The TypeLab at Typographics 2026 will host a series of informal workshops, demos, interviews, experiments, and more.
TypeLab is an informal, multi-day, typographic hackathon that complements to the main Typographics conference and workshops. Like the original TypeLab events in the 1990s, it is a place for people to meet and talk about type and design with an informal structure that allows more spontaneity and interaction than typical mainstage conference events.
All TypeLab events will be open to the public with free registration. This year’s TypeLab will be a split across multiple days and platforms, with a combination of in-person events in New York City and online events with presenters from around the globe.
TypeLab Americas
TypeLab Europe
Day 1
Wed,
June 24*
Hosted on Zoom
Hosted on Zoom
Day 2
Thu,
June 25*
Hosted in-person at Cooper Union
Day 3
Sun,
June 28*
* The dates above are based on the time zone for New York City.
Schedule specifics are very much subject to change. For updates and announcements, join the Typographics mailing list and follow Typographics on Mastodon and Instagram.
TypeLab events will take place over the course of five separate days.
The TypeLab schedule is always very much subject to change at any time, without notice. Event programming will constantly evolve until the final event has ended, allowing for spontaneous alterations and additions as space and time allow.
Times are shown in your current time zone (EDT/UTC-4)
Hosted: On Zoom
Day 1 Livestreams: 🔵 TypeLab Europe
🟨 TypeLab Americas
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Hang out with the hosts as things get started.
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In this visual talk, type designer Yulia Gonina will look at Montreal’s public lettering as more than historic signage. Through examples from the 1880s to the 1930s, she will explore how letters on façades interact with architecture: sometimes acting as a second voice of the building, sometimes revealing its function, status, or era, and sometimes becoming part of the architectural structure itself. The talk will move between close typographic observation and urban history, showing how proportions, materials, ornament, and style shape the way lettering is read in the city. It is an invitation to look at buildings not only as architecture, but as typographic compositions.
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The limitation of analog is an inevitable invention of seeing anew. For years, I’ve held onto the phrase Resistance in Analog. Post-AI, that phrase has taken on a different weight.
This talk spans a decade long practice of using type, as a means of irreverence against institutional authority. Through lettering, letterpress and design, it inquires how we view and use type to take the temperature of the world, while delicately holding a mirror to a world caught in political and social misfires.
What began as fidgeting for my neurodiverse system in an obsessive lettering series has, over the past decade, become a way of asking larger questions about type and power and what happens when typography encounters Adivasi oral traditions whose histories and resistances exist largely beyond the text; my dialogue with type has unfolded through gentle obsessions in these visual thought experiments with typography as a method in storytelling of political realities.
This presentation is a deeper dialogue into the dynamics of typographic neutrality and the possibilities of type’s imagination to explore its political behaviour and figure out new creative pathways, to disseminate counter-cultural feelings and type-play as a strategic irreverence to rigid systems. An argument to generate visualizations for type beyond cultural vessel, into a political participant. If typography is a system of legibility, what else might it become without surrendering to order?
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a new Robofont extension where multiple, un/related UFOs or can be spaced, kerned and interpolated concurrently.
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During the interwar period, Lithuanian print culture developed within a broader European pattern shaped by the migration of Latin typefaces alongside printing equipment and matrices. As these technologies moved across borders, design conventions travelled with them – a circulation rooted in earlier colonial expansion and further driven during the twentieth century, particularly by German-speaking lands.
Approaching type as an object of circulation that is subsequently “owned” by local users, and in the context of dismantling canonical histories of European typography, this presentation retraces Lithuanian user specimens, examples of type use, and a type revival initiated at Type West in 2024, positioning them as material evidence of typographic circulation, local negotiation, adaptation, and authorship in early twentieth-century Lithuanian print culture.
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A method and Glyphs plugin for spacing. Basic ideas behind the method, its origins, advantages and pitfalls and examples of use
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¿Qué ocurre cuando una tipografía se construye a partir de documentos históricos? Esta charla presenta el proceso de diseño de Don Clemente, la tipografía creada para conmemorar los 150 años del Concejo Municipal de Santa Fe. El proyecto toma como punto de partida los manuscritos de las primeras sesiones legislativas y, especialmente, la escritura de uno de sus secretarios fundadores. A partir de esas fuentes documentales, la propuesta explora cómo los gestos de una escritura del siglo XIX pueden reinterpretarse en una tipografía contemporánea. Una reflexión sobre memoria, patrimonio e identidad, y sobre el potencial del diseño tipográfico para transformar registros históricos en nuevas formas de comunicación.
