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In December the type community was deeply saddened by the early passing of Jan Middendorp. On this April 9th – Jan’s birthday – we share an unpublished talk of him from 2015 ATypI São Paulo.

“ATypI is pleased to announce that, during the March 8 Board meeting, Nada Abdallah (UAE) was elected by the board as the new Vice President of ATypI, unopposed.”

The talks from ATypI 2020 All Over are now being published on YouTube.

We’re making changes and additions to ATypI event programming to better serve our members and the greater type community.

October 27–31, the sixty-fourth annual conference of the non-profit Association Typographique Internationale will be virtual. Tickets start at $48.

“It gives us great pleasure to announce that ATypI has its first woman president! Carolina Laudon, country delegate from Sweden, dedicated volunteer, board member since 2018, and most recently board VP, was elected yesterday, August 18, 2020, as the president of the ATypI board of directors.”

Soon after the invention of upright roman type, an interloper entered the arena—italic. Rather than displacing roman, it wound its way into our typographic culture, becoming an essential part of languages that use the Latin script. Our written communication depends on it, yet in all the books that have been written about type design there are often only a handful of pages about this essential style. This talk will explore the roles italic plays in our typographic culture: as a language feature, a typographic element, a historical marker, a design object, and a business product. These roles have shaped the design of italic and inspired innovation and creativity. But they have also often forced italic into a subservient position. What is the essence of italic? Has that identity survived its use as a secondary complement to roman? Is it possible that this servitude has given italic the freedom to flourish? This is the story of how italic established itself as part of our typographic language, was transformed as it was relegated to secondary roles, and yet remains a strong and essential part of typeface design.

Stephen Coles explains how foundries work today, how they can distribute their fonts and how customers can find the right fonts.

Ann Bessemans’ talk from ATypI 2015 in São Paulo These days rhythm within typefaces is treated very homogenously. The perfect example is the currently dominant early 21th century letter model where all the letters within a typeface get roughly the same width. But how does this development affect reading comfort? Currently, there is no closed definition of reading comfort and how to test it (quantitatively) in the best possible way. Tracy (1986) describes readability in terms of quality of visual comfort, as an important requirement in the comprehension of long stretches of text without experiencing physical complaints. There is strong evidence that visual comfort has to do with the rhythm of the typeface. Studies show that stripe patterns impede the reading process due to visual discomfort. Visual discomfort refers to the adverse effects of viewing certain kind of visual patterns, like text. This lecture will offer new insights into the way how to define reading comfort and why measuring visual comfort, independent from reading performance, seems to be innovative.

A talk by Juliet Shen about Morris Fuller Benton at ATypI 2007

An ATypI talk by Oliver Linke (Germany) about the writing master Johann Neudörffer the Elder

Gerald Fleuss (calligrapher/illuminator) from Great Britain presents the legacy of Edward Johnston in this talk from ATypI 2007 (Brighton).

The ATypI or Association Typographique Internationale (the International Typography Association) is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to typography and type design. A primary activity of the association is an annual conference, held in a different city each year. It is organised with the help of local members and institutions, often universities or colleges. In addition, ATypI want to: promote contemporary digital fonts encourage outstanding typography and typographic design campaign for the protection of typeface designs influence legislators around the world