More photos at Taiwan Tech’s Facebook page.

This morn­ing I’d love to point you in the direc­tion of a great design event hap­pen­ing inNYC in just a few weeks. After the Jump: Designing Better Experiences in the Digital Landscape is a half-day sym­po­sium focused on var­i­ous top­ics in dig­i­tal design. The event was con­ceived and curated by Sullivan, an NYC brand engage­ment firm, and The Type Directors Club. It fea­tures an incred­i­ble lineup of speak­ers who will undoubt­edly pro­vide lots of food for thought.

Cassandra Zimmerman, a Creative Director at Sullivan and one of the dri­ving forces behind the event, was kind enough to answer a few ques­tions for us about what you can expect.

—

What inspired Sullivan to cre­ate After the Jump?
Sullivan had pro­posed the idea of part­ner­ing with Type Directors Club in an effort to con­tribute to the larger cre­ative com­mu­nity and to rep­re­sent a sub­ject mat­ter that we are par­tic­u­larly pas­sion­ate about — content-driven design. Taking that a step fur­ther, thanks to inno­va­tion in tech­nol­ogy and a myr­iad of dig­i­tal devices there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­nect­ing brands with peo­ple that sim­ply didn’t exist before. After the Jump is a moment to reflect on the evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape and how we can seize this oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate more mean­ing­ful and com­pelling experiences.

Why do you feel this con­tent is espe­cially rel­e­vant to design­ers today?
It’s an excit­ing time for design­ers thanks to ongo­ing inno­va­tion in tech­nol­ogy allow­ing bet­ter access to bet­ter fonts, respon­sive design, and devel­op­ers that make unprece­dented expe­ri­ences with lan­guage possible.

What can atten­dees expect to get out of the symposium?
This sym­po­sium curates indus­try lead­ers from dif­fer­ent aspects of content-driven design such as web design, data visu­al­iza­tion, and/or technology-driven user experiences.

Who should attend?
Web design­ers, media-agnostic design­ers, data-visualization design­ers, con­tent strate­gists, UX design­ers and developers

Tell us a lit­tle bit about Sullivan and the work that you do.
Sullivan is a brand engage­ment firm whose work lives at the inter­sec­tion of brand, design, tech­nol­ogy, and con­tent. From higher edu­ca­tion, tech­nol­ogy, cause-related orga­ni­za­tions, and finan­cial ser­vices, we thrive in mak­ing the com­plex com­pelling and cel­e­brate how tech­nol­ogy can enhance these experiences.

EVENT SCHEDULE
1 – 2pm

Jamie Neely (TypeCast): Prototyping web typography.

2:15 – 3:15pm / Panel Discussion

Lisa Strausfeld (Bloomberg): Type and data.
Deroy Peraza (Hyperakt): Meaningful design for the com­mon good.

3.30 – 4.30pm

Oliver Reichenstein (iA): Responsive design and typography.

4:45 – 5:45pm / Panel Discussion
Ian Lord, Andrew Mahon, Lev Kanter, Zeke Shore (Type/Code): Don’t go chas­ing water­falls: design and devel­op­ment as one fluid process. 

Andy Mangold (Friends of the Web): Content has changed, so must design.

6 – 8pm
Afterparty Above Allen @ Thompson LES Hotel, 190 Allen Street, New York, NY10002. Have a drink on us and rub elbows with the event’s best and brightest.

—
As design­ers in this day and age, our world is expand­ing more and more towards dig­i­tal design. So whether or not you work in the dig­i­tal space cur­rently, these top­ics are impor­tant to con­sider. And as a result, I think this sounds like an excel­lent event for all design­ers, no mat­ter what your present focus might be.

For more infor­ma­tion, check out Sullivan and the Type Director’s Club. Or to pur­chase tick­ets right away, you can head straight to Eventbrite.

Roger Black
Judge’s Choice: Chiavari

This new stencil face takes the Latin (chiseled serif) style to a new extreme. The thins taper to points and then disappear. The result is a natural stencil design, and nothing like the industrial or Corbusier-inspired fonts we are used to, where the letters are just sliced so the template holds together. Rather than being sprayed on a shipping crate, these forms want to be deployed in fashion ads and perfume labels. The proportions are classical, with a whiff of Kis. The result is a display face that is delightfully fresh and elegant.

