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[Plaza de la Constitución.] |
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It has been six months now since I was attacked in broad daylight on Avenida Hidalgo Tacuba in Mexico City. I have been attacked twice before. During a boy scout camping trip in Belgium, a fever forced me to rest in my tent while the others went on a hike. I had just turned eleven. The group's priest, a guy called Luc Mols, tried to sneak into my sleeping bag while I was asleep. I had an inkling that this was not the thing priests were supposed to do---although I still ask myself what exactly they are supposed to do---, so I quickly simulated a deathbed cough, and asked him for a glass of water. He complied and went to fetch me one. At that moment, I got up and hid in the forest until the other scouts returned from their hike. |
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The second event was more serious, because the short man on Barcelona's Barceloneta beach had a knife. He was a confused young fellow who did not know whether to focus on money or sex. I had no money to give and was intent on keeping my virginity, which I had managed to preserve for over fifty years. In the two-hour ordeal that followed, I kept the negotiations open and tried to keep my friend from thinking about sex, which was not easy to do since he had already undressed and had his machinery pointing to the moon, ready to launch a grenade on a moment's notice. But in the end diplomacy won [barely], and he agreed to take lots of cash if we could only fetch it in my hotel room. My virginity intact, we headed off to my hotel, my arm firmly in his grip. I could have kissed the security guard in the hotel lobby, but didn't. The three of us sat down, and talked for about twenty minutes about travel and soccer. Then we shook hands and that was it. |
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The third attack took place on Monday, October 26, 2009, in Mexico City. Without any provocation or warning, the gringo shoved me against the wall of the MIDE building and held me there for a minute or so while explaining viva voce what he thought of me, using delicate anatomical analogies. It was clear that my third attacker did not have the pope's support---he did not even have a water gun. I pulled another Kissinger to get out of this prickly situation, to the amusement of the people near me who were also waiting to register at the ATypI meeting. Blackberries went atwitter and cellphones were smoking. Bystanders were putting bets on the imminent impromptu lucha libre outbreak. But, as they say, you can make a Belgian drink, but you can't lead a virgin to water, so over the next few days, the gringo and I shook hands, and even had a couple of decent conversations. He apologized, and I accepted his apology. |
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Everyone will understand now why I kept a careful eye on all the gringos at the meeting in Mexico. I tried very hard to hang out with the locals for protection, and it was a good thing too. The internet is what it is---it gives someone some rough idea about what is going on in the world, but you can't smell the passion, or touch the excitement. I knew something was brewing in Latin America in the area of type design. Schools are opening up all over the continent, but especially so in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. The Tipos Latinos project has become a movement---before we know it, they will have their own May 1st parade. Latin American type designers are regularly winning international type design awards. From my desk in Montreal, I was aware of all that, but I had not experienced it first-hand. So, I packed my chastity belt and headed for the airport. |
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Far away from the hectic pace of the MIDE, in the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Gabriel Martinez Meave showed his remarkable work, including many stunning sketchbooks never before made public. In type design, the scale near the top is exponential, that is, the best handful is twice as good as the next gaggle, and the latter are twice as good as the next posse, and so forth. It is clear that Meave cannot draw a bad letter even if he tried---he is obviously in that select top group. While initially interested in display type and type with a penman's personality, his latest type family, Presidencia, which was used to print the ATypI material and which was created for use by the Mexican authorities, is a huge contribution in the text family area. I hope that the Mexican Government will use it wisely to print new laws against overexcited gringos. |
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There were lots of talks by gringos---some good speakers, even some great speakers, and in fact, we call one of them Spiekermann because he is the greatest speaker of them all. He spoke about designing house numbers and admitted that I don't design type on my own. He is a smart guy. Designing house numbers must be the simplest way to get a foot (or more) in the door of one of the Desperate Housewives. | ||
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Most of the gringo delegation at ATypI galloped to the technical and/or business sessions---they were easy to corral and control. There were funny moments---like when Ted Harrison, the President of Fontlab, declared that Fonts are the Rodney Dangerfield of software, or when Roger Black proposed the following strategy for getting out of the web font quagmire: Let's do it the old American way: Build it and then fix it. There were also intense moments, especially during the web font session, in which a panel of gringo card carrying specialists (Black, Daggett, Kew, Veen, Daniels, Wildenberg, Davis) discussed strategies for solving the web font problem. The moment in time is crucial indeed---we are about to take the next leap forward in terms of quality web typography, and so how can the companies cash in on this? What is the business model? How are browser makers reacting? How can we help clients spend their cash? The only guy missing from the panel was Humphrey Bogart, because he could have told them where the treasure of the Sierra Madre is hidden. |
