TypeCon 2015: Highlights

This guest post is by TypeCon correspondents Almenia Candis and Allie McRae.

 

From Almenia:

TypeCon 2015 was definitely an experience that I wish was not over in so few days. Not only did I make new friends, rub elbows with giants in the graphic design and typography circles, but I had a wonderful experience learning more and feeling like I was in university again.

I was fortunate to take the expressive brush lettering workshop with calligrapher Stephen Rapp. In this day-long workshop, we were provided with supplies, a few notes, and one on one demonstrations on how to achieve a variety of calligraphy strokes. So many questions were asked, and Stephen provided excellent tips and feedback on pressure, ink flow, and chair position to yield beautiful results.

If you weren't able to go to a workshop, there was still a chance to try your hand at cranking out some letterpress around metro Denver. There were 30 of us on the party bus as we made a series of stops to add pieces to our letterpress sheets. It may have been the only field trip that was educational, fun, and involved free brews while mingling with the very gracious hosts at Matter, Genghis Kern, Foil + Dies, and Now It's Up To You Press.

Last but not least, there was a brief eulogy presented by Akira Kobayashi for Hermann Zapf who passed away in June this year. Akira tells of his early days as a graphic designer, he was given the book "About Alphabets" and it has remained a great source of inspiration to the care and meticulous process of Zapf's typefaces and calligraphy work. Creator of fonts such as Optima and Palatino, Zapf's work surpasses trends and his legacy will continue to set an example for new type designers of tomorrow.
 

From Allie:

It’s tough to pick just three highlights! There were so many spectacular speakers and events that I enjoyed, but I managed to narrow it down to these:

Douglas Wilson gave this great, lighthearted talk on ‘The Beautiful Island of San Serriffe,’ a completely fictional island that made its debut in an April Fool’s edition of The Guardian, a British newspaper. The newspaper dedicated seven pages of articles to this island that included news of its culture, geography, and economy. The island is jam-packed with hilarious typesetting puns: Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse are the names of the two islands; Gill Sands Beach; and the dictator of San Serriffe is General M J Pica. I was laughing through the entire talk. Here’s an article about the prank.

The very first speaker of the program, Mary Mashburn, set the bar high with her talk titled ‘Life Lessons from Globe Poster.’ Countless jazz, blues, and go-go musicians came to Globe Poster in Baltimore to have them design and print their show posters. The Globe Poster Collection is now housed at MICA and students are in the process of sorting through and using the thousands of pieces of type to make new pieces.

And finally, I was very inspired by the works of Ernst Schneidler and his students that Rob Saunders shared with us. Ernst was an influential teacher of letter arts in the 20th century and now much of his work is housed at Letterform Archive, founded by Rob.

UPPERCASE provided complimentary magazines for attendees. Thank you to TypeCon for in turn providing passes to these two correspondents. Want to subscribe to UPPERCASE? Use the code "typecon15" for a subscription discount. Code expires on September 1.