Typeface designer: Hélène Zünd, Lausanne
School: École cantonale d’art de Lausanne
URL: www.helenezund.ch

Matthew Carter
Judge’s Choice: La República

The majority of this year’s winners were single typefaces; this is a rare example of a family—not a monster family, a sensible family. The purpose of the family can no doubt be inferred from the word “Newspaper” used in the sample setting. It has display and text versions and three weights. I like that the styles within the family have strong individual flavors rather than just being slices from the same salami that vary only in thickness. All the styles are economical in set-width, particularly the Display, which is frankly condensed for banner headlines, and all have good sturdy structures with unbracketed serifs. The small caps in the text faces are a practical size for acronyms (which is what they are really needed for nowadays), and in the Display face at least the accents are unapologetically big. My only question concerns the closeness in weight between the Regular and Light text faces, but in newspaper typography I have learned that there is generally a good reason for something that seems at first glance to be odd. I’m sure the client and the designer knew what they were doing—in fact, the whole design has the feel of a satisfying collaboration.

Typeface designer: Cesar Puertas, Bogotá, Columbia
Design Office: Typograma
Client: Diario La República–Editorial El Globo
URL: www.typograma.com
Available in: Regular, Light, Italic, Semibold, Bold, Black, and Display

Paul Shaw
Judge’s Choice: Hipster Script

I chose Hipster Script because, based on the submitted specimen, it seemed to be a lively brush script that succeeded in feeling natural without resorting to an excessive array of alternates, ligatures, and swashes. I found this restraint impressive. However, it turns out that Hipster Script—a design still in progress as of this writing—has a glyph palette of more than 1,900 characters. This does not diminish the quality of its design, though it does undermine my reason for selecting it as a Judges’ Choice. had I known this I may well have chosen a different typeface to single out. In my opinion, Hipster Script was still the best script submitted to the type design competition. Like many of Alejandro Paul’s designs, it is an attempt—ultimately a futile one—to reduce the divide between writing and type, or, as he puts it, “between manual and digital.” To this end he has included among the numerous ligatures some that incorporate apostrophes. Although this is not a new idea—see Typo Script (Morris Fuller Benton, 1902)—it is an unusual one that has plenty of merit. It is a functional combination, unlike the i dot ligatures that have become so prevalent. Thankfully, Hipster Script is too hip to have any of them.

Typeface designer: Alejandro Paul, Buenos Aires
Foundry: Sudtipos
URL: www.sudtipos.com

Erik Spiekermann
Judge’s Choice: Balkan

Typefaces can solve problems: they may be particularly legible at small sizes, fit lots of copy into small spaces, read well on screen. Or they are surprising takes on a classic model, well crafted, and useful. Balkan doesn’t solve a typographic problem; nor are the letterforms terribly exciting. But the premise was: how can one show two alphabets in one glyph? What are the differences and what are the common shapes for Latin and Cyrillic? Balkan combines them into one alphabet that solves not a typographic problem but a cultural one: it celebrates the differences and points out the overlaps. Most of us in the Western world tend to forget that the world’s majority reads what used to be called “Non-Latin” scripts, Cyrillic being one with several hundred million readers. More and more type designers find themselves confronted with this unknown territory as international brands realize that their messages need to be spelled out in the local languages, whatever they may be. Consumers everywhere may recognize brands by their logos, usually based on Latin letterforms, but real communication needs to speak their native language in the alphabet they learned at school. Balkan is more than a typeface: it is a concept, a lesson in communication and cultural awareness.

Typeface designers: Nicola Djurek and Marija Juza, Zabok, Croatia
Foundry: Typonine Font Foundry
URL: www.typonine.com
Available in: Balkan Sans One A, Balkan Sans Two A, Balkan Sans Three A, Balkan Sans B, Balkan Stencil One A, Balkan Stencil Two A, Balkan Stencil Three A, and Balkan Stencil B

This article was originally written for and published by Visual.ly

In recent years, graffiti has enjoyed as near to mainstream appreciation as something that transgressive can get. However, much of that praise has been geared at graffiti murals and imagery, while tagging has taken a back seat, bearing more of a resemblance to vandalism than art.

Tagging has been around in some form as long as people have written. What we know of tagging now, though, is largely dependent on the modern materials artists use (paint markers, spray paint), and through a sort of visual history, with people in different locations communicating to and learning from one another.

Typographer and designer Christian Acker goes a long way toward capturing that visual history and giving the artform its proper respect in his new catalogue of the various American tagging styles, Flip the Script: A Guidebook for Aspiring Vandals & Typographers. The book is set up as an overview of American tagging: what it is, where it came from, where it’s going. It features hundreds of lush — well, as lush as blackletter could get — reproductions of regional alphabets completed by graffiti writers from around the country. There are a lot, and an index would be helpful in future editions.

