Python for Graphic Designers with Maurice Meilleur

Code is a great way to generate and explore ideas in design. Participants in this workshop will learn the basics of writing in Python, a popular and powerful programming language, working in the free and user-friendly application DrawBot for the Macintosh operating system. No previous experience with Python is needed. You’ll create high-quality vector art, and work with text to explore DrawBot’s advanced typographic features. You’ll be able to save your creations as static or moving images (.jpgs and .pngs, animated .gifs and .mp4s), and even export to multipage .pdf files. You can treat these files as sketches, using them as starting points for work in other applications. Or, you can refine them further in the DrawBot code editor to develop final products: animations, type specimens, posters, magazines, and books.

Mon–Tue, June 12–13, 2023
10am–5pm
$535 (or $481.50 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration

Library Show & Tell with Tobias Frere-Jones, Nina Stössinger, Fred Shallcrass

In this remote event, Tobias Frere-Jones, along with Nina Stössinger and Fred Shallcrass, will offer a tour of Tobias’s extensive library of type specimens and ephemera at Frere-Jones Type, collected over the course of Tobias’s design career. See their personal favorites and historical curios, which open up a look into the history of type design and the business of typefounding.

Mon, June 12, 2023
5–6pm
Free
Details and registration

Evidence-based typeface design with Giulio Galli, Luciano Perondi

Empirical research in typography has highly important applications, such as effective road signs, sensitive information on medical and food packaging, reading material for the visually impaired, and many more. It also can highly benefit brand design, as type should convey values and qualities not different than other elements of an identity, such as photography or color. But how does empirical research in typography work? Let’s find out through a small-scale collective experiment.

Learning how to evaluate type qualities through the experimental method will help you back your design proposals with empirical findings, make the most out of clients/users’ feedback and ultimately produce more reliable designs.

Wed, June 14, 2023
10am–5pm
$270 (or $243 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration

Tour: Black Power to Black People: Branding the Black Panther Party with Es-pranza Humphrey

Poster House is thrilled to present an afternoon exploring the lettering and type design of our acclaimed exhibition, Black Power to Black People: Branding the Black Panther Party. This event is co-presented by Typographics Festival.

Wed, June 14, 2023
6–7pm
Free
Details and registration

Green-Wood Cemetery Tour with Jordan Bell, Raven Mo

Walking through a cemetery for fun may sound strange to some, but for those of us who are interested in lettering it’s like going to a museum. Green-Wood Cemetery, which dates back to 1838, is a beautiful greenspace in Brooklyn that is home to many New York luminaries such as DeWitt Clinton, Louis Comfort Tiffany, “Boss” Tweed, Samuel Morse, Leonard Bernstein, and of course, Peter Cooper. Additionally, it’s home to some of the best stone carving and inscriptional lettering in the city. On this walk we will focus on finding 18th & 19th century ornamented lettering, but we will uncover just about every typographic style you can think of on the tombstones and mausoleums within this national historic site. Join us for more!

Sun, June 18, 2023
10am–12pm
Free
Details and registration

Walking Tour: Brooklyn Letters/Fort Greene with Alexander Tochilovsky

Join Alexander Tochilovsky on a guided walking tour through one of the most lettering-dense parts of Brooklyn. The path winds through the Fort Greene neighborhood and ends in the adjacent Clinton Hill area. The area’s rich history can be traced through its signs. Along the way, you will encounter all sorts of attractive letters of all shapes and sizes. Each one with a unique story to tell. 

Sun, June 18, 2023
4–6pm
Free
Details and registration

Teaching Type on the Web with Amy Papaelias

As new technologies emerge, typography educators are challenged to balance contemporary approaches with foundational concepts. While learning some HTML and CSS is valuable to any designer’s web typography toolbox, new “low code” platforms are offering more typographic control on the web. This two-day workshop will help design educators integrate both code-based and low/no-code tools into their typography courses. On day 1, we’ll discuss design principles of type on the web, HTML and CSS typography basics, and several web-based tools that require no or little coding skills. On day 2, we’ll put what we learned into practice. By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with several simple but effective projects to supplement existing coursework and gain an awareness of both code-based and no code platforms for teaching typography on the web. While primarily geared towards educators, anyone wanting an introductory overview of web typography tools will benefit from this workshop. No experience with HTML or CSS is required.

