After our Saturday 20 April workshop sold out in an astonishingly quick 6 hours, we scheduled another one for Sunday, and that one filled, too.

Thank you to all of those who came, ready to try something different in your typographic learning. There was laughter in the air and a wonderful collegial attitude, even for a weekend morning! We drew each others’ names, practiced our ‘carrots’, and totally drooled when watching Laura do her demos.

Quite a few of the attendees had been watching out for Type Camp for several years so it was a real treat for them to be able to attend one in their own city.

(I have a feeling some of them will be showing up at future camps!)

Laura and I had so much fun that we will return to Vancouver for a second level of this Script class for all of the attendees of the April camps and we’ll even begin a Calligraphy series for new Type Campers.

The venue was absolutely perfect. Thank you so much, Fluevog! What a wonderful space. It was light and airy and just felt like a truly creative environment. It was also awesome to try on a few pairs of shoes during breaks. . . I have my eye on a pair or two!

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A few days ago, I sent off everyone’s letters from that Australia camp – I never read them of course! I opened and read my own today. Surprisingly, it seems to communicate nearly everything that I’m trying to achieve with Type Camp. Although not entirely obvious, it actually says a lot about my time in Melbourne with everyone. It was a great camp with fantastic people and really helped to solidify just where the business was going (I had been considering packing it all in up until then!).

For all of you, perhaps what I was telling my future self, which has become my present self, might just work for you, too?

Please remember that hard work pays off for

there are good people around that appreciate it.

Be yourself, you’re fine the way you are.

Know that what you do is important.

Let other people help you.

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

So work hard, because it matters, and laugh, because that matters, too.

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As an expansion of our hand lettering team, we are pleased to announce Laura Worthington, a Seattle-based script type designer who will lead the upcoming Vancouver workshops, and Neil Summerour, a professional calligrapher and type designer from Atlanta, who will lead the Japan camp in May.

Welcome to the Type Camp family, Laura & Neil!

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My 20 year old dream (that’s 20 years old and I made it when I was 20) came true yet again, twice in two weeks.

Today, I was published on the EYE Magazine blog.
Click here for the article.

I didn’t even realise it was up until I saw the tweets that EYE sent out:

It’s so easy in this field, or any other research-y/design-y one, I suppose, to never feel smart enough and to always compare yourself to the superstars. (Having Marian Bantjes as a friend doesn’t help so much, either!) I try not to compare myself to others and know that I would never want to be, nor could I be, a design rockstar. Besides, nobody gets excited about a typography teacher — fame and fortune are obviously not my aims in life.

I celebrate little things these days. Not having to work for an idiot boss is one, another is that I get to work from home most of the time, and when I’m not, I’m travelling, which I love, for teaching, which I also love. I write articles and give lectures on topics that are interesting (to me!). I also live with an amazing chef, who just happens to be a type designer. I work in an exciting field with brilliant and kind people. It’s easy to appreciate these simple and yet amazing things.

Anyway, my point is that I made a little contribution, in a very public way, to the world of design and typography. It might not have been major in other people’s views, but it was in a magazine that I respect, for an editor that I respect, and that makes me feel fantastic. I think it’s the little things that add up in ones’ life anyway.

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I showed slides from recent stuff, such as Wired, Real Simple, and The Walrus and brought in original copies of the Ladies Home Journal (1904), The Spectator (c. 1760), and RayGun (1993). I did talk a bit about the magazine design era in the USA from the 1930s to the 1960s, but I was running out of time so I had to leave out big chunks about Brodovitch & Agha & Pineles. Oh well, at least there’s great books on them!

However, my favourite part (and if you’ve been in any one of my classes, you know that I totally love to do this) was when we created a design brief for a hypothetical magazine. They picked random audiences and random topics out of a hat and, though the results were hilarious, their solutions were bloody brilliant. I was really impressed at their thinking and felt great that they understood my thesis: that designers reinforce the content to the audience. How does that audience need to get the information? The designer doesn’t just pick colors, they do it all, and when they do it right, it seems utterly easy.

Here’s some photos of their ideas – and they had only 20 minutes to do it!

A design brief for a magazine on beer to beavers and one on geology to robots.

A design brief for a magazine on Ecology to Zombies and one on Astrophysics to the Amish.

A design brief for a magazine on pottery to dinosaurs and one for calligraphy to Shiva.

They’re clever, eh? With the price of 1 chicken (for the Amish), a title being a bar code (for robots), a small format (for beaver hands), a combo title (Zombology) and a 3 column grid (for Shiva’s 3 eyes), I think they totally rocked it.