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What does it means to create a type specimen today? In recent years, I have put a lot more thought into the presentation of typeface projects and looking for more non-conventional ways of doing so. In part out of a desire to keep a foot within design in the broader sense but also to have a bit of fun with it and create the space to collaborate with designers outside of our day-to-day bubble. For many foundries, the presentation of the work is often half the work – an aspect that helps differentiate one from the other. I will be sharing a few of the WiseType projects which have attempted to do something a little different in regard to how the work is presented. Not always purposeful but certainly playful.
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The presentation will give an insight into my residency at the Huis van het Boek in the Hague (which is ongoing until October). I am currently investigating floral decoration in historical printing and connecting the loss of ornamentation to the loss of biodiversity. I am working on new typefaces and will share the process, as well as many images from the collection during my talk.
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The presentation will be exploring this question by looking at the era of metal type setting in India, which spans from the 19th to the mid 20th centuries. The study looks at key phases, individuals and systems that shape the development of the script in print in broader, technological, and cultural context. Alongside a historical overview of the typography, the lecture will also show a chronological analysis of the letterforms, which was conducted with various specimens to highlight patterns of transformation in various aspects of the script. This allows us to look at how Devanagari type design of today was shaped by constraints and possibilities of technologies of the past. Altogether, this presentation will offer a better understanding of the evolution of Devanagari type design and let newer perspectives emerge for future designs.
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FC Lead, light, glass and lead, letters based on convex shapes and whole undivided whitespaces, a new typeface by Frederik Berlaen from Font Club Belgica.
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In the bustling theatre of an Indian supermarket, typography does more than label a product, it invites us in. A familiar wordmark, a playful curve, a bold price flash, or a quiet piece of fine print can spark memory, appetite, trust, or curiosity.
Through iconic and everyday examples from Indian packaging, this talk explores how letterforms become emotional and cultural cues. Across languages, scripts, regions, we’ll look at how type helps brands tell stories on crowded shelves, shaping what consumers notice, remember, feel, and eventually choose.
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This paper documents an archival visit to the historic Gujarat Mitra Press in Surat, India, focusing on its extensive collection of Gujarati newspapers, literary publications, and printing ephemera that illuminate the intertwined histories of print culture, language, and regional literary production. Established as one of the significant centers of Gujarati publishing, the press served not only as a site of newspaper production but also as an important printing house for literary manuscripts, poetry collections, novels, pamphlets, and public discourse circulating across Gujarat.
The study examines the archive as a living repository of Gujarati print history, with particular emphasis on printed newspapers, proof copies, editorial corrections, and publication materials associated with literary works that passed through the press for production. During the archival investigation, materials including annotated proofs, compositor marks, typographic corrections, and printing drafts revealed the often-overlooked processes of textual refinement before publication. These proof copies, bearing handwritten interventions and editorial decisions, offer insight into the collaborative relationship between authors, editors, printers, and typesetters in shaping Gujarati literary and journalistic culture.
Beyond preserving printed outcomes, the archive provides a rare opportunity to examine the material life of Gujarati publishing—how poems, serialized novels, essays, and journalistic writing were physically composed, corrected, and disseminated. The paper argues that proof sheets and production documents should be understood not merely as technical remnants of printing but as cultural artifacts that preserve evidence of linguistic negotiation, typographic decision-making, and editorial authorship.
Methodologically, the project combines archival documentation, visual analysis, and typographic inquiry to map the relationship between print production and literary circulation in regional language publishing. By documenting overlooked materials such as galley proofs, newspaper specimens, and production annotations, this research contributes to broader conversations around vernacular print histories, archive preservation, and the role of regional presses in shaping literary publics.