History in the writing

As a typographer, Acker maintains that graffiti alphabets don’t work well as fonts. That’s because the actual tags look much different than the sum of their letters, with each letter altered in relation to the next and the piece as a whole. But the exercise of having hundreds of artists write out separately the letters and numbers of their tags is an interesting — and academic — approach to an artform that’s rarely studied with this much precision. More importantly, in asking for the alphabets and talking with these artists, they were able to give voice to their own lettering.

At a discussion of his book at the Type Directors Club in New York City, Acker said that having the taggers complete a font helped them tell hidden stories. ”Stories are made up of words. Words are made up of letters,” Acker said to a room of type enthusiasts. “When I was going to the letters, I got stories.”

And really, that’s the most impressive part of this book. Each handwriting is accompanied by lengthy quotations by its authors.

From Acker’s interviews with the artists — many of which are recorded on his Youtube page — we learn that Philadelphia tagger Cornbread began his lengthy grafitti career by writing his name along the train route of a girl he was wooing in order to get her attention. We also learn that the that the reason the Cholo style bears resemblance to Old English because Mexico’s printing press predated those of the rest of the New World.

Creativity or Plagiarism?

Like linguistics, the meaning and the execution of tagging are always in flux. Acker catalogues this continually moving art form to show, generally, what tagging looked like in a given place and time. In doing so, numerous artists discuss where they got their inspiration, whose tags they’ve copied and how they’ve updated them with their own idiosyncrasies. It’s a healthy conversation that designers should take to heart.

Unless you live in a vacuum, you’ve copied someone. It’s best to be upfront about your inspiration than ignore it and a appear like a thief later. In all of our arts — writing, blogging, designing, drawing, data visualizing — it’s probably better to be open about our inspiration than accused. What arises from the relationships of tags as well as the taggers’ own words, is an artform that is comfortable having an honest discussion of inspiration, that doesn’t just draw a line between copying and the creative process. In many ways that open discussion has led to its proliferation.

The more positive side is what you can learn from other artists — those tackling many of the same conundrums. Graffiti is often perceived as a lonely venture, but like any art or text visible to the public eye, it is a form of communication. Adding to others’ work creates a conversation, and a more evolved product all around.

Since Acker began this documentation project 10 years ago, four of the artists in Flip the Script have passed away. Fortunately, the book preserves the stories and lessons behind the tags — even after they are painted over and power-washed away.

Rani Molla has a digital media master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School. She’s a journalism reader, writer, photographer, videographer, data visualizer and general doer. Follow her on Twitter.

JASON SANTA MARIA

Judge’s Choice: Red Bull Music Academy website

The Red Bull Music Academy connects fans to the world of music by traveling around the world to cities like Berlin, Sao Paulo, New York, Cape Town, and Melbourne to host events with musicians sharing knowledge through interviews and performances. The website seeks to be the online face of the Academy, documenting the events with videos, articles, and conversations. The website makes a big splash with its use of imagery, but the type (predominantly FF Clan by Łukasz Dziedzic) is the star here. The heavier weights of FF Clan are used nice and big for eye-catching headlines, making for a great visual anchor to browsing around. FF Clan’s text weight is used sparingly for captions and smaller excerpts before handing over the longform text to Georgia (still a sturdy staple on the web). It’s a simple typographic system, but it works extremely well. The overall effect has lots of impact and feels like a modern editorial magazine. Perhaps the best thing is how The Red Bull Music Academy combines all this great design into a fully responsive website using the latest in modern web design practices. Regardless of what device, platform, or browser you are using, the site reorients itself to accommodate you. There is no “mobile” version, just a single site that can adapt to everything, all the while keeping the wonderful layout and typography intact.

Design: Sarah Lincoln and Marlene Schufferth, Berlin
Creative Direction: Sven Ellingen and Robert Stulle
Web Developers: Moritz Guth, Dirk Schmid, Elke Send, and René Zschoch
Design Office: Edenspiekermann
URL: www.edenspiekermann.com
Client: Red Bull Music Academy
Principal Type: FF Clan

JASON SCHULTE

Judge’s Choice: All Time Hits and Nike Bats

I’m a sucker for type on baseball bats. I recall that as a kid, before I knew what typography was, I admired the type burned into my dad’s Louisville Slugger. In this case, I was drawn to the idea of creating something unexpected out of an everyday object—a piece of equipment transformed into a beautiful, useful sculpture. It forces you to interact. You can’t help yourself from picking up the bat, running your fingers over the engraved type, and spinning it around to read the stats. (And it probably brings you back to the last time you gripped a bat.) The Knockout typeface mimics the nostalgic, utilitarian type that appeared on old bats, but feels distinctly modern in this context. And the crazy number of widths available in the face allows the name Yastrzemski to wrap around on the narrowest part of the bat. It’s a smart idea, beautifully executed.

