It’s been a very busy and exciting time here at the Manor and luckily I had some time to go along to Typo London last week. I have just managed to find a few hours today to write a quick overview of my time at the conference.
Typo Talks has been running for about 16 years in Berlin and this year was the first of hopefully many set in London. There were a broad range of topics covered over the three days from animation, art, signage, digital, print and of course typography. They were all loosely based on the theme of ‘Places’ but some more loosely than others. I can honestly say, there wasn’t a talk I didn’t enjoy and I even got to try a bit of calligraphy although I think I need a bit practice. I do plan to do a few detailed posts around some of areas covered, but for now here is just a few of my favourites from Typo.
Nat Hunter from Airside, ran through of a few of their latest projects but with particular focus on storytelling. I really liked the work they did for the Virgin Airlines inflight entertainment system, showing that a better design solution aids in a better experience, which then makes people happier, and then leads to other outcomes (such as drinking less from the free bar on Virgin flights, which then saves money).
“Pain is temporary. Suck is forever”. This is what Michael B Johnson from Pixar told us on Friday morning. I have always loved the way Pixar approaches a project and the attention to detail they put in. He gave an overview of a few stages of the Pixar process such as storyboarding and animation lighting, and finished on talking about the software they produce within Pixar just to ease the process and removing tension. After all, Pixar produce a playful product.
The talk that really stood out for me was from Karin von Ompteda. She did a very interesting experiment on typography, first conducting a survey to find the top 100 most popular typefaces and then analysed the individual letters with each other to find the areas of similar density. I won’t go into detail but I thought the images of each typeface placed onto of each other were really cool. I’d have then as a print on my wall.
An entertaining talk from Chip Kidd was a great way to end the conference. Briefly going over some book covers he had worked on over the years, he then told us about his obsession with Batman and the opportunity he had been given to write a Batman comic. All good stuff.
Like I said, I plan to do a few more posts on what I learnt at Typo so stay tuned. For now I’ll leave you with a few statements from Joachim Sauter on how to stay creative that I liked:
Reinvent yourself (every 7 years or so). Have the courage to fail. Share your experiences. Inspire rather than motivate. Teach.
