Dynamic Font Day 2023—Recap
After a “creative break” the Dynamic Font Day is back, once again organized by the Typografische Gesellschaft München in the rooms of the Munich School of Design & Fashion in the very city center of Munich. The Dynamic Font Day 2023 was curated by Tim Ahrens, Antje Dohmann, and Oliver Linke.
After a warm welcome, Phillip Koller from Berlin kicked things off with his presentation on Parametic type. In contrast to variable fonts, parametric or procedural type is not trimmed by a minimum or maximal values, which can lead to interesting effects by overdriving values. Bugs, glitches, and surprises are welcome and sometimes inspire further development.
The next lecture by Kimya Gandhi was about Devanāgarī type. The title Pushing boundaries of Devanāgarī type design already says a lot about the very exciting topic of the lecture. She spoke about how the development of the centuries-old Devanāgarī fonts was hampered by the printing press. The letterforms’ rich history and vibrance that one sees in hand lettering was not able to be translated into digital fonts–until recently. She says that OpenType, Unicode standardization, and the widespread use of the internet in India have opened up new possibilities for the existence of fonts and there is no better time to create new designs than now.
After a short break, Dutch designers Akiem Helmling and Bas Jacobs from design studio Underware spoke about their concept “Look backward, write forward” that encourages reflection on the past as a source of inspiration and insight for the future. While this approach can be applied to various aspects of life, including personal growth, decision-making, and creative endeavors, it becomes especially fascinating within writing.
Sabina Sieghart spoke about Design matters: The use of digital media by an easy-to-read audience in her lecture. Thereby the importance of design was set into the context of people with low reading ability due to intellectual disabilities. She researches with the target group to develop tools to simplify text in digital media.
After a very tasty lunch break, Vincent Wagner gave an overview of his understanding of 3D type, showed design and application examples, and presented accessible ways of experimenting with typography in digital space.
In her talk Reimagining Reality, Tina Touli spoke about her analog experiments, exploring the ordinary from extraordinary angles, reimagining the world that we live in, with her collection of interesting utensils from which she creates exciting campaigns.
After a short coffee break, the day continued with the presentation Creating accessible typography through visual prosody by Ann Bessemans from Belgium. She and her team from READSEARCH developed a system to visualize the basic emotions still allowing for changes in speech prosody.
The last lecture Procedural Typography by Daniel Wenzel was about exploring the influence and transformative power of technology in design, highlighting the synergy between tools, generative design, automation, and AI.
After all the exciting presentations, the day ended with a nice get-together and lively discussions.
Thank you very much for having us, it was a blast!
Images: © Michael Bundscherer
