TypeCon2005: Alphabet City

Wednesday, July 20

9:00 am-4:30 pm: Design with Letters

• Presented by
• • Paul Shaw

• Cost: $100 + $15 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

Letters are not just the building blocks of language. They are visual images; gestural marks and abstract shapes as powerful as pictures. At this hands-on workshop, attendees will explore the many ways (beyond ordinary calligraphy and typography) that letters can be created, and how they can successfully replace images in design. Numerous historical and contemporary interpretations of letterforms, taken from art, architecture, the environment, advertising, and graphic design will be analyzed for inspiration. Tools used to create letterforms will range from the typical (pens, brushes, pencils, markers, etc.) to the unusual (sponges, feathers, Popsicle sticks, etc.). Creativity, curiosity, and play will be emphasized. This is a design workshop for calligraphers, typographers, and anyone else interested in letterforms.

Renowned calligrapher and graphic designer Paul Shaw brings more than 25 years of teaching experience and historical research and exploration to this workshop. Shaw has written many books and articles and curated exhibitions about type, lettering, and design, including Blackletter: Type and National Identity (with Peter Bain).

9:00 am-12:00 noon: Design in FontLab

• Presented by
• • Ted Harrison and Adam Twardoch, FontLab
  • Mark Simonson, Mark Simonson Studio
  • Brian Sooy, Altered Ego Fonts

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

This workshop offers beginning to intermediate type designers the opportunity to learn from master users and developers of FontLab. Students will learn through lecture-style presentations combined with hands-on practice, tips and tricks, and Q&A.

This session offers hands-on experience in the drawing and spacing of letterforms. Our experts will demonstrate the design process step-by-step. Specific tools and techniques will be explained, and attendees will be encouraged to try these out.

This workshop will be conducted in a Macintosh lab. Basic Bezier drawing skills are required. Recommended reading: Learn FontLab Fast, by Leslie Cabarga.

1:30-4:30 pm: Production in FontLab

• Presented by
• • Ted Harrison and Adam Twardoch, FontLab
  • Mark Simonson, Mark Simonson Studio
  • Brian Sooy, Altered Ego Fonts

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

This workshop offers intermediate to advanced type designers the opportunity to learn from master users and developers of FontLab. Students will learn through lecture-style presentations combined with hands-on practice, tips and tricks, and Q&A.

Finalizing the Font, Naming, and Encoding

This session offers a hands-on experience in preparing a font for the real world. Our experts will demonstrate the process of setting all the parameters, names, encoding, etc. Specific tools and techniques will be explained, and attendees will be encouraged to try these out.

This workshop will be conducted in a Macintosh lab. Basic Bezier drawing skills are required. Prerequisites: Design in FontLab 4.6 (morning session), or prior experience with FontLab. Recommended reading: Learn FontLab Fast, by Leslie Cabarga.

1:30-4:30 pm: Speedball Lettering

• Presented by
• • John Downer

• Cost: $50 + $20 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

Back by popular demand, master sign painter and type designer John Downer will teach basic sans serif Speedball pen lettering. This workshop will be of special interest to font designers and graphic designers, as it will focus mainly on fundamental letterform constructions, proportions, and weights.

The techniques taught will employ India ink applied with B-series Speedball pens. The pen nibs will be supplied, as will the ink and card stock for practicing.

Students are asked to bring to class a pencil, half a yardstick (18 inches in length), masking tape, and an apron or old shirt.

1:30-4:30 pm: Letter-Carving

• Presented by
• • Steven Kennedy

• Cost: $50 + $15 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

Workshop attendees will design and carve letterforms into easy-cut linoleum blocks and print their designs on 80# Mohawk Supefine text. All tools and materials will be provided, with individual guidance given as to proper use of tools and technique, drawing, transfer, and tracing letters for carving. Through example and demonstration, students will gain insight into the step-by-step process.

This workshop is taught by Steven Kennedy, an adjunct professor at Parsons and co-founder of Interrobang Design Studio. He led students in a volunteer summer project as they produced Abecedarian, a limited edition book printed on linoleum presses, which became the first imprint of the Parsons Communications Design Press.

A picture is worth a thousand words: view a short movie featuring highlights from a past workshop.

1:30-4:30 pm: TrueType Hinting for Non-Hinters

• Presented by
• • Jason Campbell, Monotype Imaging

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

My designs are perfect, so why does my font need hints?

What are the advantages to hinting a font, and where can I see these hints in action?

What is a hint, anyway?

These questions and many others will be answered in the workshop, TrueType Hinting for Non-Hinters. This session is designed for those who work with, talk about, or use hinted fonts, without trying to make anyone into a professional hinter. The goal is to answer questions about hinting, particularly for TrueType fonts, in simple terms - so this session is ideal for designers, salespeople, marketing reps, engineers, or end users.

