Home / ATypI Montréal 2017
Date Friday, September 15th 2017

The 1983 ATypI Working Seminar at Stanford

Ferdinand Ulrich

In 1983, ATypI hosted their fifth “working seminar” at Stanford University. It was a conference format dedicated to research, education, and discourse on the latest technological developments in typography and type design in academic environments. The speakers list reflects the span of generations, visible in sessions ranging from stone carving and punchcutting to the “digital type foundry”, a term first used at that event. Entitled “The Computer and the Hand of Type Design,” the conference was concerned with the translation of analogue aesthetics into digital media. In the opening keynote, the year 1983 was described as “the second turning point” of the type industry, raising questions about new considerations given the change of technology. A handful of type design systems were presented at the conference: among them the well-known Metafont by Donald Knuth and Ikarus by Peter Karow, as well as the mostly unknown ELF by David Kindersley and Neil Wiseman.

This talk aims to review the 1983 ATypI seminar and seeks to raise the issues and controversies discussed in heated debates.

Speaker

Ferdinand Ulrich

Ferdinand Ulrich is a typographer, researcher and editor. At p98a berlin he explores with Erik Spiekermann how letterpress can be redefined in the twenty-first century. He also researches and writes articles about type history, published in the US, in the UK and in Germany. Ferdinand taught typography in Halle and Potsdam and has given lectures at the MIT Media Lab and the Cooper Union. In 2016 he gave the closing talk at TYPO Berlin, honoring the lifetime achievement of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. Ferdinand studied in Berlin and Pittsburgh and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Reading.