The Department is pleased to be hosting the New Baxter Society’s annual general meeting on Saturday 29 October. This members-only event will commence at 1.30pm with an opportunity to look at the display of Baxter material, followed by talks by Professor Michael Twyman and Martin Andrews. The meeting itself follows at 4pm.
¶ The Baxter process for colour printing by letterpress, patented by George Baxter in 1835, involved an initial metal keyplate and up to 20 wood or metal blocks to apply each individual colour.
Gerry Leonidas will be joining Phil Baines, Jonathan Barnbrook, Zoë Bather, Tom Farrand, Amelia Gregory, Matt Jones, Alan Kitching, Vaughan Oliver, Paul Rennie, Lucienne Roberts, Jack Schulze, Steve Watson, Matt Webb, Rebecca Wright, and Derek Yates on the platform at the two-day St Bride conference, 10–11 November 2011. Book here.
After a full two days of judging the Letter 2 competition, three of the judges spent the morning at the University of Buenos-Aires, the most prestigious institution in the country. We attended a presentation by recent graduates of the typeface design postgraduate course (which runs twice a week over eighteen months) and had the opportunity to address the students and staff of the course. We saw some excellent work – truly impressive, especially considering that this was the first cohort to graduate.
The UBA is a massive institution, operating very differently from UK universities: tuition is free, and admissions are in practice controlled by the limits to class sizes imposed at the level of the module (which is a larger unit that the UK module – something closer to a semester’s work). Professors employ a system of paid and voluntary assistants to manage the large group sizes, and most teachers are part-time. As during a previous visit to Argentina, both students and staff made us feel extremely appreciated for our contribution.
Fiona Ross and Gerry Leonidas are busy in Buenos Aires right now judging the entries in letter.2, ATypI’s typeface design competition. And the chair of the jury is Reading alumnus José Scaglione of Type Together. The letter.2 conference follows on Tuesday 4 October, and Fiona and Gerry will talk about their research-based approach to typeface design, and how archive material in the Non-Latin Type Collection at Reading informs contemporary design decisions. Alejandro Lo Celso of PampaType, another Reading alumnus, will talk on type and cultural identity.
James Mosley spoke at the ESAD/Bibliothèques d’Amiens Métropolestudy day on Claude Garamont at Amiens last week, discussing the punch-cutter’s reputation, the types with which he is particularly associated (especially the Caractères de l’Université held by the Imprimerie Nationale), and the various ‘Garamonds’ created at the beginning of the twentieth century.
There might be at least ten good reasons to study in Typography, but there’s a eleventh one that we can make no claim to be responsible for. Most universities, if you’re lucky, will have their buildings in a single campus, with some green land in between. Reading is the other way round: the campus is very much a stunning park with a bunch of buildings sprinkled on. And I’m not the only one thinking this: a couple of weeks ago it was announced that the campus was awarded a prestigious Green Flag. According to the press release, Reading is only the second university to receive the award.
The most prominent effect of the campus on the the people working there is its complete domination of the horizon: look out of any window, and instead of the rectangular grey or maroon of buildings you expect to see in cities, you will see the tops of mature oaks and cedars all around you. There is something deeply satisfying in seeing human activity sandwiched between a sea of green and open sky, the rectangular patterns of construction and order being guests in an ancient curtain of leaves. After a few hours staring at a screen half a metre away, the irregularity of foliage over open expanses is rejuvenating.
A couple of days ago I realised some of the students had not been to The Wilderness, nor the Harris Garden (or Dinton Pastures, or the cycling route to Mapledurham, or The Lookout…). Two minutes’ walk from the Department, The Wilderness is a managed natural forest on campus, and a designated Wildlife Heritage Site. This means that conservation work is carried out discreetly, and the forest looks and feels as if nature is taking its course undisturbed. A bit further on, the Harris Garden is an oasis of plants whose names I never remember, but whose colours and shapes stay in my memory. (It is also a good picnic ground.)
Picnic in the Harris Garden
Two are my favourite parts of the campus. The open green next to the Library reminds me of checking out a bunch of books when I first arrived in Reading, and sitting under the trees reading (thinking “five down, five million to go”). On the same patch, many years later, I was running behind my kids shouting “you did it! I’m not holding you!” (Like many children, they both learned how to ride a bike in the open expanses on campus, and still spend many hours there for sports.) My second favourite place is the south-eastern bank of the lake, beyond Wessex Hall: it is the best spot for a picnic I can imagine (and one that I am sure would satisfy Will Self’s dad). Having grown up and worked for years in a concrete jungle before moving here, it is still something out of a fantasy that these views are a few hundred steps away from my office.
Picnic by Whiteknights Lake
P.s. My pictures are phone snapshots: they capture moments that jumpstart memories, but not the richness of the view. But this and this do. This beautiful land around us, it’s a privilege.
