Author: Test User

Does good design translate? A LUCID event

A one-day symposium for postgraduate students will be held in the Department on Wednesday 25 January 2012, 11.00am – 7.30pm

This will be the final LUCID networking event. The day will include:

  • a review session with Professor James Hartley, Honorary Research Professor, School of Psychology, University of Keele
  • a discussion led by participants from Brazilian universities on the challenges in information design in Brazil
  • show-and-tell session based on the collections and archives in Typography, led by Professor Michael Twyman
  • early evening talk by Dr Christopher Burke on the making of the films produced by the Isotype Institute in the 1940s, followed by the showing of the some of the films

LUCID is a network funded by AHRC and hosted at the University of Reading
This event is open to taught and research postgraduates and is free to attend. For more information contact lucid@reading,ac.uk

The material book: Reading’s ‘prestigious MA in Book Design’ in the news

Kathryn Hughes’ article for the Guardian highlights the continued interest in the book as a material object alongside the advent of Kindles, Sony readers and iPads and discusses some connections between traditional methods and new technologies as featured on the MA Book Design programme at Reading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/beautiful-book-covers

Researchers’ Night at Reading

The Department contributed speakers and events to the Univesity’s Researchers’ Night on the theme of Language, Text and Power.

Gerry Leonidas introduced visitors to the history of typography through an array of printed books and type specimens: he outlined how research in historical documents informs design decisions in contemporary environments. Using Greek as a case study, Gerry used original archival material to give examples of current design practice in areas as diverse as printed dictionaries, branded corporate material, and mobile device interfaces.

Paul Luna spoke at the Language, Text, and Power seminar on researching the past, designing the present. He looked at how analysing the layout of Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 can help formulate approaches to contemporary dictionaries, and about design decisions for a scholarly edition of the Book of Common Prayer. You can read the text of his presentation, with some of his illustrations, here.

Anke Ueberberg offered a hands-on experience for visitors, explaining the workings of Gutenberg’s press using a full size working replica, hand-made by Alan May, formerly a lecturer in the Department. Based on research recently published in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, Alan’s press supports the view that a Dürer drawing of an early printing press, long thought erroneous, may in fact be an accurate portrayal.

Letters to Iceland

World scripts exhibition at ATypI 2011

From a report about the ATypI Reykjavík conference

‘This year’s conference programme included talks on – at the very least – Arabic, Devanagari, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Meeti Mayek, Mongolian, and Tamil scripts. Aside from the annual TDC and TDC² exhibitions that have long been part of the ATypI conferences, this year saw the first World Scripts Exhibition from the collections of the Typography and Graphic Communication department of the University of Reading. Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie curated this fascinating glimpse into the resources available to students and researchers at Reading; many of the items included traveled outside of the archives for the first time in order to be part of this exhibition.’

Designing the weather


‘Research room’ picnic, University of Reading, 1906

On 30 September the Department will host an interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop of designers, meteorologists and psychologists who will work together to re-think the design of weather forecasts. ‘Watching the weather’ is often more than a passing concern: it can be important when we’re planning events, choosing when to make a journey, setting our home heating etc. And it’s likely to become more important as the probability of of extreme weather conditions increases with climate change. In the workshop we’ll consider the best ways to present the increasingly complex information that meteorologists can generate to the general public.

The day is part of the programme of events within the Department’s AHRC-funded research network, LUCID.

Celebrate the Festival of Britain

A study day to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary

Do come and join us for a day of celebration and scholarship on Tuesday 20 September 2011. The programme for the day will consist of a variety of short talks by specialists on a rich diversity of topics relating to the Festival.

We’ll be focusing on the Festival’s presentation and graphic design, including a talk by Naomi Games on her father’s design for the symbol. Other topics will include the signage, architecture, reminiscences of festival-goers, and the social context of the time.

An evocative exhibition will be mounted in the department to accompany the talks, including film footage, ephemera, souvenirs, publications and hitherto unpublished photographs.

The study day will start with a welcome at 10.30am and will finish by 5pm.

£60 (includes a buffet lunch – with some festival treats!)   Students £30

Contact Diane Bilbey for more information.

MA student Joana da Silva at the Encontro Nacional de Tipografia

Joana da Silva, one of our MA Typeface Design students, will be a speaker at the  Encontro Nacional de Tipografia conference, hosted by the Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal, on 30 September. I can’t read Portuguese, but I can just about decipher the “Áreas de interesse”, and it made me think “I wish I could be there”. Good names are already on the speakers’ and organisers’ lists.

My first visit to Portugal (for ATypI 2006, in Lisbon) was an eye opener: there was strong community of designers and teachers in typography and typeface design, but they were not making their presence felt much outside the country. In the last five years this has started to change at an increasing pace. Events like the Encontro help develop a particularly regional take on typography.

The Encontro organisers are keeping the event modest in length, which has to be applauded. As larger typographic gatherings grow in numbers (ATypI, Typecon, TypoBerlin, the new TypoLondon, and others I forget) it is the smaller events, of one or two days at most, with modest registration fees, that become more rewarding to attend. Although the big typo-events are always appealing, it is the smaller events that fit better in a full typographic calendar. (I’m thinking of the many one-day events and one annual two-day conference at St Bride Library, the relatively new TypeTalks, the IDC in Katowice, amongst others.) Who knows? Maybe in a few years the big-ticket events will only be every two or three years, like the bi-annual CIT Valencia and Tipos Latinos, and the tri-annual ICTVC. (Or every ten, like the wonderfully far-sighted ATypI Letter2 event!)

But, hidden in the competition of the growing number of events for our time (and wallet) are two especially good developments: that most of the new events are based in countries that do not have a long tradition of typographic gatherings; and that there are many young speakers who are designers, teachers, and researchers. As typography and typeface design are getting established in ever more schools and universities, we can look forward to more events like the Encontro.

Encontro Nacional de Tipografia

 

Jo De Baerdemaeker on TEDx Ulaanbaatar

Jo De Baerdemaeker has just been confirmed as a speaker on the upcoming TEDx Ulaanbaatar on 20 August.

Jo will speak about Mongolian Type, his postdoctoral research project on ‘Mongolian script: from metal type to digital font’. The project is based in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, and is supported by an Early Career Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust, as well as the University of Reading. Ms Unurmaa Janchiv is main coordinator on the Mongolian side.

Mongolian writing by Sukhbaatar (2010)

The research aims to provide a comprehensive historical account of the evolution of the printed Mongolian character, and to offer practice-oriented guidance in designing and developing new digital fonts for the traditional Mongolian script. It adopts the methodology developed and tested in De Baerdemaeker’s work on Tibetan typeforms, which uses an exhaustive historical survey to support critical contemporary analysis.

The prime objectives are to develop a framework for describing the visual and technical quality of Mongolian typefaces; to determine the extent of printing houses using Mongolian typefaces and the connection with the individual punchcutters/type designers or typefoundries & companies of printing material and typesetting equipment creating and/or supplying these founts; to explore how Mongolian typefaces were developed and typeset; and to set up practical guidelines for creating contemporary digital fonts for the traditional Mongolian script.

The project website will present findings and practical guidance supported by theoretical analysis, in conjunction with the database of Mongolian typefaces, publicly available to scholars of Mongolian language and culture, to historians of print, to professional (typeface) designers, software developers, librarians, linguists, academics, and to all those who have an interest in non-Latin typography and typeface design.