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Of course I’m bringing loads of my collection to share: copies of RayGun, the 18th century magazine The Spectator, Blueprint (the Martha Stewart one, not the architecture one), The Illustrated London News, and more. I love show and tell!

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I remember when I first saw a copy of EYE magazine. It was some time in the autumn of 1991. I was nineteen years old and in my second year of design school in North Carolina. My (only) wonderful typography instructor Austen Lowrey showed it to us and remarked on its importance in the field and its exceptional quality.

We were stunned – here was a magazine that was all about what we were studying! I think that we were just so used to being a minority, whether as in the Design school of a 50,000+ University, or even being graphic designers in that same Design school that was dominated by architects. At any rate, here was a magazine that was informative and beautifully produced.

I wanted to own it, but at that time, twenty years ago, a $100 subscription seemed ludicrous. But I did say to myself that I wanted to be in that magazine. I didn’t expect to have an article written about me (ha!), but I did want to have something to say, and then to have it appear in EYE.

So no, I’ve not yet written for them (that’s coming soon!), but my name did appear in the EYE 84 Monotype Issue and it means the world to me. I’m mentioned in the credits at the end and in the caption of Sara DeBont’s entry on the recording of Beatrice Warde in my beloved St Bride Library. It wasn’t a long commentary, it didn’t require days of research or hours of writing (it took around 30 seconds), but it was about something that I knew about that others might want to know about, too.

Eleven years of post-secondary education got me to this point of having my name in the credits of EYE. And I’m very, very proud.

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We laughed in Melbourne, we relaxed in California, we explored in Germany, and we created in Brazil. You campers constantly amazed me, at every camp, in every way. It was an excellent year, so thanks to all of you campers and instructors.

An equally big thank you to the team behind the new website, both front and back end, and to all the supporters of Type Camp.

It’s been a great year and 2013 looks to be even better!

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Well, I did it. I gave a talk to over 1000 people at Pecha Kucha Vancouver this weekend. Never did figure out a good name for the talk, ended up with ‘Typography is Cool’, I think it might have worked after all.

When I was sitting in the front row with the other speakers, I was overcome with an inordinate amount of fear, fear that I had never experienced before I gave a talk in the past. It was paralyzing. The charming frenchman next to me, Serge, whispered to me ‘I don’t know why I said yes to this – I hate the way it makes me feel – I hate this!’ I totally agreed with him! Thank goodness I was 3rd on the list so I got it over with. People laughed at the right time (my cakewrecks joke always gets ‘em) and I think they got what I was trying to communicate: that typography is older than computers, it’s a pretty diverse and interesting field, and that we all do it, but whether we do it well is another story.

Once I sat down and Serge went, I started to unwind a bit. By the end of his talk, I was breathing and laughing and back to normal and was actually having fun! When he sat back down, I whispered to him that Pecha Kucha was much more fun AFTER one speaks!

It was inspiring and informative, and I met two women that I instantly admired and want to make them my new best friends (Caroline MacGillivray & Lizzy Karp), two people that I’d love to work with (Jay Grandin & Leah Nelson : call me soon, Leah!) and was admiring the artistry of Dani Tatarin’s work and eager to read everything by the utterly brilliant Trevor Brody.

A good night was had by all. It made my heart warm a bit to rainy ol’ Vancouver, too.

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For years, I’ve looked at the site, knowing that it needed restructuring and rethinking, especially as the oh-I’ll-just-do-this-once-in-a-while thing (unexpectedly) became my career focus. I’d stare at it, saying to myself ‘I’m a designer! I should know how to fix this!’, and yet, I didn’t. I didn’t know where to start and I couldn’t even identify the problems. All that I knew is that the typography had better be damn good. When you succeed by word of mouth alone, your webpage matters more than ever — it was so important that it could make or break the company and my dreams with it. Various students or former campers would periodically jump in and try to assist (thanks! you know who you are!), but it was really just wall papering over the wrong structure.

Fortunately, I happen to have the world’s best friends. Totally. They want me to succeed and they’re willing to help me in the process. Oh and also, they’re smart. Super smart. (That’s why I hired them in the first place to teach at the College where I used to work. I saw the wonderful in them, now they’re seeing the wonderful in Type Camp for me.) So Selma Zafar (Type Camp Instructor for India 2013), Lisa Hemingway (Type Camp Galiano 2007), and Kristin Liu (Type Camp India 2009) agreed to be the consultants and Daria Lanz (Type Camp Buffalo 2010, California 2011, Templeton 2012) and Erica-May Chan (Type Camp Galiano 2009, Templeton 2012) volunteered to be the designers. A family affair.