This workshop will:

• look at the differences between hinting in Postscript and TrueType
• explore the advantages and limitations of auto-hinted and manually hinted TrueType fonts
• discuss how operating systems, applications, and rasterizers make use of TrueType hints
• briefly outline the structure of the table-based OpenType/TrueType formats, and how hints are written and executed
• examine tools used to produce hinted fonts

By the workshop's end, attendees will have an understanding of what TrueType hinting can do, and what it cannot do. Designers who produce fonts which will be TrueType-hinted will have a better understanding of how outlines and hints work together, so they can produce designs which will render beautifully when hinted.

1:30-4:30 pm: Subway Spacing

• Presented by
• • Peter Bain, Incipit

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

Display typography is something everyone has opinions about, but few truly master. Tight spacing, a popular look in the 60s and 70s, is now a cliché among designers. Yet there was, and is, more to designing tight display typography than just cramming letters together. This workshop will start with the principles of optical spacing and then proceed to bend and twist the rules, Lubalin-style. Attendees will experiment with local linespacing and express ligatures. Bring some snappy phrases or words along with your fare, beckons Bain. Work with traditional tools or digitally, the choice is yours.

Thursday, July 21

9:00 am-4:30 pm: Drawing by Hand: A Letter Drawing Workshop

• Presented by
• • Dennis Pasternak, Galápagos Design Group

• Cost: $100 + $20 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

Before the advent of font development software such Fontographer and FontLab, there were pencils, pens, paper, proprietary tools, and software. Concepts for fonts were commissioned, drawn, approved, and transformed into archival drawings in a drawing office, the first steps in the production of type.

This one-day workshop is aimed at beginner to intermediate level designers who have an interest in learning how to properly draw letters for conceptualization or as part of their own design processes. This course does not include software drawing techniques.

The workshop will include visuals covering an informative background on letter drawing, approaches to conceptualizing designs, and technical issues in font design.

Space is limited to 15 attendees.

9:00 am-12:00 noon: Font Development for Software Companies

• Presented by
• • Microsoft and Monotype Imaging

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

The goal of this workshop is to help type designers and software companies work together better. The workshop will address the font acquisition process from the side of the type designer and side of the software company looking to commission the work. This workshop aims to help both sides of the transaction better understand the other's requirements.

Workshop leaders are Simon Daniels from Microsoft and Jim Wasco from Monotype Imaging, with additional expert guest speakers from MTI (Kamal Mansour on foreign language fonts, and type designer Carl Crossgrove). The workshop will be broken into three segments - each segment will consist of a case-study presentation, followed by an opportunity for participant Q&A.

9:00 am-12:00 noon: Putting Contextual Alternates In An OpenType Script Font

• Presented by
• • Adam Twardoch
  • Nick Shinn

• Cost: $50
• Space is limited to 18 attendees

For type designers, the most exciting new feature of the OpenType format is Contextual Alternates. In this workshop, participants will start with the sample script font provided, create alternate glyphs for several characters, and then program their usage with the Contextual Alternates feature in the OpenType panel of FontLab. Software used will be FontLab 4.6 on Mac OS X, and participants will try out the font they have made in InDesign.

Topics covered

1. Deciding between a ligature or contextual alternate
2. Simple substitution
3. Class-based substitution
4. The space character

This workshop will be conducted in a Macintosh lab. Basic Bezier drawing skills are required. Prerequisites: Wednesday FontLab workshops, or prior experience with FontLab.

9:00 am-12:00 noon: Reproduction Brush Lettering in Advertising

• Presented by
• • Ken Barber, House Industries

• Cost: $50 + $10 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

Brush lettering was a prominent feature in American advertising for over a quarter century. Between 1930 and 1960, headlines executed in the style sold everything from luxury automobiles to instant breakfast cereal. The appeal of so-called warm script laid in its power of suggestion and its ability to express personality with a distinctly human touch. New York City was the virtual epicenter of the phenomenon, with masters such as Sam Marsh, Tommy Thompson, and Toni Bonagura calling the city home. These craftsmen, including a host of others, brought life and vitality to advertising, and spoke to a generation of Americans through their art in a way that continues to impact our visual language.

In this survey/workshop, Ken Barber will offer a history of the genre, showing examples of brush lettering in American advertising through the decades. After demonstrating the use of the tools and techniques used during the craft's heyday, attendees will have an opportunity to create their own brush lettering. The workshop is open to participants of varied lettering experience, moderate interest and considerable patience.

9:00 am-12:00 noon: Ambigrams

• Presented by
• • John Langdon

• Cost: $50 + $5 materials fee
• Space is limited to 15 attendees

The master of ambigram art, John Langdon, will share his techniques for creating these amazing letter puzzles. The workshop starts with a slide presentation, offering background to Langdon's approach to ambigrams. He'll show all the steps and stages he's gone through for some of his ambigrams. Attendees will choose from a list of words that would be likely to make good ambigrams and work on creating one or two. Langdon will offer encouragement and helpful hints throughout the hands-on process. Attendees will also receive a package of reference materials.