TYPO Berlin 2009 (Day 3)

The day started with a seminar that answered a question I had been posing since beginning web development, “Why can’t we use custom typefaces on the web?” It didn’t seem like it was technically difficult to achieve. To my surprise the issue has been already solved by W3C. They have created a @fontface tag in CSS to allow users to download a font into their cache.

Roger Black a technologist designer was talking about this and said that it’s the foundries that wouldn’t license fonts to be used on web. It would allow users to pirate fonts if they knew how to access their cache. Roger argued that people who pirate fonts will be doing so from torrents and proposed that we open the web up to some typographic diversity.

The second speaker, Ebon Heath, finally brought some lustful desires to some damn sexy type. He was a Brooklyn designer and began creating typographic mobiles with quotes, excerpts or feelings. These mobiles were pieces of art that experimented and played with grids in the third dimension of space.

My interest and heart beat really began to rise when a designer from Paris, Philippe Apeloig, rose to the stage. He talked of his systematic exploration of typography in his design. Every word he spoke seemed to be eloquently pondered before delivered. He took simple communication design to a higher universe by showing his process of thought. By the midpoint of his presentation I was in awe and knew this was the amount of thought and precision I needed to go into my work. After it was done I wanted more and started the pursuit for his mentorship.

The conference was ended with Sol Sender presenting the creation of Barak Obama’s campaign brand. He did a good job showing the process from its beginnings but didn’t push any boundries, which could have been restricted by the client. Overall it was an excellent end to the conference and made up for the lackluster start. I learned more of myself as a designer and the work I will strieve to create rather than insight from the speakers. When attending a conference in a foreign country on your own you have to put yourself out there to get the most out of it. It was a leap into this outstanding world of design that I intend to explore and push myself to impact society for the better.