More Type Delights
Whew. Typecon2003 finally came to a close yesterday. My brain hurts from being stabbed repeatedly with so many pointy serifs, arching ligatures and retro dingbats. Letterforms have so painfully taken over and squeezed themselves into every vacant fold of grey matter that not a sign or billboard goes by that doesn’t call out for a deep scrutiny. While reading T.C Boyle’s ‘Worlds End‘ (set in Sabon) last night I came to the conclusion that the word ‘Salmon’ is perhaps one of the most beautiful words in the english language. Christ, I feel sick with fonts. As a side note, I have noticed that any book I pick up from the library that was printed over ten years ago — like ‘World’s End’ was — that the books have a very funky smell like they’ve been steeped in the pools of Lake Superior at low tide. It’s noxious.

But back to Typecon. All in all it was a good conference with tons of diversity between the digerati crowd and the analog craftsmen who play with wood and metal and care to know nothing of the kerning problems inherent in 8 point bitmap fonts. Aesthetic Apparatus put on a great display of their work. Bill Moran put on a great party on the roof tops of his studio. And the Twin Cities represented boldly. In fact, what impressed me most was how much great type and design is coming out of the Twin Cities and it’s neighboring midwestern cities. Although it didn’t win, I thought Eric Olson’s font, Locator (pictured above), was my favorite entry for the Twin Cities Design Celebration

Beyond the Twin Cities designers, I was really impressed with the work of foreign designers especially the display fonts from the Latin American crowd. Check out Downtempo and a mexican wrestling font called Lucha that has mexican wrestling mask dingbats as part of it’s character set. Also impressive and lust worthy were some new types coming from the folks down under at the Australian Type Foundry. Check out Iperion and Euron. And finally I will mention FTF Morgan as the type face I will use to re-brand the Township ‘Skelton’ when I take it over and am named King.