The presentation will include visual documentation from the archive and reflect on how historic Gujarati print practices can inform contemporary approaches to typographic preservation, publication design, and the digitization of regional print heritage. Ultimately, this study positions Gujarat Mitra Press as an essential site for understanding the cultural and material history of Gujarati publishing and the invisible labor embedded within the making of printed literature.
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The next version of Roboto is “Roboto Delta”, a masterpiece by Font Bureau that showcases how parametric axes leverage avar2 technology to create massive ranges of type styles yet huge file-size savings. This presentation reviews why the project was commissioned, the theory and tools required to make it happen, and how designers can use it in all kinds of visual design.
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An introductory workshop
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Soviet designers hand-lettered thousands of product labels, creating a rich and large tradition of lettering. Working with limited typefaces they developed a distinctive visual language: expressive, warm, and surprisingly varied.
This presentation draws on my broader visual research of Soviet lettering, focusing here on packaging to explore how lettering functioned in an economy without competition, where labels didn’t need to sell. Along the way, I’ll draw brief parallels to American packaging of the same era, because what’s striking is how much visual common ground existed between two cultures with no direct contact.
I’ll also look at how Soviet packaging lettering is being revived in contemporary design.
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How does typography evolve when text becomes a synchronized, flying overlay competing for visual authority? This project deconstructs the typographic logic of “Cyberpidgin”—a hybrid mode where characters and emoticons merge on East Asian video platforms. Drawing on Lev Manovich’s concept of “software culture,” this research argues that the bullet chat interface is not merely a display tool but an active agent in shaping social interaction.
By analyzing spatial density and shifting legibility, I examine how these flying texts function as a synchronized, architectural interface for collective cultural adaptation. The study explores how these transient, flying texts act as a form of social signaling—a digital manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village,” here re-interpreted through the lens of localized fandom dynamics. The research reimagines the screen as a site of constant textual collision, where typography acts as an architectural interface for social negotiation. Through this lens, the project investigates how these digital typographic landscapes influence contemporary interactions and shape cultural identities in the age of globalization, offering a critical reflection on the intersection of the digital self and online community dynamics.
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Type historians rarely talk about how their research actually begins, how to follow a thread into archives and private collection, how to organize research materials. This talk is about that process.
I started my investigation in 2005 with the aim of mapping type foundries active in Italy in the Nineteenth century, their production, and the evolution of the local type founding industry. More than presenting my findings, I want to share the methodology behind identifying primary sources and retrieving information from type specimens, magazines, newspaper articles, local registries. Where do you start if you don’t know what to look for? How do you find primary sources? What is available online? How do you access libraries and private archives? How do you build a database to keep track of information?
Much of the most valuable work in type history is being done by independent researchers like myself, outside universities and institutions. But we don’t have enough shared infrastructure for that work, besides meeting at conferences. I hope my journey digging in the past of my home country will inspire and support more researchers: because so much of the history of type is still waiting to be found.
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Installing python and typographic libraries used to be a nightmare, especially for designers who dabble in code. But in the last few years a tool called uv has made it easier than ever to run complex Python code without sinking in a quicksand of obscure installation errors. In this short presentation, we’ll install uv and (with the help of the new Coldtype tool directory) inspect fonts, build photorealistic Noordzij cubes, and create fun variable font animations — all without writing any code or clicking any buttons.
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Do Gothic letters belong in the 21st century? Relics from a bygone era, Gothic letterforms are often denounced, romanticized, marginalized, and caricatured, but rarely understood. Drawing upon my research at the ésad d’Amiens (EsadType) I would like to propose new ways to bridge this gap. With a resurgence of interest in Gothic typefaces, it is high time to rediscover the beauty and symbolism of Gothic lettering, and to consider its potential as a source of inspiration for meaningful, contemporary typefaces.
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Mexicana Type, recuento de una historia de diseño tipográfico en México, que se enraiza en la identidad nacional y étnica, una amplia experiencia profesional y ha sostenido proyectos hechos a la medida, que han construído una de las historias de diseño más singulares en desarrollo de fuentes tipográficas, custom type, custom fonts, caligrafía y otras expresiones de diseño de letra.
