Commentary
September 25, 2001
Report of ATypI 2001 (by Luc Devroye)
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Commentary September 25, 2001 Report of ATypI 2001 (by Luc Devroye) |
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¶
Before I describe the talks and events I attended,
permit me to whine a bit about
the conference fees, something I do every year. The conference
fees, which amount to about 1,000 Canadian dollars, are just
too outrageous. It is clear that this income is used
to pay several salaries at ATypI headquarters.
But more importantly, the steep fees keep many
interesting people from attending. This year, the
attendance from the USA was abysmal, but this was in part due
to the World Trade Center disaster on September 11.
There was a large attendance from Denmark, followed by
strong showings of the neighboring North European
countries. However, the rest of the world was all
but absent. The conference organizers pay the speakers'
expenses, while the rank and file have to support their
own travel and fork over the big conference fees.
I propose that it should be the
other way around, modeled after a common
practice in many science and engineering meetings.
The speakers should not be supported at all (the
invitation itself is an honor and a recognition),
while there is ample financial support towards the travel,
hotel and conferences fees of
young students or fresh graduates.
¶
As usual, the attendees received a lot of handouts, catalogs,
and posters.
There were beautiful fonts by Danish typographers on display
at the meeting, covering the major Danish foundries
such as e-types (Jonas Hecksher, Jens Kajus)
and Kontrapunkt (Bo Linnemann), and individuals
such as Ole Søndergaard (the designer
of FF Signa), Morten Rostgaard Olsen
(of FF Olsen fame), Klaus Andersen,
Poul Steen Larsen, Torben Wilhelmsen,
Henrik Birkvig, Finn Sködt,
Per Baasch Jörgensen, Lotte Reinert,
Anne Marie Brammer, and Kim Pedersen.
As we would learn during the meeting, Danish type
has been greatly developed in function of corporate
design. It is only recently that the Danish fonts are
being offered for sale to the public.
¶
The SAS Falconer Radisson Hotel was airy, roomy,
and stylish, just the right choice for this sort
of public. Lots and lots of comfortable sofas,
and a great organization of the lunch/computer
room had the effect of keeping people relaxed
and, most importantly, in the building.
The organizers asked if we would be interested
in an extra (fourth) day at future ATypI meetings.
I hope so.
I also hope that the organizers will reduce the number
of parallel track hours as much as possible. This
can be achieved, for example,
by reducing the presentation times by 25%. Some speakers
had trouble filling their allotted time this year with
meaningful material.
I offer my services for the badge design next year,
because once again the badges were too small and too
unreadable, except from an embarrassingly short distance
that would put one's nose within smelling distance of
one's target's armpit. In fact, it would have been nice if
the organizers had used one of Knud Engelhardt's
highly readable road sign fonts. A missed opportunity.
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¶
Ivar Gjørup lives in Aarhus, and is the cartoonist who created
the comic strip Egoland for the Danish newspaper Politiken.
His recent book, The Sixth Sense (2000), takes the readers
on a sociohistorical tour of writing and printing, with
letters first playing the role of memory machines, and then
moving on to become the message bearers and publicity agents.
It was a good warm-up, but the presentation went on a bit too long.
Several other speakers went way over their allotted time as well,
despite repeated prods from the session chairs. The overtime club
at this meeting has four gold medal recipients,
Ivar Gjørup (15 minutes), Erik van Blokland (10 minutes),
Petr van Blokland (12 minutes) and Garrett Boge (9 minutes).
¶
Erik van Blokland from LettError presented the third address,
entitled "The Future". Just as with the talk by his older brother Petr,
it was full of information and opinions on future directions
of type (or the design process, in Petr's case).
Eric did some major brainstorming
on programming in design, on
automated web pages, and on automated corporate branding.
This was illustrated with hilarious examples such as the
autoBrander02 booths destined for airports and train stations, where
one can brand a company in five minutes.
Eric's show was well prepared, entertaining and
insightful. He quoted his brother Petr: If it can
be automated, it is not design. And everything that can be
automated will be automated.
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¶
His comments on the Euro sign had the audience in stitches. Gerard
claims that it is a "c" with two lines, and thus devalues
the currency to the status of a cent. But what could one
expect from a Belgian designer, who incidentally had
the appropriate name of Billiet (only Dutchmen and Belgians
will understand the joke)? Now, after the conference, I confirmed
that this Belgian was Alain Billiet.
I also learned that the symbol had been drawn years before
Billiet's design by Arthur Eisenmenger, but back to Unger's talk.
The official
European Euro web site contradicts Unger by stating that its design is based on
the Greek epsilon, with a second horizontal line added to
stress the stability of the currency. Gerard
then showed his counterproposal
for the Euro, a mirrored
symbol with a curly "c" sitting on a horizontal stroke,
and that same glyph mirrored, with some white space inbetween.
It did not work, he said.
¶
Gerard ended his entertaining presentation
with the showings of Capitolium (for Rome 2000),
Bitstream Amerigo (originally designed for 300dpi laserprinters),
and Decoder (from the FUSE 2 collection).
He received a long ovation.
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Copyright © 2001
Luc Devroye |
