OK, so the photos are great, thanks. But what about some textual-like reviews? :-)
I’m especially hoping you guys can give summaries/highlights of the following
three presentations in particular: James Montalbano, Kent Lew, Peter Bilak.

hhp

I’m working on one… you’ll see it next week!

Mike Parker tells the story:

Once a young salesman was peddling new-fangled
dictation machines that worked by recording speech
for playback later. He managed to gain entrance to the
Mergenthaler offices on Ryerson Street in Brooklyn and
was shown to C.H. Griffith’s office. The young man
recorded a brief conversation with Mr. Griffith. He then
played it back to CHG. Upon hearing the voice issue
from the machine, Griffith declared gruffly, “I never
said that!”

>too busy looking for photos of Kent Lew on the dancefloor.

I never did that.

— K.

John Bulter said:
“I walked out with enough actual printed specimens (including Carter’s new Hamilton wood type)”.

Please tell us poor unfortunates more about that!

Well, I’m slowly getting back to reality.

TypeCon was great and it was wonderful to meet so
many of you. I think, for the most part, I was able to
express to you just how much I admire some of you
and what wonderful inspirations you are. If I didn’t
get the chance this year, I’m
hoping for the next. I’m planning to be there and
I hope you will be as well.

The highlights were many and the biggest was of course
being in the same room as all of you.

Other great points, for me, were;

1) Peter Bilak’s presentation
2) Stuart’s LazyDrinker
3) Some great spacing and kerning files
from Bitstream
4) Knowing I can only do better on next
years type quiz. ( I actually won the most
typographically challenged prize. Thanks Keith and Tiffany,
for humoring me and grading my test. )

There are way to many good things to talk about.

I should try to post later when I am more together.
It is actually a little hard to get my head around it all.

The biggest surprise; Kent on the dance floor.

Kent, you can really tear a rug up! Nice.

-Sean

>Too bad they have video of the lot of us dancing.

I’ll propose to the SoTA board that video recording be prohibited at TypeCon 04. I missed the party, but Yuri showed me some clips when he visited us last Monday. Fortunately his footage is low-res and grainy.

> Carter’s new Hamilton wood type

Yeah, what’s that about?

> Some great spacing and kerning files from Bitstream

Where to get access to these?

—

And video? Definitely evil.

hhp

Glad to meet and talk to many of you. Because of TypeCon, I have about four new projects (both design and research) I want to pursue. I rarely ever write anything down, but I kept digging out my pink pad to jot down what was running through my head. For a young guy like me, this was a great experience. It was very inspiring. Thanks, everyone.

John, Hrant —

Matthew was commissioned recently to create a new
design to be cut in wood type by the Hamilton Wood
Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, WI. (Carter says
the invitation caused him to realize that wood was, in
fact, a technology that he had never created type for
before.) His design is an all-caps, chunky, latin-serif
design and is called Carter Latin. One of the more
notable aspects of the design is that it has two variants
— a positive and a negative — which can be combined
for interesting figure-ground interrelationships. The
typeface is done, but the font is still being manufactured,
I think. Matthew confessed that last weekend was the
first time he’s actually seen it. It will be available in
wood, one size only for now, I believe — 12-line (about
2 inches).

There’s nothing about this project on the Hamilton website yet.

Matthew has the rights to produce a digital font, but says
he’s not inclined to do it any time soon, so that the
Hamilton can have a measure of exclusivity for a while.

— K.

hello guys

I make a font inspired on the grave vernacular signage who is very similar to Carter. Just a curious coincidence, i make it for a university proyect in 2002, please take a look. I called it “Finaita”:

That’s not merely a coincidence, Miguel!

In his speech, Matthew mentioned New England gravestones as inspiration — in particular for the ampersand in his design.

>Speaking of Hamilton, did anyone notice that Chank sells a digital version of the Offset face that was presented?

Yes. Hamilton Offset was presented in the Goldstein Gallery at the University of Minnesota earlier this year. I had the pleasure of admiring the type at that time and after a quick google search discovered that the font was already available digitally. Unfortunately I missed 98% of Carter’s presentation, but it’s exciting that the Hamilton Woodtype Museum is undertaking the creation of new typefaces in wood.