Self Promotion
Design: Eliza Cerdeiros, New York
Art Direction: Sam Eckersley and Stuart Rogers
Engravers: Eric Bauer, Tim Bauer, Accumark, Inc., and Laser Magic, Inc.
Design Office: Rogers Eckersley Design
URL: www.red-nyc.com
Client: Red Bull Music Academy
Principal Type: Knockout (family)

Exhibition
Design: Sam Eckersley and Stuart Rogers, New York
Copywriters: Eric Bauer and Tim Bauer
Concept and Design: Nike Brand Design
Engravers: Accumark, Inc., and Laser Magic, Inc.
Design Office: Rogers Eckersley Design
URL: www.red-nyc.com
Client: Nike
Principal Type: Combat Medium, Fieldhouse, and Knockout (family)

KEVIN SMITH

Judge’s Choice: Effenaarboek Memories Can’t Wait

Concert venue De Effenaar in Eindhoven is renowned for all the young artists who have appeared there and then went on to become famous. The main design challenge for this jubilee book—named Memories Can’t Wait, after a song by Talking Heads—was to keep an independent approach and not to reference specific styles, such as punk or dance. At first glance, the black book is distant, apart from the glow-in-the-dark title. The inside contrasts sharply with this, however. With its bright colours, playful typography and great photography, it evokes the energy of the live performances. An industrial-style typeface was used for the headers of the band names, a typeface originally designed for the signage system of the building. Its boldness fits the personality of the venue perfectly.

Design: Nils Mengedoht and Joana Muhlenbrock, Delft, The Netherlands
Creative Direction: Jeroen van Erp
Project Leader Design: Maartje Wensing
Project Leader: Tom Ketelaar
Publisher: Lecturis Publishing
Agency: Fabrique
URL: www.fabrique.nl
Client: De Effenaar
Principal Type: Berthold Bodoni BE, Helvetica Neue LT Pro Family, and custom

ERIC STROHL

Second Place Student Design Award
Judge’s Choice: Zeitschrift Der Strasse

What really commanded my attention in seeing this piece was the bold yet beautifully awkward typography featured prominently on the cover. This fantastic headline typography, along with the restrained use of color, brings to mind the classic compositions of Depero, Tschichold, or Zwart. The layout has a delightful balance of asymmetry, accentuated by a unique trim size, creating a pleasant reading experience overall. Despite all of the designers’ radical layout decisions, a timelessness and confidence is maintained throughout—refreshing in the often-safe world of print design. This honest aesthetic pairs perfectly with the subject matter of the series, a street magazine sold by the homeless in Bremen. Even for an experienced designer, the subject matter and task would be tough to tackle. In this case, these students have married journalism, design, and photography in a manner that is effective and lovely. The boldness of the design is matched only by its impressive social influence.

Design: Kolja Burmester, Janis Fisch, Bernd Krönker, Eunjung Kwak, Annika Nagel, Martin Peterson, Allegra Schneider, Samual Tyson, Christina Wangler, and Volker Weise, Bremen, Germany
Chief Editor (Text): Armin Simon
School: Hochschule für Künste Bremen
Instructor: Andrea Rauschenbusch
URL: www.hfk-bremen.de and www.zeitschrift-der-strasse.de
Client: Verein für Innere Mission in Bremen
Principal Type: Akzidenz Grotesk BQ Bold Extended, Gill Sans MT Pro, and Krana Fat

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Time:
Tuesday, July 16
6:00-9:00 PM

Acknowledgements, announcements of the Best in Show, Best in Show Student Awards and Scholarship presentations at 6:30 PM

Fees:
TDC 59 Winners – Free (only two tickets)
Typeface winners – Free (only two tickets)
TDC members – $10
TDC Student members – $5
Non members – $20
Student non members – $15

Location:
The Cooper Union Gallery
41 Cooper Square
New York, NY
 

FRANK CHIMERO

Judge’s Choice: playtype.com

Words live everywhere, but not every place has been known to be a safe harbor for fine typography. The internet, until recently, has been one such place. The most a designer could do was make wise choices in proportion and hierarchy. Surely, this is a large part of excellent typography, but the designers still lacked a sufficient pool of typefaces to choose from to make their selection a purposeful, nuanced choice for the job. Fortunately, interactive designers’ desires have largely been satiated in the past two years through advancements in webfonts. The Playtype foundry’s website offers one such safe haven to indulge a typographic lust, then provides the tools to apply it to the screen. The faces are displayed with care and affection—specific enough to suggest quality, but vague enough to provide the opening necessary for the designers to see their work using that typeface. The site is optimized for discovery, and the arrangement and interactions suggest that the visitor window-shop through the offered wares. This is a fitting analogy, because Playtype has also set up a physical space in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro to sell its typefaces and typerelated products. The strength of the website is that it mirrors the experience of the concept store: window-shop a fine selection of typefaces, take in the sights, and imagine the possibilities. In the end, the website and the physical space are bonded by their implied mission: to extend the domain of fine typography by bringing it to places it hasn’t been before.