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El gesto humano vive en todas mis letras, en mayor o menor medida, así como aún perdura en las aulas, de preescolar o de primaria, en donde las primeras nociones de lecto-escritura son aprendidas, en donde las primeras letras son presentadas.
En esta charla explicaré el proceso de diseño de mi nueva superfamilia Didáctica, dirigida a los niños en sus primeros años de escolaridad. Dicho proceso involucra el estudio de los “handwriting models”, tanto históricos como contemporáneos, para fundamentar cada decisión en el diseño de los caracteres y hasta en el propio design-space del proyecto. Con este ejemplo les mostraré cómo la investigación, la documentación (la palabra escrita), el lápiz y el papel son herramientas TANGIBLES, esenciales para el diseño de una familia tipográfica. Estos elementos son, a mi entender, el mapa de ruta que facilita este proceso extenso de creación. Son la brújula en un universo digital, intangible, donde pareciera que todo es inmediato, efímero y automático. Las ideas detrás de Didáctica provienen del universo material.
Habiendo trazado el método de quienes aprenden y de quienes enseñan, diseñar esta fuente fue para mí un gran aprendizaje. Y quiero compartirlo con ustedes.
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Huellas digitales del antiguo México es un proyecto de investigación que tiene como punto de partida la obra compilatoria Sellos del antiguo México de Jorge Enciso, cuyo trabajo explora un antiguo sistema de impresión, empleado por las civilizaciones mesoamericanas. Estos impresos resultaban de la fabricación de sellos de barro. El proyecto contempla la digitalización y concentración en una tipografía dingbat de algunos de los sellos más representativos del catálogo de Enciso y otros resguardados en instituciones y museos antropológicos de México.
Un elemento innovador de este proyecto es la inclusión de características Open Type para simular la funcionalidad de los sellos cilíndricos, los cuales eran utilizados como rodillos para imprimir patrones continuos sobre superficies planas. También consta de un eje de variación que representa el desgaste progresivo de los sellos a lo largo del tiempo.
El principal objetivo de Huellas digitales del antiguo México es rescatar y preservar los símbolos gráficos que forman parte del acervo visual del país. Asimismo, busca revitalizar su uso popular y tradicional. Este esfuerzo no solo contribuye al estudio histórico de los sistemas gráficos mesoamericanos, sino que también promueve su adaptación a nuevos contextos digitales, asegurando su vigencia en el imaginario colectivo.
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En esta presentación se abordará el proceso de diseño de una tipografía display inspirada en las letras psicodélicas de los carteles de conciertos y el amor por la música de los años 60 y 70 a lo largo de casi dos años de trabajo. Se detallarán los elementos, referencias visuales y motivaciones que dieron origen al lettering que posteriormente sirvió como punto de partida para convertirse en la familia tipográfica Queenie, así como la transición y adaptación de lettering a tipografía.
Se analizará la transición del lettering a un sistema tipográfico funcional, así como los retos técnicos y decisiones de diseño que implicó adaptar formas expresivas a una familia coherente, considerando aspectos como el ritmo, el contraste y la consistencia entre glifos. Asimismo, se compartirán reflexiones sobre el proceso creativo y el aprendizaje adquirido durante el desarrollo del proyecto. Queenie fue recientemente seleccionada para formar parte de la Bienal de Tipografía Latinoamericana Tipos Latinos 2026.
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Font proofing usually means InDesign templates or Python scripts. This demo shows a different option: talking to an AI. Watch Claude test spacing, characters, and layout using plain English, live.
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Recorrido histórico y visual sobre el diseño de alfabetos eróticos desde el medievo hasta tiempos recientes.
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Miguel presentará algunos de los libros más interesantes para diseñadores y amantes de la Tipografía. Libros queridos, libros que dejan marcas, libros que abren puertas, libros que enseñan.
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In this presentation, we will explore the development and vision behind tipomap.lat, a digital initiative dedicated to geolocating, documenting, and showcasing the rich typographic and graphic heritage of Latin America. This talk will present the project’s objectives, the methodology for archival collection, and the vital role that community participation plays in keeping this open registry alive. We will also analyze our key learnings and the platform’s next steps.
