This workshop, based around the printing press collection in Typography, attracted postgraduate students, academic staff, museum and library professionals, and members of the public interested in the materiality of text, books and ephemeral documents.
Participants used the presses under craft supervision, and had a go at casting metal type.
They printed a page from the Gutenberg bible on a reconstructed one-pull wooden press that Gutenberg would have used, as well as 19th century woodblocks on another.
Alan May demonstrated printing of a Fust and Schoeffer 2-colour initial.
The workshop culminated in a fascinating talk by Dr Elizabeth Savage (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Material Texts & Research Fellow, History of Art,Cambridge University) ‘Deciphering the First Colour-Printed Images in England: The Book of St Albans, 1486’
The use of typography and illustration in reading books for children has changed during the last hundred years. There has been a gradual shift from graphic conventions determined by printing and typesetting practice for adult readers to those more appropriate for beginning and emerging readers. Illustrations have become more important and many reading schemes used known artists to create the much-loved characters who featured in the narrative.
Granshan is devoted to the development of typographic awareness in global scripts, through its annual competition and conference. This year Reading hosted the fourthconference, after Yeravan, Bangkok, and Munich. Over three days, the conference touched on the business of type design, training, support for minority and endangered scripts, the development of resources for complex scripts, and severals aspects of design for global scripts.
A tight schedule combined a dense pace punctuated by generous break times, to allow for new connections. To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the MATD, the first day was devoted to globally prominent speakers who were also graduates of programme.
Lively discussions followed several presentations, and engaged gatherings continued long after each day’s talks had ended. Feedback for the event was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, creating combination of in-depth but accessible discourse in global typeface design:
. @granshanConf just wreaked havoc with my mental cataloging of type design territories + histories in best of ways. thank you! #Granshan
The conference included two special events. The first celebrated the Murty Classical Library of India series by Harvard University Press, with a salutation by Tim Jones, and presentations by Fiona Ross, Rathna Ramanathan, and John Hudson. The second was a very special calligraphy duet with Timothy Donaldson representing Europe and Kang Byung-in representing Korea, in an impressively packed studio in Typography.
The conference ended with an after-party organised by the current MATD students. More than twenty countries were represented by speakers, and many more by attendees, underlining the strength and extent of the current network of typeface design.An exceptional AV team produced a liveblog of the conference, and had uploaded most talks before even the end of the conference on the Granshan YouTube Channel.
Chris Washington-Sare and students working on the brand proposition for There4Reading.
Alumnus Chris Washington-Sare (1985-89), from Pentatonic Marketing, joined us this week to deliver an all-day workshop on ‘How to help charities develop their marketing proposition’ for Part 3 students, as part of their current practical project, ‘Not-for-profit branding and design thinking’.
Learning through a series of short presentations, group work and practical exercises, students were able to develop a marketing strategy for real charity clients ‘More than Food’ (a Trussell Trust food bank initiative), Team Berkshire (a initiative of Get Berkshire Active), There4Reading (Youth Volunteering in Reading) and Kileva (Helping communities in Kenya).
Students gained marketing insights on brand values, the importance of a vision and mission, how to understand and present the functional and emotional benefits of an organisation, how to identify the points of differentiation, and the brand personality. The day ended with a session on social identity and the use of semiotics in branding.
Our students loved it:
“I found the branding workshop very informative and worthwhile. It was useful to look at the project from a marketing perspective rather than as a designer. This gave me and my team a clearer understanding of our competitors, target audience and our charities vision.”
“The day was structured well, as we went through the process right from the beginning to the end. This gave chronology and a greater clarity to how the brand develops from initial research to a vision/mission/values which begin to hint at the imagery of the brand.”
Typography has a special relationship with many of our alumni. We very much value their contributions to ensure that our current students can see where their experience at Reading might lead.
Student competitor analysis for ‘More than Food’ looking at Points-of-Parity and Points-of-Difference.
The exhibition ‘Time(less) signs: Otto Neurath and reflections in Austrian Contemporary Art’ runs from 30 September 2014 to 9 January 2015, at the Austrian Cultural Forum London. It features a selection by curator Maria C. Holter from the ‘Zeit(lose) Zeichen’ exhibition first staged at Vienna’s Künstlerhaus in 2012, supplemented by original material from the Department’s Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection (see image above). As part of the public programme accompanying the exhibition, co-curator Christopher Burke will give a talk on Isotype at the Austrian Cultural Forum on Tuesday 14 October 2014.
