FontPen is a collaborative font editor in which multiple designers can work on the same font, live in the browser. Inspired in part by the immediacy of CodePen (for web development) and the real-time collaboration of Google Docs, its first goal is to make collaborative type design much easier in classrooms and workshops, where installing… Continue reading FontPen: let’s create variable fonts together in the browser
Parametric fonts come with a vast number of variable axes — far too many for sliders to remain a sensible primary UI. TypeRoof, a free/libre open-source toolkit running entirely in the browser, tackles this head-on: it explores new ways to navigate, organize, and control high-dimensional design spaces, from proofing and testing to typesetting, layout, and… Continue reading TypeRoof: A Hands-on Demo of Tools for Variable and Parametric Fonts
This demo marks the global launch of the Wikitype Kickstarter campaign—an open, multilingual, collaborative platform dedicated to classifying typefaces. Wikitype seeks to create a dynamic online educational platform where designers, researchers, and educators can contribute to, refine, and expand a shared typographic taxonomy that reflects the diversity of global scripts. The session will introduce the… Continue reading Wikitype
This interactive demo-lecture explores how the complex behavior of Arabic calligraphic shapes contributes to different levels of visual complexity in typography, depending on their contextual position. This complexity emerges from the script’s rich range of design possibilities, including contextual shape variations, stacking order and cascading, compressed constructions, elongation through kashida, and swash variants. Grounded in… Continue reading Exploring Arabic-Script Legibility: An Interactive Journey Through Visual Complexity and Perceived Difficulty
Some of the most iconic design movements and their impact on typography. Since over a century there have been some landmark design movements which have shaped our sensibilities and visual aesthetic. These events shaped popular culture and still have a huge impact on letterforms. Chandan Mahimkar shares intimate details about their popularity and how they… Continue reading Breaking StereoType with Chandan Mahimkar