Website Design: Jesper Mathiasen, Copenhagen
Creative Direction: Jens Kajus
Copywriter: Lasse Bjørch
Project Manager: Rikke May-Olsen
Developer: Jaanish Hundt
Brand Agency: e-Types
Client: Playtype Type Foundry & Concept Store
Principal Type: Hill and Home Display

RAY FENWICK

Judge’s Choice: Raucksichten 250 Years Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart

 
What does one say about a book as beautiful yet baffling as this one? It is baffling because in many ways, it shouldn’t work. The style changes constantly as it makes stops throughout typographic time—something our type teachers warned us against in threatening voices. Each section evokes a different historical style both in type and layout, from classic book design to Jan Tschichold’s New Typography and right up to monospaced anti-design. In the wrong hands, these shifts from style to style could result in a book of Great Evil (typo-evil, that is), but that is not the case here. What we get is the exact opposite of evil, something akin to a typographic holy book. A typo-bible. Of course it doesn’t hurt this overall effect that the book has a soft gold cover and a white-gilded edge, but it is really the graceful handling of the type and grid that makes the whole affair feel so… reverent. The generous amount of space that flows through the book is as thoughtfully managed as the type, which is saying something, because the variation and imagination there is impressive. The end result looks effortless and luxurious, and the sense of history it alludes to is perfectly tuned to its content. So what does one say about a book like this? “Amen.”

Design: Nicolas Zupfer, Stuttgart
Photography: Nadine Bracht
Instructor: Uli Cluss
School: Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart
URL: www.buchinstitut.abk-stuttgart.de
Principal Type: Various
Dimensions: 6.7 x 9.4 in. (17 x 24 cm)

LOUISE FILI

Judge’s Choice: Raus Kopieren (Copy Out!) Copy Shop at Klingspor Museum Offenbach

This poster immediately caught my eye for its smart use of memorable fonts by German type designer Rudolph Koch, and for employing my two favorite colors —the essential red and black. Not being a German speaker, I had no idea of how the text translated until after the judging, yet the playful layering of type and color, reminiscent of letterpress, was a not-so-subtle reference to common blackletter Weimar advertising posters and book pages, which have always captured my interest. The Dadaesque overprinting of the red ornamented boxes adds to the realism of this work—and the result is visually exciting.

Design: Lorenz Klingebiel and Nicolas Kremershof, Frankfurt am Main
URL: www.lorenzklingebiel.com and www.kremershof.com
School: University of Art and Design Offenbach
Instructor: Sascha Lobe
Client: Klingspor-Museum Offenback
Principal Type: Various
Dimensions: 27.5 x 39.4 in. (70 x 100 cm)

She began her career as an Assistant Art Director at Harper’s Bazaar magazine and went on to become the Art Director at Family Health magazine. She left Family Health to tour with the Rolling Stones – an offer she couldn’t refuse. Her boyfriend was one of their videographers, and what an experience that was! Surviving the tour, Susan returned to NYC to partner in Progressive Designers (PD), a graphic design studio specializing in branding.

A year later, in 1977, Susan was invited to teach at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City – another offer she couldn’t refuse. Susan left PD to teach but her love for advertising led her to create Circle, Square and Triangle (CS&T), a niche-advertising agency in NYC specializing in Fine Arts, Fashion, and Jewelry Advertising.

Her work for CS&T notwithstanding, Susan is committed to design education. Many of her students have gone on to top-level positions as art directors and creative directors in the world’s leading advertising agencies, graphic studios and publishing houses. From 2000 – 2007 Susan chaired the Communication Design Department at FIT. From 2007 – 2012 she was the Online Director for the School of Advertising at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

A well-known consultant in the industry, Susan is quoted on book covers and in various publications. She’s taught at Marywood University in its Communication Design Master’s Program, guest lectures at colleges and industry events, and chairs and judges industry and student competitions. Susan’s industry memberships included the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Art Directors Club (ADC), the One Club, the Society of Illustrators (SI), the Society of Publication Designers (SPD), and the Type Directors Club (TDC). She has also served on the boards of both SPD and TDC.

