Phinney on Fonts

Category: Conferences & Speaking

  • Conferences & Talks: Chicago, Hong Kong, Vegas, NYC

    The Case of the Special Sack
    The Case of the Special Sack

    I am doing a lot of fun talks and workshops I am doing in the next couple of months, starting tomorrow night in Chicago! If you’re in one of these cities listed below, I’d love to meet up with fellow typophiles and anybody who wants to talk fonts, over coffee, lunch, dinner, or a drink.

    Chicago Tues Sep 25, 2012
    AIGA presents: Font Detective, Extra Bold

    7 pm at Harrington College, admission is $5 for AIGA members, $10 for non-members.

    Probably nothing is more fun for me than talking about the legal cases I’ve been called in to consult on. Whether it’s a forged will, a pioneer mail bag, the NFL Hall of Fame, or the US Presidency, I’ve been asked to look into a bunch of fascinating cases involving fonts, printing, and logic. This long-​form version of my presentation has only been seen once before, at the Type Director’s Club in New York City.

    Chicago Fri 28 Sep 2012
    WebVisions talk : CSS3 OpenType Fonts, the new web typography frontier

    11:15–noon, WebVisions @ Siskel Film Center.

    CSS 3 brings support for OpenType layout features to browsers. Most already have this support today. But what good is it? I show you everything from everyday workhorse typographic functionality like ligatures, true small caps, and oldstyle figures, through to the fascinating and bizarre: fonts that censor naughty words, predict the future, or translate languages. If you are coming to WebVisions, check it out!

    Chicago Sat 29 Sep 2012
    WebVisions workshop : Control the Web with Fonts & Type

    1:30–5:00 pm, WebVisions @ Harrington College. Conference info here.

    Join me for an immersive, hands-​on workshop on using CSS3 typographic controls to create great web typography, from the basics of ideal type setting to enabling custom web fonts with @font-face. A live web site will be provided for each participant to practice and experiment on, along with access to WebINK web fonts.

    You will also learn:

    • How “real” web fonts are transforming the web, and exactly how to implement them.
    • How to pick the perfect font for a web site
    • How to choose fonts that work together
    • The common crimes against legibility and aesthetics, and how to avoid them
    • Issues around color, spacing, line length and font size

    REQUIREMENTS: Laptop and basic familiarity with HTML and CSS.

    Hong Kong, Wed 10 Oct 2012
    ATypI talk: Crowdsourced Font Funding

    10:20–10:40 am, ATypI “Research, Case Studies & Workshops” sessions @ Icon Hotel. Full talk description on the ATypI site.

    All about the impact of Kickstarter (and similar services) on type design, from my own experiences and surveying everybody else using Kickstarter for fonts. What is involved, how should you structure your campaign, and what distinguishes successful campaigns?

    Las Vegas, Tues 16 Oct 2012
    PubCon panel: CSS & HTML 2012

    3:10–4:25 pm, PubCon @ Las Vegas Convention Center

    On this panel I plan to do an intro to web fonts and a small portion of my talk from Sep 28, above.

    Las Vegas, Thurs 18 Oct 2012
    PubCon Labs Q&A Session

    11–noon, PubCon @ Las Vegas Convention Center

    Meet with me one-​on-​one to ask questions about web fonts, web typography, or anything to do with fonts!

    NYC, Tues–Wed Oct 23–24
    Future of Web Design: booth & workshop

    I will be at our booth most of Tuesday, and giving my web fonts and typography workshop all day on Wednesday.

  • Conferences & Cristoforo

    Wow, it has just been a crazy time lately. I wrote most of this yesterday at 36,000 feet, on my way home from a quick tour of Europe for work: Barcelona, Paris, Hamburg and Munich. This included numerous customer meetings and three speaking engagements:

    My “Type Detective” talk at Typo Week Barcelona

    Now I have a break for a couple of weeks before my next conference, TypeCon in Milwaukee (Aug 1–5), where I’ll host a panel to talk about Kickstarter as a means of funding new type design. I’ll also be doing a talk on the same subject at ATypI in Hong Kong (October 11-15).

    In the meantime, I have been hard at work in my off-​hours on my Kickstarter-​backed typeface, Cristoforo, with help from my fabulous intern, Andrea Harrison. The full details are available to my backers in an update on Kickstarter, but for public consumption, I’ll just say that work continues on the upright face, and has started on the italic, and I am predictably enough wishing that I hadn’t promised to add so much language coverage (central European, Greek, Cyrillic). But it’s coming along, and the extended language support offers some greater design challenges than just digitizing an old typeface.

    My day job has kept me pretty busy, and has presented me with some one-​sided decisions. Gee, I have exactly one day free in Paris: work on Cristoforo, or visit the Louvre? Okay, so I’m probably not going to collect a lot of sympathy votes here. But after spending less than 48 hours in each of Paris, Hamburg and Munich, then flying back to Portland, I am pretty beat.

    Finally, I need to thank my backers for Cristoforo! Without them I would not have tackled the typeface, or would have done something much less ambitious and done it more slowly. Here is the backer listing (and yes, some of these are pseudonyms, it’s whatever they use on Kickstarter).

  • Web Typography Best Practices webcast series

    Through my day job I am doing a 3-​part webcast series on web typgraphy best practices. It is free, and registering once covers all three webcasts (with no obligation to attend).