Last week saw the annual, simultaneously programmed, Art Book Fairs at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Contributors from the Typography Department’s Art Information symposium, first staged in April at London’s ICA, presented again in New York and organiser Ruth Blacksell was invited to talk at NYCUs Artists Institute space in Manhattan. John Morgan, who will follow on at the Artists Institute this Autumn, presented live at the London Fair with his sell-out Whitechapel event ‘I will not make any more boring books’. Amongst the plethora of conference presentations and events across locations, other highlights included AA Bronson in conversation (London), the ‘Unbinding the book’ projects (London), ‘Publishing as research and development’ featuring the web-based magazines Triple Canopy and East of Borneo (NY), Norway’s Kunstnerbøker focus (NY), David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister on Bruno Munari (NY) and Emily McVarish from California College of the Arts on the book designs of Phil Zimmerman (NY).
Last week saw the annual, simultaneously programmed, Art Book Fairs at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Contributors from the Typography Department’s Art Information symposium, first staged in April at London’s ICA, presented again in New York and organiser Ruth Blacksell was invited to talk at NYCUs Artists Institute space in Manhattan. John Morgan, who will follow on at the Artists Institute this Autumn, presented live at the London Fair with his sell-out Whitechapel event ‘I will not make any more boring books’. Amongst the plethora of conference presentations and events across locations, other highlights included AA Bronson in conversation (London), the ‘Unbinding the book’ projects (London), ‘Publishing as research and development’ featuring the web-based magazines Triple Canopy and East of Borneo (NY), Norway’s Kunstnerbøker focus (NY), David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister on Bruno Munari (NY) and Emily McVarish from California College of the Arts on the book designs of Phil Zimmerman (NY).
As students were settling into their Halls for Welcome Week and the start of the new academic year, Sunday marked the return of several members of the Typography family from the annual ATypI conference, a highlight in the calendar of international type professionals. Held in Barcelona’s impressive new Museu del Diseny by MBM Arquitectes the conference was especially significant for Typography: to celebrate the award of the Sir Mischa Black Medal to Michael Twyman, the Association invited him to deliver the Keynote lecture on the topic of “Typography as a university study”. (The image above, of visuals marked up by Tschichold for a facsimile edition of Vespasiano’s 1572 writing manual, is from Michael’s collections – and seen by postgraduates who join his seminars.)
Forty years after the foundation of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication (and a few more since the inception of the original course, in the late 1960s), Michael’s integration of history, theory and practice continues to define typographic education. These ideas have proven not only resilient, but prescient: graphic communication education worldwide is moving towards these ideas, holding Reading as a model for both new courses and institutions realigning their design studies.
(Above: Fiona Ross and Michael Twyman in Barcelona. Photos by Elena Veguillas)
Borna Izadpanah and Behdad Esfahbod reviewing the Urdu section of the exhibition.
ATypI president (and Reading alumnus) José Scaglione’s announcement that ATypI 2015 will take place in São Paulo, the first South American location for the Association, which will bring the conference closer to the substantial community of Brazilian alumni.
Kicking off a busy week for Typography staff, Gerry Leonidas spoke to a full hall at Smashing Conference in Freiburg. The new talk focused on typefaces from a web designer’s perspective, and included key notions for evaluating typefaces. Web design professionals are increasingly interested in typography and typeface design, where the Department’s expertise has many contributions to make. By way of a reminder, Marko Dugonjić (amongst many other things, SmashingConf reporter on Twitter) noted:
The ninth Typosium, organised by Initiaal, took place at the Museum Plantin Moretus in Antwerp on 30 August, with the theme Crossing Borders/Genze(n)loos. Our own Jo De Baerdemaeker, Fiona Ross and Gerard Unger were amongst the presenters. Gerard spoke about his Alverata project, a contemporary typeface drawing on romanesque sources and employing a wide range of historically-inspired alternate shapes. Fiona wand Jo conducted a Dialogue on type, looking at a range of projects for global scripts. Pictures on Jan Van der Linden’s photostream.
