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ATypI 2006 Lisbon | Day Two

Livraria Bertrand, Rua Garrett, on our way to FBAUL © Tiffany Wardle
After grabbing a quick breakfast at the local pastelaria, we made our way to FBAUL. First thing on the list was collecting the conference goodie bag. The bag itself must’ve been the best one yet: a brown shoulder bag in sturdy canvas, with quality zippers and nicely printed. I did have the impression though that the content was a bit “light”.

ATypI 2006 Lisbon goodie bag © Yves Peters
The original plan was to attend Jean François Porchez’ introduction and welcome, and then head over to Track Two as I was curious about Henrique Nardi’s “Tipocracia - Building a typographic state”, about an educational project designed to stimulate and disseminate typographic culture throughout Brazil. For some reason Porchez didn’t show up and suddenly the lights dimmed and the first presentation started. As we were sitting smack dab in the middle of a row this prevented us from disappearing quietly.

François Chastanet | Pixaçao letterforms

At first I feared François Chastanet’s presentation would be too similar to Tony de Marco’s on the same subject at TypeCon2005 last year. Luckily my fear quickly proved to be unfounded. Contrarily to Tony de Marco’s very personal account – remember his poignant “I live here” –, Chastanet approached the subject matter more pragmatically.

© Tony de Marco
Being an architect, he focused on how the letter’s structure is perfectly integrated into the overall urban landscape. Then he quickly touched upon how the specific shapes of the characters were determined by the physical process of painting them. The most interesting part was his research on the origins of those peculiar local letterforms, which have a very homogenic style and bear no resemblance to graffiti in the USA nor Japan nor anywhere else in the world. After testing a couple of theories he eventually discovered that they were influenced by lettering on heavy metal and hardcore record sleeves, a mixture of blackletter and ancient Runic forms.

© Tony de Marco
Chastanet’s talk turned out to be very interesting and well presented – perfectly complementary to Tony de Marco’s. It had good visuals, and the build-up in the narrative was excellent. Ending with the revelation of the inspiration for the letterforms was a nice pay-off. One criticism though: positioning the white type on black background at the top edge of the text slides made it hard to read, and the smaller grey type was completely illegible. All in all a perfect start for the conference.

Dino dos Santos | Calligraphia Portugueza

Dino dos Santos’ “Calligraphia Portugueza” was a beautiful presentation in the literal sense of the world. Dino traced the history of calligraphy in Portugal by showing stunning examples by the writing masters who defined the Portuguese style.

Andrade, a new script typeface by Dino dos Santos

Page by Manoel de Andrade de Figueiredo (fragment)
We witnessed the emergence of the national style thanks to the “Nova Escola” of Manoel de Andrade de Figueiredo, who developed his own teaching method concentrating on the formal shapes of the lowercase. The design of the capitals – assembled using a number of basic strokes as building blocks – was more open to personal interpretation by the calligrapher.

Ventura, a new script typeface by Dino dos Santos

Page by Joaquim José Ventura da Silva (fragment)
The Portuguese style further evolved and flourished in the 19th century as Joaquim José Ventura da Silva formalised the letterforms even further, creating a grid-like system for both lowercase and uppercase.

The 20th century heralded a period of decline, when French and English influences superseded the national style. Only recently a revival started; the digitisation by Dino dos Santos of both the Andrade and the Ventura model being a testimony to the resurgence of typical Portuguese calligraphy.

This is the kind of presentation I really like, providing the historical background and then linking it to the contemporary digital versions. The numerous gorgeous calligraphy samples Dino showed us were just icing on the cake. I thought he was being unnecessarily modest about his beautiful digitisations of Andrade and Ventura, as he barely mentioned them and only used his typefaces to illustrate the characteristics of the two styles.

“Are you making fun of my coffee!?” © Dan Reynolds
During coffee break the first glitch in the organisation manifested itself. Jean François Porchez walked up to me and asked me if I would moderate a session. I said sure and asked when. To what Jean François replied: “Right now”. This meant I didn't have any time to prepare and as a result did a rather mediocre performance. Sorry'boutthat, but it really wasn't my fault.

Andreu Balius | What's up in the neighbourhood?

Andreu Balius’ presentation was an interesting and entertaining analysis of digital type in Spain in the 90s. Andreu started by giving us a brief political and socio-economic history, which went a long way to explaining the evolution of Spanish type design. It also made clear where the current crop of Spanish type designers come from. Basically by the early 90s there was no Spanish type design so to speak of, and no type design education either. Possibilities for learning the craft were virtually non-existent, so aspiring type designers had no other option but to copy other designers’ work. As their self-assurance grew, people like Andreu Balius, the Typ-Ø-Tones collective and Iñigo Jerez gradually moved away from the grunge principle of deconstruction and appropriation. They developed their own distinct voices and their focus started to shift to “classic type”. Andreu ended his presentation by showing several recent digital type designs, some of which won prestigious awards.

Pradell by Andreu Ballius
Excellence in Type design · Bukva:raz! / ATypI. 2001 & Type Directors Club. 2002

Quixotte Fine by Iñigo Jerez in Suite Magazine
Excellence in Type design · Type Directors Club. 2006
Again an interesting talk, combining historical background with contemporary type design. There was a slight language barrier problem, because Andreu read the presentation from a print, just like Dino had done right before him. Fortunately the quality of both content and visuals meant this wasn't too much problem.

Raquel Pelta | Spain, avant-garde and typography

Raquel Pelta’s talk on the other hand had considerable problems. Her presentation about the Spanish avant-garde and typography in the early 20th century consisted of her sitting behind the desk and simply reading her paper. She didn't master English very well and spoke with a very strong accent, which made it nigh impossible to understand her. Because the visuals were scarce and half her slides were simply excerpts from the paper she was reading aloud, her presentation dissolved into a monotonous, unconvincing affair. I sincerely think that in cases like this people should be allowed to give the lecture in their native language, with subtitles on the screen (it's being done in theatre and opera since quite a while). Either that or have someone else present it. Or even not have it, because this truly was a waste of time.

:: The ATypI 2006 Lisbon Reports ::

Day 1 | opening night
Day 2 | morning session | afternoon session
Day 3 | morning session | afternoon session
Day 4 | closing day

30.09.2006 - 16.54.44

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Just a note about morning moderation. Wasn't this the morning that John Berry stood up and introduced himself as Jean François Porchez? I'm pretty sure it was, and John did take over the morning session as moderator.

04.11.2006 - 06.36.06

Posted by Miss Tiffany

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