I attended my first Typographics four years ago in 2019, and I had the opportunity once again to see the conference this past June. HMCT resumed its sponsorship for this year’s Typographics. Sponsorships and proceeds are used to help return full-tuition scholarships for Cooper Union students. In addition, the ninth Typographics featured two full days of talks and programming in person at the historic Great Hall. Twenty speakers were scheduled over the two days, and here are some highlights.

The first day of Typographics opened on June 16, and the speaker line-up was Jonathan Barnbrook, Lavinia Lascaris, J. Dakota Brown, Ximena Amaya, Craig Ward, Muk Monsalve, David Jon Walker, Suzy Chan, Inez Ayer, and Rob Stenson.

HMCT had a significant presence at Typographics with both Lavinia Lascaris, HMCT Exhibition and Graphic designer, and Ximena Amaya, HMCT Typography Fellow, both invited to speak about their work. Lascaris’ presentation began with a slide of a postcard of the cacti garden at The Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California, where she quoted the designer Dan Goods that the numerous cacti are an example of variations on a theme. As Lavinia explained, the practice of curating and designing exhibitions is a way to define an exhibition and “dress” it. Amaya’s talk asks the question, “What is a typographic emergency?” and through her own case studies and projects, she explained how she imagines through letterforms as tools for speculation.

J. Dakota Brown presented “Typography and Automation from the Linotype to A.I.,” which sought to trace the history of the graphic designer as a job and form of labor— something that Dakota Brown noted as missing from the critical literature and history. He posited that we could learn from the labor history of typesetters and developing technology to understand how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies will affect the graphic design profession.

Craig Ward revealed experiments in his creative process. For example, he swabbed the NYC subway trains with a corresponding precut sponge in the shape of the letter or number of that subway line. The resulting sample was then incubated on an agar plate and then photographed. Ward also launched a new type foundry, NFType, which uses generative scripts to create unique modular fonts, and blockchain to create a new ownership model for those fonts.

Other highlights from the first day of the conference include Jonathan Barnbrook’s talk “Designing Bowie,” and discussed his collaboration with David Bowie on the record cover designs for The Next Day (2013) and Bowie’s final release Blackstar (2016). David Jon Walker featured his typeface design based on the masthead of the Green Book, a classifieds-based travel guide for African-Americans in the United States, in his talk “A Typographic Evolution.” Muk Monsalve discussed the influence of her hometown Buenos Aires on her typeface designs in her presentation “Two to Tango.” Rob Stenson presented his work with sound, typography, and variable fonts in his “A Font is Percussion Instrument: Animating Letters with Sound. Animating Sound with Letters.”

The speaker line-up for the second day of the conference on June 17 included Eddie Opara, Gabriela Namie, Ben Grandgenett, Ying Chang, Faride Mereb, Beatriz Lozano, Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton, Pascal Zoghbi, L.A. Corrall, and Sagi Haviv.

I noticed a common theme of multiculturalism and personal identity among the speakers. Gabriela Namie discussed, through her redesign of template covers for YouTube Music, the challenge of trying to fit music within a template. Namie’s sensitivity to a music genre’s history and culture rendered her redesigns less generic and stereotypical and added more vibrant and appropriate visual language for genres such as Música popular brasileira. Namie also cited that being a third-generation Japanese Brazilian gave her a perspective on designing the APAHM or Asian Pacific American Heritage Month-themed playlists and graphics.

Another speaker, Ying Chang, also discussed how the principle of negative space between letters is not only significant in her practice of lettering but also applied it to the practice of her own life. Chang’s talk was philosophical and demonstrated the connection between her life and work, as well as how they affect each other.

L.A. Corrall concluded his talk “Typography and Storytelling” by stating what it meant to him to be “seen” by his mentor Cyrus Highsmith and Matthew Carter. As a young design student, Corrall said it was difficult to envision a future in the design field when there are hardly any versions of yourself.

In a presentation focused on Arabic type design, Pascal Zoghbi told the story of his research project on “Arabic Bold No.49,” a metal type that Zoghbi had unknowingly had in possession of nine cases but only recently identified by seeing a type specimen of Berthold Arabic Bold Probe Nr.451 at the Catholic Press at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Zoghbi’s presentation was notable in that once he dug further into archives and consulted with academics, he could identify the work as that of Arabic calligrapher and surrealist artist Salim al Habsche.

Faride Mereb also discussed hybridity in her presentation “Transformed by the Tropics: Migration and Visual Cues in Venezuelan Design.” Mereb mentioned herself growing up in a Lebanese and Venezuelan household and, more recently, migrating to New York and starting a design studio Letra Muerta. Mereb educated the audience on ‘What makes a design Venezuelan?’ She discussed two Venezuelan graphic designers, Karmele Leizaola and Víctor Viano.

Other notable talks from the day included Eddie Opara of Pentagram, who shared previews of typefaces designed for the rebrand of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, to be released in 2024. Ben Grandgenett discussed his typographic identities and art direction for The New York Times Magazine. Beatriz Lozano explained the three emerging technologies that have affected her work: creative coding, extended reality, and artificial intelligence. Lozano also addressed labor issues regarding these technologies by providing examples of projects that harness these technologies. Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton presented “A Historical Survey of Typography by Black People in America” with examples of various works from the late 1800s up to the present. Sagi Haviv of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv used case studies of “Type as Icon” and showed how language and type are used in trademarks for Hitco Entertainment, Warner Bros., and Wolf Entertainment.