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En base al relato de su equipo de diseño, la charla mostrará el desarrollo de «Obra.otf», la nueva familia tipográfica del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de Chile. Veremos en primera persona el proceso de ejecución del proyecto, su relación con la estructuración de la identidad visual del museo y la participación del equipo de la institución tanto en las etapas de diseño inicial como en la posterior definición de los requerimientos de la familia tipográfica.
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es un competencia amistosa para diseñar una tipografía contra reloj. En solo dos horas, las personas participantes deberán crear una fuente siguiendo parámetros de estilo y estructura seleccionados al azar. Una carrera tipográfica donde cuentan la velocidad, la calidad y creatividad. ¡Hambrá jueces y porras!
TypeLab Day 2
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to
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Times are shown in your current time zone (EDT/UTC-4)
Hosted: On Zoom for TypeLab Europe
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👯 In-person at Cooper Union
Day 1 Livestreams: 🔵 TypeLab Europe
🟨 TypeLab Americas
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Hang out with the host and get the day started.
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Arabic type underwent a century of displacement and diminishment. The arrival of mechanical typesetting replaced a rich local tradition of type-making and typesetting expertise with superficial adaptations built far from the Arab world. The digital era compounded the problem — decades passed with little creativity, weak technical support, and a field largely controlled by Western foundries with limited understanding of the Arabic script’s needs. When Arab designers began re-entering the craft, many navigated it through a Latinised lens, shaped by lack of local expertise and the dominance of Western type education.
In recent years, a new generation of designers began to emerge, reinterpreting Arabic type with approaches more sensitive to the script and to readers. But genuine restoration requires more than individual talent — it requires well-established education and considered technical support.
This talk closes with a year-long Arabic type design course in Cairo, where fifteen students learned to make Arabic type with rigour, curiosity, and cultural ownership. Inspired by international programmes, the year combined calligraphy, lettering, research, workshops, technical training, and intensive feedback. The results demonstrate that when the right conditions are created, the talent is absolutely there.
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Supertype was first commissioned to design the typefaces for the German Federal Government in 2011. Over the past 15 years the typeface evolved technically and in range. Martin will be talking about Merkel era Windows 98 constraints, to today, when a font’s carbon footprint is deemed relevant.
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GridType is inspired by historical grid-based type design with stencils, such as the Plaque Découpée Universelle from the 1870s—a single stencil that allows you to draw all the letters of the alphabet. The experimental type tool allows you to create your own stencils by selecting a grid and adjusting various parameters, such as the number of rows, columns, or the level of complexity. At grid-type.com, there are nine different grid types available, providing insight into the research on grid construction. Some grids are geometric, based on rectangles, triangles, or circles. Others are inspired by how different display technologies, such as pixels and segments, have influenced type design. Additionally, there are references to historical grid-based type design, including Wim Crouwel, the Bauhaus, and the Plaque Découpée Universelle. The project explores how code can be incorporated into the design process, allowing for almost endless variations through different parameters and serendipitous discoveries.
The upcoming publication GridType Vol. 1 presents an edition of ten typefaces created with the experimental type tool grid-type.com. With typefaces by Anna Cairns, Boom Promphan Suksumek & Anna Srikitkul, Charlotte Rohde, Hanna Boslau, Julie Werenskjold Sørensen, Miquel Hervás Gómez & César Rogers (fanfare), Studio HanLi, Svatopluk Ručka, Trang Hà and Özgür Deniz Koldaş. With interviews by Lena Weber, studio pointer* and Céline Hurka.
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This talk presents the findings of an extensive literature review on dyslexia, wayfinding, and inclusive design legislation, and introduces Accessibility Tools: a new resource built for designers who want to learn more about this topic and implement it in their practice.
Accessibility Tools brings together in-depth documentation, a practical checklist, and live testing tools, aiming to become a small hub for designers to audit and improve their work. It is a research-driven site, and the goal is to make the knowledge that exists in academic literature actually usable by practitioners.
We’ll walk through some key findings, how we designed the site using iterative design, and how this platform aims to close the gap.
