Technology can create a global monoculture, but it can also open up new possibilities for preserving and celebrating minority languages and cultures. Designers, engineers and linguists are combining traditional academic research with contemporary software tools to create computing solutions for minority writing systems.
Victor Gaultney found his way to type through dance, mathematics, music and calligraphy. A type designer at SIL International since 1991, he develops fonts for minority language groups around the world. He holds an MA with distinction from the University of Reading and returns there regularly as a guest lecturer.
A discussion of what typographers look for in non-Latin typefaces and the criteria for selecting particular typeface combinations for academic and reference books.
Professor Paul Luna is Head of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, and has recently written on the design of Johnson’s Dictionary. He joined the Department in 1998 from Oxford University Press where he was head of corporate design, the culmination of twenty years’ work at OUP that included the design of major publications such as the Oxford English Dictionary, bilingual dictionaries, the Oxford Shakespeare, and the Revised English Bible.
The type specimens of the St Bride Library, which opened in 1891, include many rarities and came largely from the collections of two historically-minded members of the printing trades, William Blades, a printer, and Talbot Baines Reed, a typefounder. The library has not only continued to extend these collections but it has also added examples of punches, matrices and types, in order to add to the value of the collection for research. This is a sketch of the history and a showing of some highlights of the collections.
James Mosley is Visiting Professor in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at Reading University. As a student at Cambridge he printed with Philip Gaskell at the Water Lane Press, and spent a part of the summer of 1955 working at the Stevens, Shanks (originally Figgins) typefoundry. He was librarian of the St Bride Library from 1958 to 2000.
Why has graphics and publishing software been much slower than operating system and office vendors in supporting a wider range of the world’s non-Latin languages? Adobe’s Thomas Phinney discusses the business and technical considerations which he believes cause this problem. The talk will conclude with time for Q&A and open discussion.
Thomas Phinney has worked with Adobe’s type group since 1997, currently as product manager for fonts and global typography. He is involved in the design, technical, historical and business aspects of type. Thomas is also on the board of ATypI, and has been an expert witness in court on forged documents. His first typeface, Hypatia Sans, is an Adobe Original, and is available with Creative Suite 3 applications as a bonus for registering your software. Thomas has an MS in printing, specializing in typography and design, from the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology, and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
The Hebrew and Latin letters are fundamentally different. Circumstance and technology has distorted the development of Hebrew type and typography but which Latin typographic styles and conventions are appropriate to the Hebrew letter?
Simon Prais studied for an MA in Visual Communications (Manchester Polytechnic) in 1984–85 and wrote his dissertation on design considerations affecting the simultaneous use of Latin and Hebrew Typography. In 1986 he co-founded TypeMaker Limited (t/a ColourConfidence) and is their Technical Director. TypeMaker are developers of graphics manipulation software and are the largest independent European colour management specialists. They were also the first UK PostScript typesetting service.
OpenType is a font description and rendering format adapted by major computer companies to address many issues related to composing and rendering digital type. In OpenType, specific script and language processing engines handle the different scripts which means that the unique qualities of Arabic are no longer forced into the molds of Latin script as was the case with previous technologies.
Mamoun Sakkal, a native of Aleppo, Syria, who immigrated to the United States in 1978, is founder and principal of Sakkal Design in Bothell, Washington. Providing graphic design and communication solutions to major national and international corporations, his firm has focused on Arabic calligraphy and typography since the 1990s and received several awards for calligraphy and type design. His clients include Microsoft, Linotype, and Bistream. Sakkal lectures on Arabic and Islamic art and architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle, and other Universities in the US, Syria, and Uzbekistan, and continues to participate in fine art exhibitions in the US and abroad. He is a recent doctor candidate working on the history of Islamic calligraphy and its use in contemporary art. www.sakkal.com.
An exploration of various aspects of the history of the book in South Asia, and the cultural, social, religious, political, economic and technological factors which have influenced its development
Graham Shaw is Head of Asia, Pacific and Africa collections at the British Library. He has published widely on the history of printing and publishing in South Asia, including Printing in Calcutta to 1800 (1981) and The South Asia and Burma retrospective bibliography: stage 1: 1556–1800 (1987).
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