Susan now lives on Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, Noah.

The latest Creative Week lettering tour will cover Tribeca, the former manufacturing area that has become one of the most popular residential neighborhoods. Fortunately, many of the 19th century buildings have been preserved and thus there is an opportunity to see some of the oldest lettering to be found in New York City. As usual the tour will include a wide mix of lettering styles (classical Roman capitals, Art Deco, versals, blackletter, grotesques, scripts), materials (stone, terracotta, metal, wood, plastic) and techniques (carving, casting, painting). The emphasis will continue to be the historical, social and architectural uses of lettering in New York as well as their aesthetics. It will begin and end at the Mercer Hotel in Soho.

Paul Shaw has been conducting lettering tours for a decade and a half. From 1997 to 2000 he was co-leader with Garrett Boge of the Legacy of Letters tours of Rome and Florence. Since 2005 he has been leading tours of New York and other American cities for the Society of Typographic Aficionados, GEL, the One Club, the Type Directors Club and several design schools. Since 2010 he and Alta Price have resurrected the Legacy of Letters tours with a focus on northern Italy, especially the Veneto.

Tuesday, May 7th,
11 am to 2 p.m

TDC members $35
Non members $45

Register online

Designed by Paula Scher : Pentagram

Order the Book »

Since the fall of 2005 Paul Shaw has been leading walking tours of lettering in New York City for the Type Directors Club. The tours have covered many neighborhoods so far: the Financial District, Civic Center, Tribeca, Soho, Greenwich Village, Midtown, Lincoln Center, Morningside Heights, Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, Upper East Side in Manhattan; Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Williamsburg in Brooklyn; Long Island City, Greenpoint and Jackson Heights in Queens; and St. George and Stapleton in Staten Island. You may have missed out on one of these tours but New York is vast and there is a huge amount of fascinating lettering to be seen in parts of the city that many of us only know about from traffic reports.

The latest TDC lettering tour will cover the adjacent Queens neighborhoods of Woodhaven and Richmond Hill. These are two areas that still have pre-1980 examples of signage. However, some of the oldest businesses have closed in the past five years making a tour such as this essential for those who want to see what the city looked like before suburbia began to encroach in the form of national chains like Starbucks and Applebee’s. As usual the tour will include a wide mix of lettering styles (classical Roman capitals, Art Deco, versals, blackletter, grotesques, scripts), materials (stone, terracotta, metal, wood, plastic) and techniques (carving, casting, painting). The emphasis will continue to be the historical, social and architectural uses of lettering in New York as well as their aesthetics. The tour is an opportunity to see and learn more about the great city of New York before it becomes bland.

Sunday, May 19th,
11 am to 2 p.m

TDC members $35
Non members $45

Register online

Inspired by flea markets in Rotterdam, Tokyo, Moscow and various points in between over the past 8 years, the typographic artist & designer Yomar Augusto is turning to NYC to begin a new chapter of inspiration in his creative life. But before this new chapter begins, he’d like to reflect on the past decade with an exhibition. “I’d like to pay homage to my past work before i begin to create the next chapter of my creative life.” His typography, calligraphy, graphic design and experimental pieces will be featured at the type directors club for the first time. come see what a decade of flea markets can inspire.

Yomar Augusto is a brazilian typographic artist and graphic designer based in New York City. Born in Brasilia and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Yomar initially trained as a graphic designer before going on to study photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2001. He then started his own studio in Rio before completing a masters in type design from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands. He enjoyed 8 years living and working in the low lands, among the dutch type, design, art and educational scene.

Yomar has presented both commercial and conceptual projects with solo exhibitions in Asia, Europe and South America, while also designing for a host of brands including EMI, MTV & Warner Music in Brazil; and international agencies such 180 amsterdam, adidas (for the 2010 fifa world cup), W+K, Tbwa, DDB tribal, Lemz, Grey in The Netherlands; Fur Fur and Graniph in Japan; DDB in New Zealand and Loducca in Sao Paulo

He was teaching typography for advertising at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam between 2011 and 2012 and guess teaching at bauhaus university in Wiemar, Germany has held experimental calligraphy and book art workshops in many countries, including Brazil, Russia, Turkey, China, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Germany and The Netherlands.

in 2011, Yomar has been invited to talk at TDC New York and has also been published at TDC Tokyo, Japan. Solo exhibition Andoverpis has been held at the Catapult gallery in Antwerp, Belgium and Berlugustopol exhibition has been held at piktogram in Warsaw, Poland.

