It was like a kind of very personal annual report, with a chance to hear everyone’s opinion.įontstand Conference participants (Porto, 2019)įirst line, sitting: Hyewon Han, Sandol Yunjung Park, TLAB Ludwig Übele, Ludwig Type Dino dos Santos, DS Type Matteo Bologna, Mucca Type Susanne Zippel. And as before, we also had a private programme for the foundry members, where we discuss lots of statistics and numbers. This time in Porto, it was a properly organised public conference on a nice location, with a very packed program. And then, once everyone wanted to come, we thought that maybe it would be a shame to keep it so private, and added a public conference to the programme. At first, the idea was to make it just a private meeting of type designers, just discussions about what we were working on. So last year we organized the first meeting, in Zagreb, Croatia. I really admire the work of many colleagues, and thought that maybe we should organize personal meetings to discuss our work and learn from each other. We wanted to show that there are other ways to do it – to produce quality work, innovative way to license it, and develop intimate relationships between the makers and clients. Basically, we wondered how small foundries can still be relevant today. We started Fontstand the year that Monotype acquired FontShop. And people became disillusioned at the absence of an independent alternative. Monotype was buying companies and becoming bigger and bigger. It brings independent foundries together. It just made sense for us because Fontstand is more than a business, it’s a community project. What do you see as its achievements? What motivated you to organize the event? I’d like to start with a question about the last big event in our field-the second Fontstand Conference, which you organized. It has been a pleasure to meet and talk with Peter at his cosy studio at Koningsplein 12, The Hague, Netherlands. Last year Typotheque celebrated its 20th anniversary with a solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, a fine way to top things off. Twenty years ago in the Hague he set up his own type foundry, Typotheque, and since then has launched a series of unique publishing projects: the magazines Dot Dot Dot and Work That Work, co-founded Fontstand, a new way of discovering and licensing fonts, as well as TPTQ Arabic, a company focused on the development of modern and authentic Arabic typefaces, to name a few. That definition perfectly suits Peter Bilak: he writes, lectures, publishes and, in fact, makes letters. ‘A man of letters’ was the term, in Renaissance times, for individuals engaged in critical thinking, reading, research and human self-reflection about knowledge, life and society.
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