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And then the moment of tension---a young Mexican designer mentioned that he could not afford to pay for fonts and that he had to resort to illegal downloading or other means. For about ten seconds, there was total silence---suddenly, the panel realized that most of the world does not care about the business model that is being shaped right now at meetings like this. The only guy in the room who dared speak out for the Mexican was Nick Sherman (MyFonts), who suggested that perhaps a new type of license is needed. But the rift between the haves and have-nots is ten thousand fonts wider than the Rio Grande. |
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The Mexicans must have been really surprised to see a bunch of gringos ride into town, and start shooting at each other. Sitting besides John Berry, ATypI's President, the man without the water gun shouted (warning---bad language ahead) He is a fuckface, John. He steals, when a speaker from California was walking up to give his talk. Later, during the talk, when the Californian was talking about the skeletons of letters, our water pistol hero shouted How about your own skeletons? The twitter blog crowd headed by saloon girl Marina Chaccur was getting excited. The Californian had great one-liners, such as The eye gives us things the hand did not ask for, and The king is dead. Long live the readers, but my favorite was his cool retort when he addressed the audience with I respect 99% of you. This was on par with Viva Zapata and almost as good as Viva Maria. |
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To make matters worse, without any help from the gringos, the euringos found trouble all by themselves. Take for example the case of François Chastenet, who spoke about Cholo, a handwriting style used by Mexican gangs in Los Angeles. For this, François had to embed in the gangs---I imagine that this must have been like the reporters who were embedded in the first American tanks that rolled into Baghdad. Now, here is a perfectly stable and healthy French guy who for no reason at all gets into a tank to check out the letters written by the friends of Cheech and Chong in the back alleys of LA. The good news is that he survived, minus a finger, and that he now has a free White Fence tattoo on his backside. |
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While the entertainment may have come from north of the border, the substance of the meeting was all Latin. The heart and soul of the ATypI meetings remains academic and artistic---type history, type design techniques, and indeed, type strip-tease, set ATypI apart from all other meetings around the world. Several speakers explained the history of type in the Americas since the Mayas, and discussed some native languages and their needs---Marina Garone, Juan Heilborn, Felipe Caceres, Diego Mier y Teran, Kollontai Diniz, Laura Caso Barrera, Leonardo Vazquez, and others did a fantastic educational job in this respect. Meave himself gave a more philosophical lecture [Letters are still the most effective containers of culture. As such, they are weapons] [All airports look the same]. The majority of the Latin American speakers showed us their bouncy lively elegant typefaces. While Cristobal Henestrosa's Espinosa Nova was one of my favorites, it was sheer joy to watch the generalissimo of Latin script, Alejandro Paul, show his typefaces in use in the real world---The supermarket is the biggest font catalog, he proclaimed. Finally, if the gringos looked and acted like they mistook Mexico City for Dodge City, the locals had their act together, and organized a couple of panels on type education and the state of the art of type in the region. |
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There was also a side show at MIDE and at the Academia de San Carlos---the brochure said that it was about a Flying Dutchman. First I thought---for sure, this must be about Jan Middendorp, because he flies everywhere and makes more surprise appearances than Hillary Clinton and the pope, combined. But I was wrong. Jan and his Mexican friends had dug up the history of a Dutch book cover artist, Boudewijn Ietswaart, who had spent two years in Mexico to practice his trade around 1960. Because not a single French or Mexican guy could pronounce his name, the locals decided to call him Balduino, and out of Jan's fertile mind came the idea to make a digital type based on Ietswaart's work---this was achieved thanks to the research and successful execution by a group of 13 members of Mexico's Circulo de Tipografos, which includes Oscar Yanez. Ietswaart lives in Amsterdam, but was not able to fly to Mexico. So, Jan drank the cervezas that had been reserved for Ietswaart by the organizers.
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I usually give awards at ATypI meetings, to make up for all the faux pas and foot-in-mouth situations I always get myself into.
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Luc Devroye |
This ATypI meeting was hands-down the best one I have ever attended.
I can't imagine how many man-hours of preparation must
have gone into the the organization, with two main events
and fifteen satellite events taking place at
about ten venues. The main talks were at the splendid MIDE (Museo Interactivo
de Economia) located in the historic Convent of Betlemitas.
Two days of workshops were held on the campus of the
School of Design at Anahuac University. Exhibitions were sprinkled
over many musea in downtown Mexico City, all near the historic center.
I could sense that this was going to be their first participation in
the World Cup of type design, and not just the Mexicans were all saddled up,
but also their brothers and sisters from south of the Panama Canal.
What I found was raw passion, a deep interest in the fundamentals
of type design and typography, and a sense of beauty that is orthogonal
to that of most euringos (gringos from Europe, especially northern Europe).
