Events
TypeQuest!
with Grace Spee
Join us to learn about one of the most impactful and unexpected tools in gaming today: Video game typography!
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TypeQuest! explores the function of typography within video games — a medium where type is essential, but rarely acknowledged as a central design element. Games are not typically viewed as typographic media in the same way posters or publications are; however, typography plays a critical role in shaping the visual language, setting the tone, and guiding player experience in games. When handled well, or handled creatively, it can become a powerful tool for storytelling, atmosphere, and worldbuilding.
As video games slowly gain recognition as a legitimate form of art and cultural expression, it is time designers start looking at game typography with the same critical eye we bring to other media. Even for those unfamiliar with gaming, typography in games can be incredibly compelling and dynamic. TypeQuest! highlights the creative potential of typography in games, and makes the case for treating these virtual spaces as fertile ground for typographic exploration and innovation — not just within the context of video games, but across digital media as a whole.
Letterform Lectures are a public aspect of the Type West postgraduate program. The series is co-presented by the San Francisco Public Library, where events are free and open to all.
Grace Spee
Grace Spee’s design practice sits amongst the realms of design, animation, and computer science. She attempts to gamify her design process, pushed by her deep interests in video games as an artistic medium, digital living, kinetic typography, and virtual reality. Grace’s current design research focuses on the sense of self and identity in digital spaces, using design to question and explore how digital ways of living affect us culturally, socially, and psychologically. Before starting her career as a designer, Grace studied psychology and worked in several research laboratories, both as a researcher and a graduate therapist.
Grace’s work has been shown in the Video Game Art Gallery in Chicago and has been published in the International Journal of Visual Design. In 2021, she and her teammates presented their work OASIS: A Collaborative Virtual Reality Design Exhibition at the International Conference on Design Principles & Practices. Most recently, Grace was part of the Art Gallery Subcommittee for ACM SIGGRAPH 2022, the premier conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques, and presented an analysis on the history and evolution of typography in video games at Typecon 2023.
