and dance historian for Bill Irwin\u2019s Scapin<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

.@okaytype<\/a> Still, the @typecon<\/a> independent type business workshop went well. Could've been full day. Should be integrated into conference.<\/p>— Jeff Kellem (@composerjk) July 31, 2014<\/a><\/blockquote><\/div><\/div>\n

<\/a>Thursday:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>The first workshop I signed up for when registering was\u00a0Between the Letters:\u00a0The Business of Being an Independent Type Designer<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0It filled up very quickly. Luckily, they found space at the hotel (bonus: we didn\u2019t have to take the long bus ride!) and added another 15 slots. So, we had 30 independent type designers in the room. The panel was run by Silas Dilworth<\/a> (@silasdilworth<\/a>), Matthew Butterick<\/a> (@mbutterick<\/a>), & Jackson Cavanaugh<\/a> (@okaytype<\/a>). Attendees included a great mix of type folk, from a few wanting to get started to those who\u2019ve been doing this for 50 years. A great workshop!<\/strong> I\u2019ll hopefully transcribe some of my notes in another post and will link to it here.<\/p>\n

I also really wanted to take Liron Lavi Turkenich<\/a>‘s (@LironLaviTur<\/a>) workshop on\u00a0Hebrew Type Design: Tasting of a Square Script<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0but the Independent Type Designer Business workshop was more important for me, right now, even though I have Hebrew designs completed and in-progress. She gave a talk<\/a> at TDC<\/a> (@TypeDirectors<\/a>) in New York City right after TypeCon on her Aravrit project<\/a>, ambitiously blending Hebrew & Arabic.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/path><\/g><\/g><\/g><\/svg><\/div>
View this post on Instagram<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/a>

A post shared by Maria Doreuli (@doreuli)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>