Until We Meet Again
On Saturday, May 25, 2019 the second Fontstand conference took place in Porto, Portugal. Taking place one day before the European elections, it couldn’t have felt more international, more like a celebration of diversity and community. Occasionally, the type and design scene can feel quite US-centric, but not at this event. Each speaker seemed to speak a different flavor of English and some of the 200 people in the audience had traveled from as far away as Australia, Brazil or the west coast of Canada.
While the first Fontstand conference in 2018 came about as a foundry meeting first and conference second, this time the conference part was planned from the outset, largely organized by local type designer Dino de Santos (DS Type) and Fontstand’s Andrej Krátky and Peter Biľak. The theater-like Ateneu Commercial do Porto in the city center provided a charming backdrop — even winning this year’s conference-chandelier rating — and space for the packed program of 13 stage presentations and 13 interspersed “Tiny Talks” (one slide, 5 minutes).
The prevalent motif of the presentations was true “behind the scenes” insight into the work and lives of type designers and independent businesses, touching, among other things, on the discomfort of giving up design control with variable fonts, the less glorious parts of running a type business, font licensing, finding inspiration for your work amongst seemingly dead ends, developing your own tools to explore new creative directions, designing for different writing systems and matching different scripts, but all livened up by the zippy 5-minute talks in between that went as far as to propose eliminating all letters with diagonals from the alphabet.
Some may have found so many presentation on type design quite geeky; to others it was a welcomed difference to other conferences that focus more on general graphic design or on academic research. Either way, events like these — still small and casual enough — provide a rare chance for real conversations between (typo-)graphic designers, students and type makers and sellers, something we should maybe encourage and facilitate even more. Coffee and lunch breaks gave some time to chat and mingle, but were kept brief in favor of the dense program. We’re curious to hear the opinion of attendees on that: Do you prefer fewer talks and more breaks? A slightly higher ticket price to cover a simple catered lunch so we can stay together at the venue and talk more? Or maybe even a two-day event?
While the public conference part lasted for one day only, it was a multi-day event for the foundry partners. On Sunday we met to discuss foundries’ and Fontstand’s experiences of the past year, new ideas and new locations. Several more partners attended who couldn’t make it in 2018, so the event was also a great opportunity to get to know each other better and exchange views with far-flung colleagues. Where else do you otherwise see 30+ independent type foundries in one room talking to each other, and above all, in good spirits?
Too short a meeting almost, despite Dino having set up a great full-day program including a beach café lunch and port wine tasting. We hope to keep the conversation going during the months until the next event. Do let us know if you want to comment on anything regarding the conference, its location or Fontstand in general. We want it to be the most varied and friendly place to look for and hear about typefaces.
Text by Indra Kupferschmid Photos by Michael Bundscherer