For once, I had to be the client, which I can honestly say taught me more about design than I’d learned in years. Sit yourself on the other side of your client meeting table one time, just once, and you’ll see what I mean.

I felt stupid most of the time. I didn’t know how it should be or how I wanted it or anything.  Good thing that Selma’s career is focused on helping designers design better. She’s not a designer and you know what? She knows more about how design should work than I do.

Under Selma’s guidance (we all call her ‘boss’ now), we worked on the purpose, the functions, the tone, everything. We had meetings together where we discussed the essence of the camps, and then, the clouds parted and it all became clear. We now knew what it needed to say but how to communicate it visually was a different matter.

Erica-May and Daria would ask me questions and I wouldn’t know the answers. I had been their instructor in numerous classes, but this time, they would have to figure things out, not me. Selma would often reply ‘but she’s the client, she doesn’t need to know the answers’, and you know? She’s right. They needed to approach it without the attachments and history that I had and the less I had to do with it, the better. I need to focus on organizing new camps, not on getting this site right.

So what you see now is a site that was truly designed for the user. I believe that my favourite part of it is the ‘about’ pages (interestingly, I click on the ‘about’ button first on new blogs and sites). Describing Type Camp is often difficult, but I believe that those three links truly communicate the experience, the attendees, and the structure. You can read quotes from former attendees, you can pick which camp style would work for you, and you can figure out more about it before you ever even register. Finally!

We’ve tried to structure the camps page so that you get all the information that you want, and as easily as possible. You can understand the characteristics of the camps easier and you can better see what your money will get you.

Type Camp is very much about the instructors and we needed a way to make sure that people learned how wonderful (and brilliant!) they were before they met them at camp. The instructors page features extended bios about them, quotes by them about teaching, and the hilarious Q&A invented by Erica-May.

The blog is a big feature that has been needing to happen for years. I’ve wanted a space where I could tell some of the stories that happen during camp or post photos or even give news of former campers. Now I’ve got it and I plan to post daily during a camp and several times a week otherwise. The other side of this is that I’m also really enjoying writing again. I blogged constantly during my first few years in Canada and then let it slip away as I began teaching full-time at various Vancouver schools. Thank goodness I have a location for these thoughts and updates and stories — Twitter is just not enough space!

So welcome to the updated Type Camp webpage. Our village has worked hard on it and we’re not done yet, but we’re getting close. If you have any feedback or ideas, do let us know for we’d be happy to hear from all ya’ll!

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Tickets sold out fairly quickly (it’s a big deal ’round these parts) so if you were lucky enough to get some, I’ll see you there!

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It was a true South American event for Marina invited her colleagues to join in the fun, the assistant teachers were Felipe Cáceres from Chile, César Puertas from Colombia, and Fernando Díaz from Uruguay. Laura Serra, our German/Italian typographic illustrator was also there, rounding out the international teaching team.

They were able to make typographic potato prints, chocolate glyphs (yummy!), and have all kinds of fun creating typographic tattoos on various arms and legs. The food was yummy, the houses were beautiful, and the campers were happy. Does it get any better than that? It all makes me and Stephen Coles wish we could have been there! Next time perhaps . . . .

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We had around 80 people in attendance, all of whom were eager to try new things with type. One of the projects that we did as a warm-up involved the participants simply writing (lettering) their name. Then, they traded with another person at the table and did someone else’s name, and so on, each time getting crazier and more abstract, with legibility not being a priority! This was an opportunity for them to remind themselves that they can draw and they can use their hands and that even if it’s only 5 minutes with a sharpie, you can be creative and keep stretching your ability.

The attendees were awesome – asking questions and even laughing at the right places (if you’ve ever seen my ‘Cake Wrecks’ slides, you had better giggle, too!). I think that some of their lettering cards were really creative – pretty good for a morning workshop, I’d say.

My trusty sidekick and budding famous filmmaker, Daria Lanz, joined me at the workshop so that we could create a film from the results of the 3 hours. I still can’t believe that she was able to photograph and assemble this film in just 90 minutes, but she did! Rock star!

Since we were in Boston, we also celebrated the area by wearing lobster bibs (you mean everyone doesn’t wear them in Boston?). I think they were my favourite piece of ephemera there. They’re red, they have big claws, and they have little beady eyes – perfect. Did I ever actually EAT lobster? Nope. But I fully intend to have Dyana show me how to do it when I get back there sometime soon.

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