On saturday, april 26th, a new edition of DiaTipo took place at ESPM school, in São Paulo.

DiaTipo is a meeting created in 2007 to gather people interested in type. Last edition saw a shift to a new theme-oriented format. “DiaTipo OpenType” had 16 attendees.

Fernando Caro started out talking about his graduation project, a typeface called Arauto. Fernando highlighted advantages of the OpenType format (facilitate the layout, simulate handwriting) and explained some command lines used in Arauto, such as contextual character replacement. Other attendees asked questions and talked about how they work. At the end, Fernando distributed a printed sheet newspaper test presentation of Arauto typeface.

Next, Tony de Marco spoke about particularities of the Samba typeface project, awarded in 2003 on a Linotype contest. There was talk about the increase of brazilians trading fonts on sites such as MyFonts and popularization of FontLab. Tony also presented printed sheets of some of his font projects to illustrate spacing and kerning steps.

Eduardo Omine made a more technical presentation. He talked about tools to aid the production of types (such as AFDKO - Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType), its advantages and disadvantages.

“DiaTipo OpenType” was a warm-up for an OpenType workshop that shall take place in June, as part of Tipos Latinos exhibit in São Paulo.

› Photos of “DiaTipo OpenType” at Flickr
› Fernando Caro’s graduation project about Arauto typeface (PDF)

Collective analysis of ongoing type projects was the theme suggested for DiaTipo’s next edition.

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Besides Tipos Latinos excellence honor, Fernando Mello’s Frida typeface was one of the ten award-winning works of Tokyo Type Directors Club 2008.

The japanese exhibition presents more than 140 works selected from a total of 3140 entries, 857 of those came from other countries.

At the beginning of this month, Fernando traveled to Tokyo to receive the award and to attend the exhibition opening and the design forum TDC Day, where he lectured about Frida’s creation process on latin and tamil scripts.

In 18 years of competition, it’s the first time Tokyo TDC prize is awarded to a Brazilian. Ikko Tanaka, John Maeda, Carlos Segura, Stefan Sagmeister and Matthew Carter are among the other winners.

Tokyo TDC Exhibition 2008 can be seen at Ginza Graphic Gallery until april 26th.

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I agree with ancient people: writing is gods’ gift. I like to read, write and appreciate a well-done calligraphy. I think it’s more than an act of protecting history; to me, writing is the drawing of our thoughts, the only way of making the creative spirit visible.

Two of the greatest cradles of our actual alphabet are good examples of the sacred way writing should be treated. Ancient Egypt considered their scribes to be people with the divine touch, and their position within social hierarchy was of major importance, likely higher than painters’s, architects’s, and sculptors’s. Arabia has always valued writing as well. According to the Koran, God’s first word to humanity was “read!”, and the muslims see it as a way of praying and religiousness to write Allah’s and Muhammad’s names in a beautiful way. Although an atheist myself, I do feel enlightened when I see the richness of muslim calligraphy.

Living in Andaluzia, the Arabian side of Spain, I had the joy of getting enchanted by an exhibition I saw last week, at Sevilla Real Alcázar: “Ottoman Calligraphy”.

The exhibition is a select selection of works from the Sakip Sabanci Museum, in Istambul, and it shows the history of the ottoman calligraphy evolution along 500 years. Besides Koran pages and richly adorned royal stamps, there’s also wood pieces, paintings and lots of calligraphy tools, like pens and ink holders, out of 96 breathtaking objects.

The exhibition is divided in three small rooms. As expected, in order to preserve the exposed works, it’s a dim room and taking pictures, with or without flash, was strictly forbidden. Luckly, (also a very commercial tool) there’s a thick book for sale containing all the exhibition images plus some more of the history of ottoman calligraphy. Of course, one of those copies is already mine!

Interesting links:
A blog about ottoman calligraphy, full of images from de exhibition and more
Wikipedia about the Sakip Sabanci Museum
Sakip Sabanci Museum homepage
Sevilla tourism webpage

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Fabio Haag is in London, for a two-month training period at Dalton Maag. Back in Brazil, Fabio will work as typedesigner and representative for DM, prospecting new clients in South America. On that account, we asked a few questions to Bruno Maag, DM’s managing director:

TPC › What makes Dalton Maag consider South America an emerging market? What are the other emerging markets to DM?

Bruno › As an economy, Brazil is amongst the fastest growing. This will eventually affect the design industry as Brazilian companies expand and become more brand aware. Also for any Brazilian company to compete in the US/European market they will have to ensure that their visual appearance is as high quality as that of the industrialized nations. This expansion also brings a higher awareness of copyright and trademark issues. That, in turn, encourages more people from the creative industries to be creative without the fear of being ripped off.

We are also investigating possibilities in Asia, particularly in India as well as the Arabic world. I believe that in future there will be a big demand for complex non-Latin scripts, again as economic expansion demands increased visual identity.

TPC › How do you people at Dalton Maag keep up with new font technologies?