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First printed Georgian books were produced at Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1629. A lot about this story remains unknown: the role of the Georgian monk and ambassador Niceforo Irbachi, the choice of shapes of the letters, and the later fate of these printing materials. The first Georgian type itself never reached Georgia, where printing developed independently more than 80 years later. Following these letters reveals an unusual history of a script living outside its own country. Anya will share the findings from a year-long research project conducted together with Yury Ostromentsky (CSTM Fonts).
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Most typographic decisions made are evaluated under the best possible conditions like a calibrated screen, a quiet room, fresh eyes. But tabletop games involve none of these ideal factors. After four hours of gameplay, the player has just spent the fiftieth minute reading the same card, while in heated discussion, with their minds crowded with strategies and rules. The card has already been shuffled, passed around, and may even be being read upside down from across the table. This is the normal environment of gaming.
In this lecture, I will develop criteria to analyze typographic choices as temporally, physically, and cognitively experienced forms of expression which perform very differently throughout the process of gameplay. Through research into legibility, type anatomy, x-height, stroke contrast, aperture, and spacing, along with actual examples from board games, we will come up with some concrete parameters for testing typographic choices.
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Since her first visit to Svalbard, Ying has returned to the island every year until making it home last fall. While she is still slowly finding her footing at this latitude, moving into her first-ever studio in Spring 2026 has been a game-changer for her practice, which has been taking on a loose and open direction. Ying will give a mini tour of her letter workspace, share how these shifts influenced her recent projects, and reflect on the fragility beneath the romantic illusion of Arctic living and creating.
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Doors open…come hang out and get settled
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Chop suey fonts—a faux-Chinese typographic trope—embodies a paradox: It is both hypervisible in commercial contexts (such as restaurant signage, film posters and “ethnic” branding) and systematically marginalized in typographic discourse. Despite critiques of its hegemonic role in racializing “Chineseness”, its persistence reveals a deeper contradiction: a market-driven system where capital, more powerfully than cultural fidelity or typographic craftsmanship, shapes typographic identity.
To explain this phenomenon, we will synthesize findings from both qualitative and quantitative research. Interviews with type historians and designers, on one hand, expose how chop suey’s longevity stems more from economic incentives than from aesthetic or functional merit. On the other hand, they highlight nuanced type design processes developed by Chinese type designers that challenge the “capital as author” model. Quantitative data on IP protection and licensing from major font licensing sites reveal how the absence of copyright and licensing standards for chop suey fonts contributes to their ubiquity and lack of design accountability.
By interrogating the economic, legal, and cultural factors that shape the visibility and marginality of chop suey fonts, this TypeLab presentation reveals the mechanisms that both reinforce and undermine the representation of “Chineseness” in type design.
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As technology continues to connect the world, design education must expand beyond Latin-centric typographic traditions to embrace global scripts and cross-cultural communication through the application of emerging tools. This presentation introduces Hangul in Context: From History to Lettering, a collaborative project developed for the course Cross-Culture, Cross-Space at Virginia Tech, in partnership with visiting designers Halim Lee and Soo Min Lee. Centered on Hangul, the Korean writing system celebrated for its scientific structure and visual elegance, the project positions typography as both a systematic design framework and an expressive medium.
Through historical research, zine-making, and the creation of static and motion posters using creative technologies, students investigate Hangul’s structural logic and reinterpret Korean onomatopoeia through contemporary lettering. By translating sound, rhythm, and movement into typographic form, they engage in design as a process of cultural and sensory translation that communicates beyond linguistic boundaries.
Grounded in a pedagogy that bridges research, making, and collaboration with native speakers, this talk proposes Hangul as a model for fostering cultural literacy, systematic thinking, and inclusive approaches to global typography.
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Constrictor is a kinetic typeface designed by Fred Shallcrass and released by Frere-Jones Type. The design defies strict contrast and style classifications, using instead the rhythm and friction of its forms to provoke an emotional response. It explores how visual intensity and deliberate uncertainty can spark joy and fascination. This session traces the evolution of Constrictor from its origins as a film title pitch into a variable typeface family, where movement serves as a fundamental component of both its individual shapes and its overarching structure.
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Every font has built-in “vertical metrics” which specify the line height of text set in that font. Simple, right? Unfortunately, no. Due to the historical development of font formats, operating systems, and typesetting applications, there are three separate systems for recording vertical metrics, and each of them is used in slightly different ways, depending on context.