Thursday, May 9th
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Exhibition from May 9th to 31st

TDC members $5
Non members $20
Student Non members $15

Register Online

Join us for a summer afternoon as industry leaders address how technology affects human behavior and the resulting impact on design and typography.

Type Directors Club, in partnership with Sullivan, have curated this symposium based on their shared passion for crafting meaningful experiences with typography.

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Speakers:

Oliver Reichenstein, iA, Tokyo, Zurich, Berlin
Oliver Reichenstein is the founder and director of Information Architects, the Tokyo, Zurich, and Berlin-based design agency. “I was never satisfied with the state of the web. Websites were — and still are — always too noisy for my taste. I didn’t really understand what was missing until I discovered typography.” iA has created its new website with responsive typography and a custom-built responsive typeface.

Lisa Strausfeld, Bloomberg, NYC
As global head of data visualization at Bloomberg, Lisa Strausfeld will build a new team to leverage the company’s data, analytics and editorial content. Her job will be to oversee the creation of interactive data applications for Bloomberg’s consumer media platforms including web, mobile, and TV.

Jamie Neely, Typecast, Dublin
Jamie Neely is the founder of Typecast, recently acquired by Monotype, and is Creative Director of Front, a web strategy, design and technology studio. “We believe that as sites become more responsive, devices proliferate and screens shrink, typographic decisions become even more important and influential on site success.”

Deroy Peraza, Hyperakt, NYC
Deroy Peraza is a founding partner and creative director at Hyperakt. Deroy works at the crossroads of social entrepreneurship and design and relentlessly searches for meaningful challenges. He loves juggling vastly different projects such as data visualizations, brand identities, website interfaces and inventing products such as ChampsRing.com and LetsSwap.it.

Ian Lord, Type/Code, NYC
Type/Code is a studio of designers and developers who invent, communicate, build, and refine. “We collaborate with ambitious clients who want to bring powerful ideas to life. We find clever solutions to hard problems. We love to immerse ourselves in new domains. We strive to make complicated things beautifully intuitive and powerfully functional.”

Andy Mangold, Friends of The Web, Baltimore
Andy Mangold is Co-Founder at Friends of The Web & On the Grid. Friends of The Web builds websites and mobile applications and are “passionate about making practical products that are delightful to use.”

About Sullivan
Sullivan’s work lives at the intersection of brand, design, technology, and content. Sullivan is a brand engagement firm headquartered in the Meatpacking district that works with clients in financial and professional services, technology, higher education and not-for-profit. sullivannyc.com

Cooper Union, Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Square,
Manhattan, NY, 10003

Friday, June 7th
1:00 to 6:00 p.m.

“To help integrate the lessons from the day, attendees will receive exclusive discounts for relevant General Assembly classes and Tekserve products.”

On Failure is a funny and heartbreaking tale of making it (or not) in New York. The presentation begins in early 2003 when a good friend sent Debbie Millman an email with a subject line that read: Begin drinking heavily before opening.  The email contained a link which took her to a “blog,” the first ever online forum about graphic design and branding. Suddenly she found herself reading an article that disparaged her entire career to date. This experience—in tandem with a number of historical rejections and setbacks—sent Millman into deep despair, and she seriously considered leaving the design profession altogether. In a series of poignant, revealing and sometimes hysterical anecdotes, Debbie will share her journey out of despair and degradation and offer insight on how the worst moments in your life can actually become the most profound and life affirming.

Debbie Millman is President of the design division at Sterling Brands. She has been there for 18 years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of over 200 global brands, including projects with P&G, Colgate, Nestle, Kraft and Pepsi.

Debbie is President Emeritus of AIGA, the largest professional association for design. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine and Co-Founder and Chair of the world’s first Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2005, she began hosting, “Design Matters,” the first podcast about design on the Internet. In 2011, the show was awarded a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.

She is the author of five books on design and branding, including the best-selling Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. Last year, an exhibition of her visual essays debuted at the Chicago Design Museum.

sterlingbrands.com
debbiemillman.com

Pencil to Pixel
Tribeca Skyline Studio
205 Hudson Street
PenthouseNY 10013

Tuesday, May 7th
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

TDC members $5
Non members $20
Student Non members $15

Register Online

This book presents their smart and beautiful efforts, as well as memoirs and reflections by Roger Black, James Montalbano, Paul Shaw, Ilene Strizver, Carol Wahler, and Alex W. White.

Buy the book >

The featured designers come from more than twenty-five countries and include such celebrated names as Marian Bantjes, Neville Brody, Sonya Dyakova, Louise Fili, Rubén Fontana, Milton Glaser, Henrik Kubel, Niklaus Troxler, Underware, Sharon Werner, and Bai Zhiqei. Six Type Director Club medalists are represented: Ed Benguiat, Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Paula Scher, Erik Spiekermann, and Hermann Zapf.