    • Part 1: Selecting Fonts. Wed Sep 7, 11 am PST
    • Part 2: Setting Text, Wed Sep 21, 11 am PST
    • Part 3: The New Frontier—OpenType typography on the Web, Wed Oct 5, 11 am PST

    Read all the details on the WebINK blog. Or just register now.

  • ATypI talk submission deadline April 30

    Speaking of end-​of April deadlines, there are only four days left for talk submissions for the ATypI international typography conference in Reykjavik, Iceland in September.

    As always, it will be a great event with tons of fascinating and varied content about fonts, typefaces and typography. Going as a speaker usually nets you free conference admission, which saves you hundreds of dollars. It also gives people you don’t know yet a reason to talk to you about something you are interested in… recommended!

  • Type Tuesday in Portland, Oregon

    Effective immediately (that is, starting tomorrow!), on the first Tuesday of each month at 7:00 pm, I invite Portland typophiles to congregate. This is in the spirit of the monthly first Tuesday get-​togethers held in Seattle. This is a chance to socialize, meet fellow type fans, and have a beer, a meal or a snack.

    The first monthly Type Tuesday will be at Horse Brass Pub, which is an English style neighborhood pub in SE Portland. We may rotate through other locations, depending on the general will.

    4534 SE Belmont St
    Portland, OR 97215
    (503) 232-2202

    Next month we might postpone to the second Tuesday. Watch this space. Or contact me to be on a mailing list for future Portland Type Tuesday announcements. You can reach me by email as tphinney at the cal.berkeley.edu domain (they do free email for alumni).

    I look somewhat like this:
    Thomas in Green Hat

  • Speaking @ Portland IDUG, visiting TypeCon Atlanta

    Just a quick note here. As posted on the Extensis blog in more detail:

    1. I’m speaking this Thursday (July 9th) at the InDesign User Group right here in Portland, Oregon.
    2. I’ll be at the TypeCon conference in Atlanta late next week, and happy to meet people there and answer questions.

    Cheers,

    T

  • Speaking at InDesign User Group Seattle, May 12th

    I’m only a week back from Vancouver BC and the “Justified West” conference, where I spoke on forensic typography (detecting forged documents by means of fonts and print tech). I’ve also just finished moving from Seattle to Portland (everything is still in boxes), but I thought I’d drop a quick note on the blog.

    On the evening of Tuesday May 12th, I’ll be speaking at the InDesign User Group here in Seattle, right at Adobe Seattle HQ (where I worked for many years) in the Fremont neighborhood. It will be a somewhat multi-​faceted talk, more of a set of talks really, covering various things group members requested. Admission is free (but registration required or at least strongly desired), and there’s free food, too! So come on out, or let your Seattle-​area designer friends, clients and colleagues know, okay?

    IDUG meeting details link for registration, directions and such.

    SCHEDULE

    6.30-6.45 Meet, greet, and eat (usually they have pizza)

    6.45-7.30 Part I of my talk

    7.45-8.30 Part II of my talk

    8.30 Raffle, Wrap-​up, and Au Revoirs

    Here’s what I’ll be talking about (subject to minor modifications):


    PART I
    6.45-7.30

    • A brief rant on legibility in design (15 min) 
      • including choosing fonts for print and screen
    • How fonts are made (10 min)
    • Tips and Tricks (15 min, list subject to change) 
      • How to know if a font is corrupt (with two tools you shouldn’t use and why)
      • Recognizing system fonts
      • Which system fonts you can remove and why
      • Windows Type 1 fonts on Mac OS
      • Fonts vs transparency in InDesign
      • Character styles
  • Font management (5 min)

    • PART II
    7.45-8.30

    • A Brief History of Type (20 minutes)
    • OpenType demo (20 minutes)

  • Spring/​summer 2009 speaking

    I have a few talks coming up in the next little while. Currently planned:

    WorldWare Conference, 17-​19 March 2009, Santa Clara, CA
    Font Handling in Multilingual Software
    Um, well, yes, this talk is today. Fonts are a critical part of making software world-​ready, and applications must test with the right fonts. Various font formats take different paths to dealing (or not dealing) with the needs of the world’s languages. Operating systems offer varying levels of support for the different formats. Learn how to navigate and escape this maze!
    45 min

    Justified West Conference, 25 April 2009, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Justified West 2009 Conference poster image—click for higher-​res version

    To register, phone 604-​323-​5322. Email Dr Shelley Gruendler for more info
    Forensic Typography
    Thomas Phinney discusses and shows cases of forged documents and other typographic investigations he’s been asked to investigate, from a
    father’s will to the NFL’s Pro Football Hall of Fame, to the US
    presidency. Learn how choices of fonts, typography and output devices
    have ruined perfectly good forgeries.
    30 min


    HOW Design Conference, 24-​27 June 2009, Austin, Texas
    10 Things You Didn’t Know Fonts Could Do
    Join type guru Thomas Phinney on a whirlwind tour of advanced typography using OpenType, from the incredibly useful to the bizarre. You’ll learn how advanced typographic effects formerly only available to experts can now be automated, and see how cutting-​edge fonts can do everything from emulate realistic handwriting to translate languages. You’ll get plenty of tips and tricks (including tips for more legible type in print and onscreen), and there will be time set aside for Q&A—so be sure to bring your burning type questions.
    75 min