Bruno › My tech colleagues are on various tech forums and we also have a dedicated software engineer who always keeps up to date with the latest specifications from Microsoft and Adobe. You may miss Apple here, but I feel that the Apple Mac has become a small concern and no-one is creating fonts anymore specifically for the Mac. Of course we are also constantly trying to innovate and potentially create new technology ourselves.

TPC › You told me once (correct me if I’m wrong) that Dalton Maag only works with corporate fonts. If so, what made you start working with retail fonts? And how much it represents in DM’s overall sales?

Bruno › Yes you are right. Dalton Maag certainly started out designing corporate fonts only. This is still our core business. However, we have realized that there is a market to modify existing fonts (of course only with permissions and correct licensing in place). Creating our font library allows us to exploit these designs not only with plain sales but to create modifications, too. As they are our Intellectual Property (IP) we have total freedom on permissions and licensing schemes.

The retail library now presents approx 10% of turnover. This may sound a lot of money but don’t be fooled. The cost of creating a font is high and usually only a small percentage of retail fonts actually successfully sell. You need to bank on these to support the expansion with other, less commercial fonts.

TPC › Here in Brazil we’re talking about starting a national typographic association. As an ex-chairman of Typographic Circle, can you talk about the UK organization and your experience with type associations in general? What difference do they make to your work?

Bruno › What I have found is that it is difficult to maintain an organization on a national level. We only managed to keep it going in London, and that was hard enough. The Typo Circle is a voluntary organization which means that you need to have a core of dedicated people who organize everything, from talks to social events.

The Typo Circle has managed in the last ten years to raise awareness of good typography, and make typography a more important issue. We now regularly count over 100 people at talks. However, we have always felt that it is important that the TC is a social club where members can network, or just have a good time and talk type. This is where the real value is.

My suggestion would be that you may have a national umbrella organization but that much is organized at a local level. Also, don’t forget that type/typography is largely a minority interest so you will need to run this on a membership basis.

Being the chairman of the TC impacted mainly in a PR (public relation) sense, in that I was able to expose myself and the company. I am not sure whether it has made a real financial impact.

TPC › What made you select a Brazilian type professional to join your team? Is there something you would like to say to students here who plan to work and possibly live by typedesign?

Bruno › If I want to establish Dalton Maag in Brasil as the type company where designers go, this is only possible by having a physical presence there. This is one of the reasons I invited Fabio Haag to join our team. He will help us promote and grow the business, as well as carry out design and production duties.

I am not sure what to say to students – type does not pay, maybe. Yes, I have made my business work, but it is tough. Type is a luxury item and even big corporates do not easily part with their money. It is not enough to be a good designer. You will also have to be a good sales person, and totally understand technology. It is no good to be able to design great type if you can’t make it work, or provide support to your clients.

TPC › Bruno, are you still full-time trapped into type business or did you manage to get back to type design?

Bruno › I am afraid to say that I am a full time manager now. Just occasionally I actually manage to get my hands dirty. I do make a point of being involved in the initial stages of every type project because I want to make sure that we only create the best ideas. I also ensure that I get to see most of the work that leaves the office, again, simply for quality control. It takes ten years to build a reputation, and only ten seconds to destroy it.

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Brazil is well-represented! 14 works out of 73 national entries were selected. Here they are:

Maryam and Jana Thork, by Ricardo Gomes of Outras Fontes foundry (Vitória, ES).

Boldoni Gray, by Jarbas Gomes of Forte Type foundry, also from Vitória.

Ninfa, from Eduilson Coan of Dootype (Curitiba, PR).

Processual typeface, by Vicente Pessôa, Tiago Porto and Zed Martins, all from Belo Horizonte, MG.

Armoribats 1 and 2, a nice dingbat work by Buggy, Gustavo Gusmão and Matheus Barbosa (Tipos do aCASO foundry), all from Recife, PE.

Adriane Text family, by Marconi Lima of TypeFolio foundry, from Macapá, AP.

Frida, a type family with latin and tamil scripts, developed by Fernando de Mello (São Paulo / London) which received an excellence honor.

Nova Sans by Francisco Martins from Belo Horizonte, MG.

Flat Pipe by Gustavo Garcia (São Paulo / NY).

Chumbitos by Anderson Maschio from Curitiba, PR.

There were also two brazilian design jobs with latin typefaces selected.

Congratulations to all!!

A full list of selected works can be viewed from the exhibition’s website.

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This month Tipocracia celebrates five years!

Yes, it took some time for the blog to come out, but it came in three flavors!!! Portuguese, spanish and english. The idea is to set up a communication channel with other countries, thus to increase the project’s and brazilian type’s reach.

In time, I’d like to thank Gabriel Menezes, Hernán Paganini and Pablo Codeglia for the spanish posts translations and revisions. And to Feijão!!! untiring in his help with programming nodes of the triple blog. Danke!!

So here we go!!

“We”? Yeah! “We” ; )

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