There are various existing strategies to handle this, but each approach has drawbacks. In an attempt to sort out this mess, Stephen has been methodically testing strategies and documenting results. In this talk, he will share what he’s learned and help you to understand how to set vertical metrics in your own fonts.
This presentation will be primarily focused on horizontal typesetting, with a bias towards Latin script, but will also attempt to clarify how these concepts exist within the larger scope of global typography.
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is a friendly competition where participants design a typeface against the clock. In just two hours, they will create a font following randomly selected style and structure parameters. A typographic race where speed, quality, and creativity all count. There will be judges and cheering!
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This workshop would use interlocking letters to focus on turning words into designed structures rather than simply writing readable text. The style comes from early commercial lettering manuals like the Speedball Textbook, where sign painters, cartoonists, and pen artists experimented with letters that twist together, share strokes, bend into shapes, or become ornamental compositions.
This style of lettering draws heavily from the graphic of mid-century through 1980s commercial art and display typography. Influences range from the bold showcard lettering and sign painting traditions featured in the Speedball Textbook to psychedelic poster art, advertising scripts, hot-rod graphics, tattoo flash, annd album covers.
“Stunt lettering” turns text into shape, motion, and ornament.
***Suitable for calligraphers, illustrators, tattoo artists, designers, and anyone interested in expressive letterforms. No advanced calligraphy experience required, though familiarity with basic tools (like Speedball B series nibs) is helpful!
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As we hit the midpoint of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, type designers have a vital role to play. Que Queda Type is a type foundry specializing in addressing typographic representation for Indigenous languages and writing systems in North America. This talk outlines the foundry’s experience navigating complex design challenges, gathering key insights, and establishing its upcoming plans.
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I will be presenting writing, lettering, and typesetting from my autobiographical comic, Intrusive Thots.
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XYZ Type and Polymode discuss their collaborative work to publish Identity Is Variable, a book featuring 15 diverse voices from the design world discussing the ways their personal and cultural identities resonate with typography, through personal narratives, critical essays, and lively conversations.
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How well do you really know type? Let’s find out!
Join Polina Baydin and Maria Doreuli for Type Trivia — a game about type history, famous specimens, font recognition, and typographic pop culture. Teams of 4–6 people will play through multiple rounds of nerdy type design questions in a classic pub-trivia style, with pen and paper.
Stick around till the end — the prizes are worth it.
TypeLab Day 3
, at
to
, at
Times are shown in your current time zone (EDT/UTC-4)
Hosted: On Zoom for TypeLab Europe
&
👯 In-person at Cooper Union
Day 1 Livestreams: 🔵 TypeLab Europe
🟨 TypeLab Americas
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Graduating students in the KABK TypeMedia program present their projects.
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Doors open, come hang out and get settled
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‘Cinco impresiones de agua’ es una publicación independiente que entrelaza poesía y ensayo a partir de la imagen cinematográfica. El uso de la tipografía ocupa un lugar central en su concepción: partiendo de la poesía concreta y sus usos en las artes gráficas, articula relaciones entre la imagen visual, la imagen textual y el objeto libro. Desde un enfoque de accesibilidad, busca también visibilizar la cinematografía del sur global y su diversidad lingüística, incorporando textos originales y traducidos en distintos sistemas de escritura.
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As design increasingly operates across languages and cultures, typography becomes a site for negotiating identity, hierarchy, and power. Linguistic Layers is an assignment developed for Cross-Culture, Cross-Space at Virginia Tech, where students create bi/multiscript typographic works across formats such as signage, publications, or advertisements. The project centers on a key question: how do multiple scripts coexist—through hierarchy, equivalence, or integration?
Students determine whether scripts function independently or as an interwoven system, and whether one takes precedence or all are treated equally. These decisions are grounded in themes of identity, including language as a cultural marker, colonial and post-colonial dynamics, globalization, and activism. Through research and making, students examine how typographic hierarchy reflects broader social and political structures.
The assignment positions typography as both a formal system and a cultural negotiation. By questioning Latin-centric norms and exploring alternative approaches, students develop a more nuanced understanding of multilingual design. This talk shares the pedagogical framework and student outcomes, proposing multi-script typography as a method for engaging identity and cultural complexity in contemporary design practice.