Mon–Tue, June 19–20, 2023
10am–5pm
$535 (or $481.50 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration

Lettering Intensive: The Modern Letter with Ken Barber

From the elegance of copperplate engraving to the punch of robust Fat Face fonts, the Modern letter continues to be extremely useful in contemporary advertising and design. In this workshop, students will learn how to customize hand-drawn Modern letterforms and exploit their inherent versatility for different uses. Participants will gain a foundational understanding of how these qualities can be manipulated to produce an extensive array of results. Skill-building exercises will focus on the development of both precision and expression in creating unique wordmarks for a variety of applications. Slide presentations will illustrate the numerous varieties, descendants, and by-products of the Modern genre while drawing demonstrations will aid students as they bring logos and lettering from the conceptual stage to completion.

Tue–Wed, June 20–21, 2023
10am–5pm
$535 (or $481.50 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration

Digital Lettering Effects with Kyle Letendre

Could MTV’s Pimp My Ride act as a blueprint for drawing a dynamic piece of lettering? With cars as with drawing, a solid foundation ensures that the whole vehicle hums along harmoniously. And a little bling goes a long way towards drafting souped-up, high-gloss letters that are sure to turn heads. By using professional font editing technology made available to typeface designers rolled into a workflow with Adobe Illustrator, designers can draft clean and consistent lettering well prepared to be tricked out. In this hands-on workshop, participants will begin by hand lettering, learn to vectorize the forms using Glyphs, and generate the letters needed for a lettering piece to be developed further in Illustrator. These digital tools allow for maximum flexibility and potential to explore effects like shades, shadows, highlight, out and inlines, bevels, prismatic effects, warps and beyond. Students will leave with a methodology for drawing structurally-sound letters, and a bevy of styling techniques to explore further.

Tue–Wed, June 20–21, 2023
10am–5pm
$400 (or $481.50 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration

Curator’s tour of the Herb Lubalin Study Center with Alexander Tochilovsky

Cooper Union’s Herb Lubalin Study Center is a treasure-filled archive of graphic design ephemera by influential designers such as Herb Lubalin, Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, and many others. Join the Center’s curator Alexander Tochilovsky for a presentation of selected materials and a glimpse into the highlights of the collection. The event will give participants a rare opportunity to see and handle all of the ephemera as well as to learn about the important background details about the designers and their work.

Tue, June 20, 2023
6–7:30pm
$28.00
Details and registration

Ask XYZ with Ben Kiel, Jesse Ragan

Ever want to ask a type designer what they think about X? Or, how do they do Y? Or possibly, how does one commission Z? Ben Kiel and Jesse Ragan —partners in XYZ Type— will virtually open their studios to answer your questions about typeface design and their practice. They will also show in-progress work and gems from their book collections.

XYZ Type is an independent studio that designs typefaces and lettering for identity. For us, “doing it right” means approaching each project thoughtfully and deliberately. We work out a coherent visual system, executing it with exhaustive attention to detail, but never losing sight of the big picture. This distinctive approach is what gives our work its personality, its unmistakable sense of “self,” whether we’re designing a custom typeface for an identity system, helping a branding designer refine a logotype concept, or developing a font for public release.

Wed, June 21, 2023
2–3pm
Free
Details and registration

Tour: Made In Japan with Rayyan Mikati

Poster House is thrilled to present an afternoon exploring the lettering and type design of our acclaimed exhibition, Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art. This event is co-presented by Typographics Festival.

Wed, June 21, 2023
6–7pm
Free
Details and registration

Lettering Tricks and Techniques with Ken Barber

Sharpen your lettering skills with this in-depth two-day workshop chock-full of profitable drawing strategies. With over 25 years of experience, Ken Barber of House Industries will share his sure-fire recipes for producing effective and eye-catching wordmarks. Students will begin by learning how to decode the underlying systems that are intrinsic to all well-made letterforms, before applying those elements throughout more complex compositions. Building on this approach, participants will then explore methods for blending disparate letter styles in order to create new and surprising pieces of lettering. Next, students will become acquainted with a handful of basic yet often-overlooked principles that can be interpreted to alter the appearance and behavior of letterforms.

Thu–Fri, June 22–23, 2023
10am–5pm
$535 (or $481.50 with in-person tickets to the main Typographics conference)
Details and registration