Eclectic Echoes

ATypI Between Text & Reader

The ATypI 2003 conference wraps up today. It looks like it should have been a fun time for all involved. I thought when I was still in Idaho I might have been able to make this. The Keynote speaker was Robert Bringhurst, whose book The Elements of Typographic Style, I would dearly love to add to my collection. In conjunction with the conference, Microsoft, Adobe and Fontlab held two different workshops for creating OpenType fonts, and there was what I am sure was an awesome workshop for 6—7 individuals on a traditional letterpress. Wood and metal, one piece at a time, building up the words and lines. Adobe was also showing an upcoming release of Illustrator that adds Unicode and OpenType support. The list of panels and forums covers the spectrum of typography: from typographical history, to the re-emergence of the letterpress as an art-form; from Arabic to Hebrew to Chinese typographies; from digital font creation tools to hand lettering and carved letter forms; legibility to marketing.

While many of the programs really interested me, I would really have liked to see the program by Kevin Larson of Microsoft. Kevin has a PhD in psychologist from UT and his research was—word recognition and reading acquisition. His work for Microsoft is on ClearType and reading technologies. In his program he says that word recognition is not done by word shape, but that we perceive each individual letter while reading words. It is the letters that are the basis of our recognizing the word. If that is the case I’m sure there is a whole lot of allowance for context in the recognition of words from the individual letters. Hopefully Kevin’s presentation will be made available at some future date. I would love to read it. Of course this still does not necessarily put the meme running around the net in any better light—it only emphasizes that our brains are able to reconstruct, fairly seamlessly, data from context far better than we often allow for. 

Another paper I would like to see, would be from the discussion of the future of type in the design of Information and Communication Technologies, e.g. the web, cellphones. The focus appears to have been on type’s possible role to humanize these technologies, especially when, so often, the technologies have poor visual designs. Yeah, we all missed the boat badly on HTML Language and even on CSS. We really all need to get things right soon, because as WaSP and others have found, it’s going to take anywhere from 3—6 years to bring around the moment and change the way enough people are doing things with the technology.

The auction looks like it was filled with treasures and each attendee received a 48pt type cast of the conference mascot. The organizers put together some great informational material about Vancouver and if you’re visiting there soon maybe take a peek at their Restaurant Guide (non-printing PDF)

“However, do not be tempted to eat at Assam on Denman Street. This may be the worst Indian restaurant in the world: it should be demolished, and the ground where it stood sown with salt.

“…but if you want a great coffee you should go to Caffé Artigiano (763 Hornby Street). This place serves some of the best tasting and most beautiful coffees in the world.

“If you’re in Yaletown, try a Japanese green tea flavoured latte while listening to Finnish pop music in the deeply surreal Don’t Show the Elephant (1201 Hamilton Street).”

I hope for all involved it was highly successful and stimulating.