I want to begin this month by expressing gratitude for all the wonderful support, and encouragement I received from my recent talk at the Design Conference. It was intimidating sharing a stage with such amazing speakers - Jess Hische is an extremely hard act to follow! This was the largest crowd I had presented to and I was incredibly nervous but the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our community - and the way people embraced my creative play, approach to practice and the TypographJournal with such enthusiasm was awesome! Thank you all so much! (The above photo was shot by the amazing lens lady - Camille Santiago). For those of you unable to make it - the whole conference was recorded - and the presentations will be released via video soon - but in the meantime, you can check out this little timelapse which gives a sneak peek at my print play on a typical Saturday in the printpavilion.
Since the conference I have been ramping up my mileage with the pencil in preparation for my upcoming alphabet is code workshops with Design Assembly. In contemporary culture, we are constantly bombarded with communication and the most powerful messages we experience today are those which are visually expressive. I believe that form and function are inseparable - and type has the potential to carry meaning in multiple ways. In this full day typography workshop we delve into the modularity and anatomy used in different typefaces, and the way various genres of type carry and distribute their weight. Participants will be guided through a series of exercises to visually interrogate the construction and tone of typefaces. Then use what we learned to start to draw letterforms with proportion, aesthetic cues and weight distribution appropriate to a specific genre. In the afternoon session, we follow up all the mechanical thinking with a series of analogue type experiments where we use layout devices, space, proportion, surface and edge treatment of letterforms in an attempt to more closely align our visual and verbal language. It is a full and fun day and there are still spots available in Auckland and Hamilton.
Check out this 'Creative Mornings' video with local sign painting dynamos Rick and Emily aka Frank and Mimi. The talented duo talk about their approach to creative practice and encourage us all to think about our contribution and impact as creatives.
I love that our community has a good sense of humour - this photo of me making a typographic dick joke shot by Mrs Typism (Dominique Falla) has been getting a lot of attention! I was encouraging designers not to compare themselves to others by pointing out all these DICK's are the same size!
Type Network is a new model for type design, development, and licensing built in response to the increasingly complex needs of type designers and type users.