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In 2025, it was reported that 30% of Americans consult psychics and astrologers at least once a year. One estimate puts this market at $2.3 billion in revenue with 105,000 people employed. In a world that is unraveling as we speak, I found these statistics unsurprising.
While exploring my neighborhood, I chanced upon three psychics within a mile of my home promising a glimpse into my cosmic fate. This prompted me to look at 30 psychic establishments in Brooklyn within a 16-mile radius of my home, collectively comprising over 1,000 images. I also examined image archives for depictions of divination and type treatments connoting the prognosticating prowess of psychics.
This presentation analyzes different letterforms across the ages that inspired ideas of psychic or mystical ability — swash-heavy Didone-inspired serifs, Art Nouveau-esque curves, or psychedelic infusions from the late ‘60s, among others. This exercise has also demonstrated that as astrology has shifted from themes of prediction to introspection, virtual businesses have largely shifted to a sans-serif sensibility to serve a larger customer base, thus indicating a sign of the times.
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The letterpress shop at Studio Two Three (in Richmond, Virginia) inherited a vast collection of wood type and cuts from the historic Pizzini Print shop. Many of these sets are missing glyphs. A small cohort of designers is cataloging and organizing the collection (much of which arrived in boxes) and have begun drawing missing glyphs which will then be cut on a cnc router. We talk alot about how to design a glyph that is consistent with a wood type system where there are often quirky individual glyphs that challenge the modern digital conventions of type design. In this workshop we will share examples of the project and invite participants to design a missing glyph.
We would love for this to be a conversation about the culture and aesthetics of wood type and the realities of maintaining a jobbing wood type shop, and how a current view of digital type design does or—maybe— doesn’t apply!
Bring a laptop with a drawing program and or just come and engage in a discussion.
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A brief overview of type.lol along with a behind the scenes look at how it works and what’s next!
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What visual possibilities do we unlock by replacing design software with commonplace hardware? The answer could lie somewhere between wiring up a simple joystick to inform real-time graphics and letting a basic potentiometer shape typographic letterforms. While the crossover between graphic design and physical circuitry remains largely experimental, it stands testament to how novel processes can lead to novel outcomes for both domains.
The talk highlights one such process, which led to a project for Processing Foundation’s annual creative coding festival. What began as a playful prototype built from an electronics starter kit transformed into a dynamic visual system that became the face of the organization’s flagship event (also anchored in open-source philosophy). In this walkthrough, we witness the power of stepping away from the usual, standardized way of making and harnessing the creative potential of hardware in the visual arts from type to color and composition.
Underlying this inquiry is the need to break out of templatized workflows by introducing interfaces that hit a momentary reset on how we think and make.
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Come on down and design a collaborative typeface with other participants in the workshop! Together. In real time! No undo, and no conventional curve drawing tools!
Letters Together will take the form of a fast-paced, collaborative workshop in which attendees work in concert to produce a typeface using Letters Together, a collaborative web app, accessible on mobile or desktop. The session will be energetic, and playful with timers, live commentary, and a game show-like atmosphere; however, everyone wins as all participants will have access to the typeface(s) produced in the workshop.
The workshop expands on an earlier project of the same name, originally developed to help prospective first-year undergraduate students become kinesthetically familiar with the type design process. It utilizes an intuitive but deliberately limited toolset, with no undo and no bezier curves. This new iteration will introduce new options and more “conventional” type design concepts such as components, and basic spacing/kerning.
Because the tool allows for (extremely) rapid development, attendees can create, critique, revise, and version a working typeface within the session itself. The workshop will conclude with a poster or pangram made from the .otf output, and the finished font will be shared publicly. The project is inspired by collaborative digital type projects like FUSE, and newer tools like Fontra, FontBob, and Fontstruct.
Bring a laptop or mobile phone and participate via drawing or voting, and critiquing the in-progress work.
The TypeLab schedule is always very much subject to change at any time, without notice. Event programming will constantly evolve until the final event has ended, allowing for spontaneous alterations and additions as space and time allow.