Lockdown news

- Date
- April 2020
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started reaching around the world, we’ve worked hard to provide a way to decompress, a way to get some font education, and an avenue for inspiration. We have prepared games, articles, “Ask Me Anything” on Instagram, and there’s more to come.
Games & working remotely
As part of our efforts to make these days a bit easier we have created a series of type games — envisioned by game master Roxane Gataud and developed by the whole team. If you haven’t played yet, all games are accessible via our Instagram account. Just check the highlighted stories. You will test your knowledge on type anatomy — but not just Latin! — font classification, recognising scripts, and many more.
We also wanted to share the experience we’ve built as a team that has been working remotely, Elena Veguillas gave a personal account on working online with a team, and Pooja Saxena shared her views on how to manage online meetings without losing your soul. And sanity.
Keep checking our social media channels and our blog for more feel-better news and games. And remember: Stay safe, stay home.

Conference and lecture videos
Conference organisers had to make bold decisions this year and due to COVID-19, most of the 2020 type and design conferences are being cancelled or postponed, with just a few taking the risk of switching from in-place conferences to online editions. In the meantime we want to invite you to enjoy talks from the last few years, maybe from conferences we did not have the chance to attend, or even watch again those we really enjoyed.
We’ve put together a list of type and typography videos that are available for streaming, most of them free, which we started in Twitter and has since grown considerably.
Type and design conferences
- ANRT Nancy (Atelier National de Recherche Typographique), the videos are on the ESAD-Nancy school video channel.
- Ampersand conference, an event that was focused on web typography, has a channel including 13 videos from their 2013 and 2019 conferences.
- ATypI, the Association Typographique Internationale, a global forum that holds international conferences, includes lectures from Barcelona 2014 to Tokyo 2019, and the recent working seminars.
- Blanc Festival [in Spanish], graphic design festival that includes some type design lectures.
- Beyond Tellerrand, a series of events focused on technology and development since 2011, includes 224 videos in their Vimeo channel.
- BITS, a typographic and type design event in South East Asia, the Cadson Demak video channel includes the three last editions of BITS as wells as many other videos.
- Creative Mornings Berlin, a monthly free breakfast lecture series that includes some type designers’ talks.
- Designers Institute (New Zealand), type and design talks.
- DiaTipo, [Portuguese and English] a typographic event in Brazil since 2012, offers videos.
- Esadtype, [French and English] the French school organises typographic events: Sans Everything, Baskerville in France, Everyday Reading, and many more.
- Elisava Barcelona, [English, Spanish] includes all kinds of design and non-design talks, as well as some type designer talks.
- Gʁafematik, Grapholinguistics in the 21st century includes their 2018 edition.
- Granshan, a conference devoted to scripts and cultures beyond Latin, includes lectures from 2015, 2016, and 2017 editions.
- [Graphisme en France] Colloque « Design graphique, les formes de l’histoire » at the Centre national des arts plastiques, 2014, including talks from Gerard Unger, Rick Poynor, Fred Smeijers, and others.
- ICTVC, the International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication, organised in Greece and Cyprus every three years, has a video channel with two talks from 2019.
- IsType, the Istanbul typography conference, 52 videos from different years, also available at Youtube.
- Kerning Conference, an international conference on typography held annualy in Firenze, includes videos beginning from 2013.
- Letterform Lectures: talks held at the Letterform Archive.
- Robothon, a conference on type design and technology held every three years in The Hague, includes 58 videos from 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2018.
- Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) has been uploading TypeCon lectures since 2014.
- TypeCon, the US-based type conference includes their 2019 edition.
- Type@Cooper, at the Cooper Union, includes the Typographics conference and other individual lectures.
- Type Directors Club (Vimeo or Youtube) channel includes several collections: Type Drives Culture, TDC Salons,TDC Uncut series.
- TypeParis, the type design course has been uploading the guests’ talks since 2015.
- Typetersburg 2017, [Russian] see the full day one and day two.
- TypeTech MeetUp includes only the one talk that was possible to organise before the pandemic.
- TypoBerlin, rescued from the past, this video blog includes talks from 1999–2011.
- Typographics, the New York graphic and type conference, includes all editions, from 2016–2019.
- Typographische Gesellschaft München – tgm, includes a multitude of collections and conferences: Dynamic Day conference, QVED Editorial conf, WebfontDay, etc.
- Typomania, Moscow-based type festival has published the 2018 edition, and the 2020 edition will be organised online.
- Tÿpo St. Gallen, 2017 and 2019 editions.
- TypoTalks, includes TypoBerlin 2017 and 2018, and TypoLabs 2017 and 2018.
- Walker Art Center has a wider approach to art and design and includes several type designers talks.
Individual talks
- Three talks by Gerard Unger: Lettering and type design, Lecture at the 5th Biennial of Slovene Visual Communications, Ljubljana, October 2011; Conférence de Gérard Unger à l’institut Pierre Werner, April 2012; Jenson’s model of type and its development from the 1470s until today, at Leiden University, 2011.
- Matthew Carter & Roger Black: Type design and changing technology, UM Stamps School of Art & Design, 2012.
- The Art of Hermann Zapf.
- Elena Ramirez (Ashler Design), Tipografía para frontends, [Spanish] talks about typography on the web during Front Fest conference.
Educational videos
- History of the Latin alphabet by Lynne Yun, 6 videos of roughly 30 mins each.
Films
- Gary Hustwit’s films: Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, and others unreleased: He is offering one for free each week, check them here.
- Letterpress documentary, Making faces: Metal type in the 21st century, free until 4/24/2020.
- Letterpress documentary: Los últimos [in Spanish].
- Linotype: the film.
- PrintingFilms.com, a collection of vintage films that showcase the technologies and processes of printing, journalism, and typography, established by Doug Wilson in 2012.
- Typeface (2009) The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers.
- El hombre que diseñó España (2020), [Spanish] a film about José María Cruz Novillo.