Wednesday July 27, 2005 / Filed under: Type Industry
TypeCon2005 Report #2
Thursday morning we wandered around mid-town Manhattan and wound up at the New York Public Library where we saw the Declaration of Independence (including some of Jefferson’s drafts, which were surprisingly legible) and one of the few existing Guttenberg bibles. That was pretty cool.
I didn’t attend any of the workshops, but the presentation sessions commenced in the afternoon, starting off three full days of TypeCon for me. (I won’t go into the talks in detail here—if you’re curious, try this page.) What I learned:
- PostScript Type 1 fonts are dead. The future (and present) is OpenType. (Actually, I did already know this, but maybe you didn’t.)
- Fontographer is not dead, but I don’t care anymore. (There are people who do care, though.)
- Adding Greek and Cyrillic characters to my fonts will not be a simple matter, but I think I will enjoy doing it.
The highlight of the day was Paula Scher’s keynote address in the evening. Paula is one of the most talented graphic designers of the last two decades and, even though she basically just walked us through her portfolio, her energy and humor made it thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable, even thought provoking at times. (Here’s a QuickTime movie by Hillman Curtis about Paula if you don’t know who she is.)
The Typophile Film Festival topped off the evening. It was a bit shorter than last year’s. It had some good things in it, but nothing to top last year’s Helvetica It Hurts, in my opinion. Although, Strange Attractors’ Little Yellow Writing Hood was close (and funnier).
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