We thank the contributors to Celebrate 65 for their support of the Type Directors Club, which continues to lead in the promotion of typographic achievement around the world.

The seven typefaces used in the book text were all winners in the TDC Typeface Design Competition. TDC board chairman Diego Vainesman designed the book, which is 10 x 10 inches and 80 pages.

If you are a TDC member, you’ve already received your free copy. Happy 65! If you are not a member, the book is now available at Amazon. Your purchase will help support TDC lectures and classes.

Buy the book >

Your purchase will help support TDC lectures and classes.

This color Annual includes the winning selections from entries into the TDC57 Communication Design Competition, and the winning selections from entries into the TDC Typeface Design 2011 Type Design Competition.

The Type Directors Club is pleased to support the exhibition Pencil to Pixel in New York City in May, during Creative Week. Pencil to Pixel presents the venerable Monotype company, which has been associated with typesetting and type design for over one hundred years. This will be the premiere of the exhibition in the US and a rare opportunity to see historic and inspirational typographic materials, including original drawings for familiar typefaces from Monotype, Linotype, and ITC. Also in the exhibition are Monotype publications and specimen books, original patent drawings, historical photographs, and artifacts of the type design and casting process.

Reservations Required (FREE)

Monotype began operations in the USA in the late 19th century and branched out to a British sister company in 1897. In its early years, Monotype produced type designs that were based on existing foundry typefaces, but it later developed original and iconic designs such as Times New Roman and Gill Sans. Although the company no longer manufactures machinery, it retains the records of its Type Drawing Office in Salfords, England, which form the core of the current archive. Home of the records of around 80 years of typeface development, from the drawings of all of Monotype’s hot metal typefaces to associated correspondence, trial proofs, and statistics, the archive has become a valuable resource for designers and researchers in the UK. The TDC is very proud to help Monotype bring highlights from the archive to the United States, alongside material from Linotype in Germany and ITC here in New York.

Over the decades, as technology has evolved, the archive has helped Monotype transfer type designs into new formats. Aptly named, Pencil to Pixel documents the incredible skill, precision, and effort required to create type that is beautiful, adaptable, and useful.

When:
May 3–9, 2013

Reservations Required (FREE)

Where:
Tribeca Skyline Studio
250 Hudson Street, Penthouse
New York City

penciltopixel.org

Register Now »

Details

Location:
TDC Conference Center
347 W 36th St, Ste 603
(between 8th and 9th Avenues)
NY, NY 10018

Time & Fees:
Thursday, April 11
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

TDC Members $5
Non Members $20
Student Non Members $15

Please join us once again for Book Night at TDC, where three awesome designers & art directors will show you what it’s like to work in the glamourous New York publishing industry. Arrive at 11am, have a three martini lunch, take a nap in the couch, make a pass at your secretary, bark at your client and go home at 5pm. …oh, sorry that was an episode of Mad Man…there will be nothing like that here.

Christopher Brand is the Art Director of Crown publishing, division of Random House. He also has numerous clients like FSG, Hachette Book Group, Knopf, Little, Brown and Company, The New York Times, Penguin, etc. He is also the Fussball Pope.

Keith Hayes is a book cover designer / art director at Little, Brown and Company. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 2002 with a BFA in graphic design, he began his career in publishing at St. Martin’s Press. Prior to this, Keith was pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. He also turned down an opportunity to put out fires with the NYFD so that he could instead follow his new creative path. Photography is his true passion, and looks forward to filling spare time with a camera in hand.

Jaya Miceli is an art director, designer and illustrator. After graduating from Parsons School of Design for illustration and landing some pieces in The New Yorker, found herself not so keen on the constant self promotion while also having to work in retail to make ends meet. She then sought out the more stable industry of book publishing (no threat of E-books then) and fortunately stumbled upon an opening at Penguin in 2000. Not formerly trained in graphic design and typography, had determinedly picked up on the creative and not so creative aspects of book design during her years there and working within the industry. Her work includes cover designs, illustrations and identity for clients such as Penguin Books, WW Norton, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Picador, Bloomsbury and Harvard Business Review Press. Her work has also been featured in Communication Arts magazine, AIGA 50/50, The Annual New York Book Show and in the Op-Art Section of the New York Times. She currently art directs three imprints for Penguin, which has been a successful undertaking of reinvigorating the looks of Plume, Hudson Street Press, and Current.

Thursday, March 21st
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

TDC members $5
Non members $20
Student Non members $15

Register online

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