The annual Pen to Printer seminars bring together distinguished speakers and delegates from many lettering and associated disciplines to discuss in a convivial atmosphere issues of importance in today's rapidly-changing world of communications.
The Eighth Annual International Ditchling Seminar will run from Friday 30th May to Sunday 1st June 2008.
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The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design, through its partnership with the University of Brighton, Royal College of Art, RIBA and V&A Museum, aims to enhance learning and teaching in design through research that brings together resources and expertise from Higher Education and collections-based partners.
The EJF is pleased to announce that CETLD has approved funding for the following project commencing in September 2007 (a regular progress report will be introduced):
Lettering - the legacy of Edward Johnston
Project leader: Eiichi Kono, University of Brighton with Gerald Fleuss, Edward Johnston Foundation and Dr Rowan Watson, V&A
This project will provide a consolidated learning space for HE design students by bringing together collections and material from partnership and other archival collections to advance the understanding of Edward Johnston and his legacy in terms of his rediscovery of the fundamentals of formal handwriting and lettering and its continuing and widened relevance in the contemporary digital world (from electronic books to directional signage).
In collaboration with the curator at the V&A and curatorial colleagues at the RIBA, and in the design archives at Brighton, the project will examine the material located in all archives and in parallel include fresh exploration of the Edward Johnston Foundation's archive in Ditchling with the aim of making it accessible to students in Higher Education as well as other researchers and students both physically and on-line. Links to on-line materials located in other collections will be used to enhance the teaching materials and online effectiveness of the materials developed.
A second strand will be the design of an educational programme for practice-based learning at Levels 2 and Masters to explore the relevance of Johnston's principles to contemporary letter design. The historical thread informing the development of letterform through the ages, forming the major element in Johnston's teaching, has virtually disappeared in the educational environment and the importance of re-establishing it is timely. Without the knowledge of this tradition further development in, for instance, the field of type design is stultified. These teaching materials will be tested by introducing them to students on the extension studies courses at Brighton, where they will automatically be drawn from a wide range of disciplines.
The project will be further enhanced and evaluated by outreach to a wider audience of learners and students through the medium of video podcasts, lectures, course materials, workshops and demonstrations and exhibitions.
The benefit to students, especially those working with text will be to help them become better designers by providing them with a renewed understanding of the core value of the broad-edged pen as the prime lettermaking tool and of its influence and continued relevance as far as contemporary letter design is concerned. This concept was fully grasped by earlier generations of type designers, none more so than Hermann Zapf whose recent Zapfino Contextual Pro typeface stands at the cutting edge of digital font technology, Contextual OpenType. Instead of the hitherto restricted palette of 256 individual characters within a font, the new technology offers up to 65,000 with the resultant potential for an unlimited range of stylistic and contextual variants. This is opening up profound possibities for designers able to take advantage of the material contained within the archive together with accompanying practice-based teaching.
Students will also benefit from the development of the EJF's Wikipedia which will contain key authoritative articles on the subject of calligraphy and lettering to be submitted by selected experts in the field, supplemented by those already published in the Foundation's Journal, catalogues and monographs. Connections will be made by hyperlink to other relevant material on the web and hopefully with wikis being developed within the CETLD partnerships. The EJF has digital expertise and its Wiki is already functioning and will be fully operational by the end of the project.
Posted by:
Gerald Fleuss
on 26 Aug 2007 | 8:37 am
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comments (716 views) |
Sun 04 Feb 2007
ATypI announces Brighton as conference venue for 2007
The 2007 ATypI conference will take place from Wednesday 12 September to
Sunday 16 September 2007 in Brighton, UK, the Association announced today.
The conference, organised in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and
Architecture at the University of Brighton, will have the theme 'Hands on'.
In recent years, the ATypI conference has consisted of a specialist
two-day 'TypeTech' focusing on digital font development tools and
techniques, followed by the main conference, consisting of three days of
presentations, seminars and workshops.
"For the 2007 conference, we're also going to take advantage of
Brighton's excellent practical facilities and location to host a series
of practical workshops and masterclasses," said ATypI's Barbara Jarzyna.
"We have a lot of ideas and contacts which we will be developing those
over the next couple of months.
Posted by:
Gerald Fleuss
on 4 Feb 2007 | 2:48 pm
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Wed 17 Jan 2007
Stoneywish Country Park
GOOD NEWS! Under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1990 and the Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1995, Lewes District Council have just granted planning permission for the EJF application submitted on 16 November 2006 for the erection of a two storey building to be used as a museum and as a centre for calligraphy. This is the final major hurdle we needed to clear before commencement of construction of our new home on the 52-acre Stoneywish Country Park in Ditchling. Planning permission had been granted some time ago but alterations to the upper storey of the building to make it suitable as an attic storage area required a fresh application with all the attendant expense and complications that implies. Meanwhile over the past few months a number of necessary preliminary surveys have been conducted at the site. One example, a geological survey, revealed the presence of greensand and clay in this area. If clay was predominant, foundations for the building would have needed to be some 9ft deep. After trial boreholes were dug we were gratified to discover the underlying stratum is greensand and thereby several thousand pounds will be saved in construction costs.
The next stage in the process is inviting builders to tender and we have already approached several likely candidates for the work. It is our intention to keep a photographic record of work in progress.
Posted by:
Gerald Fleuss
on 17 Jan 2007 | 1:27 pm
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comments (716 views) |
Tue 25 Apr 2006
Stoneywish Country Park
Negotiations are in progress for the construction of a new museum/classroom at Stoneywish Country Park. a 52-acre park in Ditchling.
Posted by:
Gerald Fleuss
on 25 Apr 2006 | 11:07 pm
[0]
comments (628 views) |
Tue 20 Sep 2005
Microsoft Design
Eiichi Kono, EJF Board member, has designed Meiryo, a Japanese ClearType font for the Microsoft Corporation in collaboration with Matthew Carter and C&G in Japan.
Details here
Posted by:
Gerald Fleuss
on 20 Sep 2005 | 7:49 pm
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comments (244 views) |
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