Second Dispatch from TypeCon 2004
TypeCon has officially begun — and I’m exhausted.
Fortunately there are Internet stations set up in the SoTA store here, so here’s my chance to write while I’m waiting for the crazy Brazilians to start their presentation. So here’s a little wrap-up from last night (I had to work yesterday, so I missed the day’s pre-conference workshops):
The evening began with a reception sponsored by Linotype. I didn’t get much to eat, as the rest of the attendees had arrived and the place was absolutely jam-packed. What I did manage to eat was good except for the little cumin-bomb in the form of a mini-tart, but we won’t talk about that. Instead we’ll talk about the evening’s event, which was called the Big Night. There were some 300-400 people in the audience, so I’d say it was pretty big.
First up was the presentation of the awards for the Linotype International Type Design Contest 2003, hosted by Bruno Steinert. Of personal interest to me was Eduardo Omine’s honorable mention for his Beret. Eduardo is a frequent contributor to Typophile and was the only one of the winners I knew. His Beret bears some Meta similarities, but on closer inspection reveal a humanist touch (I’m pretty sure that’s how you’d refer to it), which gives it a nice individuality. You can see the rest of the winners on the site above, but my favorites in there were Piourette (I don’t know whether I should add [sic] to that), Picture Yourself, and Bohemia. Despite the contest’s having been running for what apparently was forever, the judges declined to award anything in the first category, type systems. At any rate, go take a look at the site — I expect you’ll be done with it long before the presentation was over last night.
If I have one quibble with TypeCon so far, it’s that nothing starts on time and everything runs long. Interesting, definitely — but very difficult to plan around. Especially if you didn’t take the time for dinner.
Next up was Erik Spiekermann, who — shockingly — started late and ran long. He’s an extremely entertaining speaker. I have no idea how the title of his presentation, “Sex, Type & Rock ‘n’ Roll,” related to his actual presentation, but he definitely knows how to put on a show, not to mention a slide show. My favorite moment of his talk was where he recounted the story of doing the signage for the Dusseldorf airport, and the client wanted him to use some particular DIN, because they didn’t want “something that looked like Times New Roman.” But he gave them FF Info instead, and he says they didn’t notice. This segued into a story about the vagaries of installing a bike stand outside his apartment, which, had he gone about it the official way, would have cost the equivalent of $200US in fees plus a ridiculous amount of bureaucratic runaround. Instead he just made his own thing, it was there for ten years before anyone realized, and then they made him pay a fine of 50 Euros and that was that. “So,” he said, “you should just do what you want, because no one will notice anyway. And if they do, well, good for them!”
He did get progressively meaner as the night wore on, at one point ripping Adobe for its early forays into digital font design, which seems way past its prime as a worthwhile subject to talk about. Being opinionated has its charms, but it has its drawbacks as well.
Finally (!) we got to the Typophile Film Festival, which was fabulous, and it’s a shame it didn’t get started effectively until 10:30 (should have been 9 at the latest), as a lot of people got up after Spiekermann’s spiel, and more trickled out by the end. But the diversity of films was awesome, with narrative movies sharing space with avant-garde work, as well as a brief clip from a classic “Twilight Zone” episode featuring Burgess Meredith working the hell out of a Linotype machine. My personal favorite was a French film called “The Child” by Alex Gopher, a performance artist. It’s an amazing three-dimensional work where everything is made out of words. It’s a high-speed romp following a pregnant couple as they race in a taxi to get from Brooklyn into Manhattan to the hospital so the woman can give birth. Big fun. Another highlight was a silent work showing how beautiful Helvetica can be.
I was honored to have my two movies in the show as well. It was really fun to watch “Behind the Typeface” with an audience, who laughed at all the right places. At the end of the show we had the premiere of my new movie, “Etched in Stone,” which suffered from a slight technical glitch, but people appeared to enjoy that one as well. It’ll be on Veer pretty soon.
Speaking of which, among the people I got to meet yesterday was Grant Hutchinson from Veer (and formerly Image Club and Eyewire). Grant was instrumental in helping me make the movie, and is as warm a person in person as he is online. I also got to meet Mark Simonson, Joshua Lurie-Terrell of Typographica and the brand-new Hewn and Hammered, Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio of Speak Up, and many more. Oh, and to Amanda — Stewf says hi.
OK, off to see the crazy Brazilians Tony and Caio Silva, winners of one of the prizes in the Linotype competition. More tomorrow!
Comments:
This is so great! Thank you, thank you.
Keep em’ coming. Thanks.
S.
Mark Simonson is blogging from TypeCon too!
Cheshire Dave, congrats again on your movie. I can’t wait to see it!