dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro. If you’d like to read more from this series, click here.
Eventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking About Fonts, which are available free to download here. You can find more from John at his website, https://johndberry.com.
Typography’s annual gathering is coming up again at the end of the summer, and this year it’s in North America for a change.
Association Typographique Internationale—ATypI (pronounced “ay-type-eye,” at least in English)—holds its conference each year in a different city. Usually the conference takes place somewhere in Europe, but every once in a while it leaps the Atlantic and lands over here. In recent years it has been in Rome, Copenhagen, and Leipzig; the last North American conference was held in Boston, in 1999. This year, it takes place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 25–28.
History & Change
As the name suggests, the Association Typographique Internationale was originally created in Europe. When ATypI was founded in 1957, the type world was a smaller, more hierarchical place; the annual gatherings were known as congresses, and most of the attendees (“delegates”) were sent by the companies they worked for. Everyone knew everyone else. The change was gradual, and it continues to this day, but the turning point was probably Type90, a more ambitious event held in Oxford in 1990. Type90 was the first ATypI conference to reach out to the burgeoning culture of desktop publishing—the revolution that put typesetting in the hands of “end users.” The type world has been in a constant state of change ever since.
That’s precisely what makes an organization like ATypI useful: to provide a sense of continuity in a rapidly changing field, and to preserve the collective memory of how we got to where we are now. If it were only a repository of old knowledge, ATypI would just be a museum; but as an organization it looks outward and forward as well as inward and back. For many years now, ATypI conferences have featured a mix of typographical history (such as one of James Mosley’s witty lectures on the fine points of Didot’s typefaces, or on how, to the English eye of 200 years ago, sans-serif lettering looked “antique” and “classical”), contemporary visual design (such as Edward Tufte on information design or David Carson on his photographic adventures), and cutting-edge technology (from the latest font formats and layout programs to John Maeda on programming for designers).
Talkin’ ‘Bout Communication
This year’s keynote speaker will be Robert Bringhurst, poet, typographer, and author of the seminal “The Elements of Typographic Style.” As he has demonstrated in many other public venues, Bringhurst is adept at bringing together erudition, common sense, and the whole sweep of human art and knowledge. When speaking, he can swing from a quiet murmur to oratorical declamation as the subject warrants. I have no idea what he will say, but I have no doubt that it will be talked about long after.
The theme of the Vancouver conference is “Between Text and Reader“—which, of course, describes everything that happens in the process of publishing, or of presenting the written word in any form. Confirmed speakers include Roger Black (designer and re-designer of more newspapers and magazines than you can shake a stick at), Erik Spiekermann (indefatigable spokesman for good typographic communication: “You cannot not communicate”), Gerard Unger (whose fonts underlie the identity and usefulness of so many publications), and Doyald Young (lettering artist and logo designer, and author of “Logotypes and Letterforms“).
A few of the practitioners whose lives and work will be the subjects of talks are Rudolf Koch (German punchcutter and woodcarver who influenced so many European type designers of the 20th century), W.A. Dwiggins and D.W. Griffith (the type designer and the filmmaker), Geoffroy Tory and Simon de Colines (giants of type in 16th-century France, which set the standards that we still follow in the letters that we read), and Beatrice Warde (spokeswoman for Monotype who brought typographic education, and what we would now call evangelism, to the graphic-design public).
There will be several items on Arabic and Hebrew type, continuing ATypI’s longstanding commitment to multilingual, multicultural typography. Not surprisingly, given Vancouver’s large Chinese population and Pacific Rim orientation, there will be discussion of Chinese and other East Asian type and typography. There is a deliberate focus on typography in design—how type gets used, not just how it gets created. One quarter of the speakers at the conference this year will be Canadian, and the typographic heritage of Canada itself (a sprawling nation that was consciously tied together in the 1970s by a bilingual program of graphic design for its federal government) will also be a subject.
The What & the Where
Vancouver is Canada’s major West Coast port, a city known for its cosmopolitan charm and its spectacular setting between the mountains and the sea. The conference is being held in partnership with the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, a leading Canadian art school. During the days when multiple tracks of programming will run simultaneously, they will be held at the Emily Carr Institute; the big kick-off events will be at the main conference hotel, the Westin Bayshore Resort & Marina; both are in central Vancouver, in the heart of the city.
ATypI conferences usually have extra, optional events that happen in conjunction with them, and this year is no exception. The Emily Carr Institute is hosting a two-day, hands-on letterpress workshop (with a limited enrollment). Before the conference proper, Microsoft and Adobe are holding a technical workshop on OpenType (and Adobe has special presentations scheduled during the conference for new typographic developments in its software). The traditional Gala Dinner will be held in a waterfront restaurant.
Beginning this year, you will be able to register for the conference directly online; but as of this writing, the mechanism isn’t quite up yet on the ATypI website. (It will be shortly—maybe by the time you read this.) The deadline for early-bird rates for registration is almost upon us, but readers of this column can get the early rates by e-mailing se*********@***pi.org or by faxing (201) 861-3365 and reserving a place. (There is another cut-off—August 4—for an intermediate discount; after that date, you pay the same price you would pay at the door. Prices are lower for ATypI members than for non-members, so if you’re not a member, there’s an advantage to joining at the same time you register for the conference. A student discount is also available.)
ATypI is the primary meeting place of the typographic community. Despite the proliferation of other conferences and gatherings, this is still the best venue to meet and hear the foremost experts in type and typography. The world of type today is large, amorphous, and spread out; ATypI is at its heart.
This article was last modified on February 24, 2022
This article was first published on June 16, 2003
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