Skip to main menu Skip to main content Skip to footer content

Event

Lecture

Typographic Testing Grounds: Job Printing, Small-scale Web Projects, and Innovative Typeface Design

  • Date
  • Time
  • Led By Nick Sherman
  • Where SFPL Main Library, Koret Auditorium

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, ephemeral printing and publication design fueled a profusion of new typographic styles and technologies. Similarly, the early days of the web fostered a weird and wild diversity of design techniques.

More recently, as communication is increasingly channeled through centralized services and template-driven systems, many areas of the visual landscape have flattened. However, with an abundance of new type platforms and technologies from just the past few years, the potential for typographic innovation and experimentation is greater now than ever.

In this talk, Nick Sherman will discuss the long, complementary relationship between small-scale design projects, technological advances, and inventive typography. Focusing on recent developments in responsive design and variable fonts, he’ll make a case for designers to explore new opportunities on the web while embracing ephemeral publishing ideas from the past.

This event is part of the Letterform Lecture series, co-presented by Type@Cooper West and the San Francisco Public Library, and sponsored by Adobe Typekit.

What’s next at the Archive?

This past event is part of our legacy website system. Our new events page has upcoming events, as well as past events held after 2022.

See new events