This is interesing.

One of my teachers ask me if this is gonna be a Chilean vernacular unique specimen or something? Of course not.

In this days, one of the things now in Southamerica i guess, is the discuss about identity in graphic design, and the production of a local typeface scene.

In some of the details about the serifs and proportions in my rescue are “vernaculal” i guess, related to the imperfection maybe…thats pretty latino.

M.

The process for creating the Hamilton Offset typeface was interesting. It reminded me of the deconstructed type in the 90s, but it’s far from it. I think it’s great that they are still interested in making new woodtype. Matthew Carter’s design is great. And as expected, he did something that’s just a little bit different! Hey, let’s organize a trip to Two Rivers!

<formal>
Speaking about video: Artist has a copy. Nobody else does. If anybody want to see what was happening — contact him direcly. All my copies of the video are deleted :-)
</formal>

That was a great event! I thought it is impossible to do anything better than last year TypeCon, but Tamye and her team did it!

/Preparing for Vancouver/

Yuri

...

My photos are up!
http://members.shaw.ca/typecon

Sorry, Joe, my mistake. It should be:

http://members.shaw.ca/tamkeith/typecon

Oops :-P

i think keith is pulling our leg ;)

Close, but not quite. I figured it out:

http://members.shaw.ca/tamkeith/TypeCon/

HAHA! I am some of your pictures. The forces of evil will prevail!!!

Wow, Mark, how did you figure out?!

Delve — You know how sometimes you only know sites by the url and not the people that create or run them? Well … I now understand one of the remarks that you made to me.

It takes time, Hranter. I plan to write a report but I’ve been
too busy looking for photos of Kent Lew on the dancefloor.

Great story. Too bad they have video of the lot of us dancing. :^/

Images of Carter Latin: 1 | 2 | 3

Speaking of Hamilton, did anyone notice that Chank sells a digital version of the Offset face that was presented?

The funniest thing at TypeCon:
When Si introduced himself as moderator of the Blog and
Communities panel and said, “I’m Si Daniels and I work for
Microsoft. Sorry about that.”

The most frustrating moment:
Scoring a 6 on that *lousy type quiz (okay 8, if I give myself
2 points for getting my name right). I had to second
Stephen’s assertion that it needed some questions from
this half of the last century. (*No offense Kent, it’s just
that you have to come down to the rest of our levels to
speak to us. Haha. I guess next year I should do some
homework.)

The warmest fuzzy:
Realizing that the people you’ve looked up to forever are
genuinely warm, friendly people. (Awww.)

The truest prediction:
Jill Bell lamented that the Mac OS Finder should be able to
recognize and activate fonts by double clicking them. The
guy from Apple granted her wish 4 hours later when he
gave a demo of Apple’s Mac OS X update, Panther (Mac OS
X 2.6).

The strangest moment:
Sitting at lunch with Delve Withrington, hoping he doesn’t
notice me staring, thinking Is he really an immortal vampire?
By the end of the conference I still couldn’t tell…

The second worst moment:
Realizing that our room did not have high speed internet
access.

The worst moment:
Realizing that, not only did our room not have high speed
internet access, but that the hotel’s “business center”
consisted of a single PC and a single chair in a closet-sized
space that was constantly occupied. (I humbly suggest that
TypeCon ‘04 be held at San Francisco’s wireless enabled
Herbst Theater or similarly equipped venue for us tech-
spoiled kids.)

Biggest regret:
Flying on Priceline. Leaving Sunday morning. Essentially we
missed the one day of the conference that was dominated
by people of my own generation — Test Pilot, Miniml,
Aesthetic Apparatus among others.

The simplest pleasure:
Watching Jim Parkinson beaming like a proud parent over
the pages of Indie Fonts 2. The book itself was a catalyst
for a pile of his recent releases. I’m sure he was both
relieved to have the work done and proud of the showings.
Note to self: invite Jim over for Sunday dinner sometime.

Funnest time:
Sharing a panel with Si, Jon, Armin, Stephen and Jared.
There were some genuine good laughs. I’m glad we could
pull off a smoke screen so that not everyone realized
that we were sitting up there modeling the emperor’s new
wardrobe.

Is that url broken? (Or is it just me?)