Mnémosyne

Sans Everything - an international conference about sans serif letterforms

Sans Everything is an international conference dedicated to sans serif letterforms.
The bicentenary of the first sans serif typeface - shown around 1816 in a specimen of the foundry of William Caslon IV in London - , was the pretext to organize this cross-disciplinary free event.
It is aimed at graphic & type design students and educators, as well as at professionals and academics

retour à la liste des manifestations

mercredi 19 octobre 2016
Exposition Traits, lettres, bâtons
Morlighem

1'36

Exposition Traits, lettres, bâtons
Morlighem
Sans Everything is accompanied by two substantial exhibitions whose 'Traits lettres bâtons' displays a manifold survey of sans serif letterforms through their history, their design and their use.

mercredi 19 octobre 2016

mercredi 19 octobre 2016
The sanserif: the search for examples
James Mosley

51'09

The sanserif: the search for examples
James Mosley
The sanserif is a simple form of letter, with neither "serifs" or endstrokes, nor much variation (indeed sometimes none at all) between the thick and thin strokes. If first appears in the work of architects and artists at the end of the 18th century. Later, but not before about 1830, it began to be used as a model for printing types, and it soon became widely used for posters and commercial printing. In the 20th century, it was a dominant form in the typography of the modern movement. It is the style of some of the most familiar current typefaces, among which are Futura, Gill Sans, Helvetica. The dates of the appearance of the early sanserif in the work of "neo-classical" artists remain badly documented, and I am still searching for examples: my talk will offer a summary of what we currently know.

mercredi 19 octobre 2016

jeudi 20 octobre 2016
Serif or sans serif? Studying Ladislas Mandel's typefaces for telephone directories
Alice Savoie, Dorine Sauzet - Esad

48'57

Serif or sans serif? Studying Ladislas Mandel's typefaces for telephone directories
Alice Savoie, Dorine Sauzet - Esad
French designer Ladislas Mandel created an impressive number of typefaces for telephone directories between the late 1970s and the 1990s, including Galfra (Italy, Belgium), Clottes (France) and Colorado (US). Looking closely at his atypical working method, from original drawings to printed phone books, it is sometimes difficult to assess whether these designs should be considered as sans or serif typefaces, many of them sitting on the fence between the two genres. These commissions provided a fertile ground for Mandel to experiment and develop his theories on cultural differences in type design. In an attempt to better understand his approach and illustrate his ambiguous relationship with sans-serif typefaces, this presentation will chiefly provide an excuse to delve into Mandel's archives and his design process for the singular reading space of telephone directories - Research "Ladislas Mandel: la création typographique du quotidien à la croisée des technologies et des cultures" - Esad'Reseach Unit: De-Sign-e

jeudi 20 octobre 2016

jeudi 20 octobre 2016
The sans serif as a design pattern: finding artistic renewal in repeating environments
Jean-Baptiste Levée - Production Type

38'07

The sans serif as a design pattern: finding artistic renewal in repeating environments
Jean-Baptiste Levée - Production Type
Sans peur, sans gêne, sans reproche, sans culotte and sans souci: Since its beginning, Production Type has approached numerous sans serif design principles in its work for clients and its retail library. Which directions were more thoroughly explored? Which ones have yielded the best results, either from a personal or a commercial standpoint? This presentation surveys the conceptual and formal backbones that drove the type designer, type director, and type foundry entrepreneur Jean-Baptiste Levée towards specific genres. The designer puts his own obsessions in perspective as he examines the process and struggles of his work.

jeudi 20 octobre 2016

jeudi 20 octobre 2016
Why - and how - designing custom typefaces for institutional actors?
Christina Poth

35'04

Why - and how - designing custom typefaces for institutional actors?
Christina Poth
Why would today's institutions choose to adopt purpose-built fonts for everyday use? From my experience, I have learned that more than a wish to look different, it can be a subtle and thus very effective way to make visible unique historical or functional particularities. It can be a strong vector of identity, both for internal and external communication, for print and screen and all kinds of applications, like for instance signage systems. A custom typeface is a powerful tool, accessible for and usable by everyone, which contributes to building or completing visual identities. How to translate specificities linked to an institution's history, architecture or particular activities? What is the starting point? Through three different examples, I would like to share my research that lead me to create custom (sans serif) typefaces.

jeudi 20 octobre 2016

jeudi 20 octobre 2016
Big simple tiny complicated drawings
Cyrus Highsmith

42'50

Big simple tiny complicated drawings
Cyrus Highsmith
Complicated drawings Type design is full of contradictions. Serifs make letterforms more complicated but removing them is not simple. Cyrus Highsmith will illustrate this with examples of his typefaces as well as discuss his obsessions with shape, repetition, and different kinds of drawing.

jeudi 20 octobre 2016

jeudi 20 octobre 2016
Helvetica is dead
Gerry Leonidas

54'20

Helvetica is dead
Gerry Leonidas
From the point when typefaces became independent commercial products, myth and constructed identities have been integral parts of every successful design. No other typeface exemplifies this as well as Helvetica. While meaningful a few decades ago, the excessive use of the typeface in recent years make it very clear that its time has passed: it works badly for our typesetting needs, and will perform even worse in the coming years. The documents and environments we use today have exceeded the design space of Helvetica: a new concept for a sans family is needed. Indeed, many designers are placing bets on what the next phase in the development of sans serifs will be. Speaking from a typographic perspective, Gerry will show why Helvetica as we know it is bankrupt, and lay out a blueprint for a competent typeface family to replace it. He may be showing some good candidates.

jeudi 20 octobre 2016

vendredi 21 octobre 2016
Stroke by stroke
Elena Albertoni

36'20

Stroke by stroke
Elena Albertoni
To trace by hand the single strokes that make up letterforms offers a valuable insight into the creation process of a type designer. Starting from there with the help of examples ranging from sign painting to digital type design (my main fields of work), the talk will focus on the potential of those strokes for the purpose of conceiving original visual identities. The study of the different approaches (digital and analogue) to build specifically sans serif letters is aimed to show the importance of choosing the right letterforms for a specific application and environment, independently from the technology used to create and render them.

vendredi 21 octobre 2016

vendredi 21 octobre 2016
Typannot: a glyphic system for the transcription of handshapes
Claire Danet, Morgane Rebulard, Timothée Goguely, Adrien Contesse

32'52

Typannot: a glyphic system for the transcription of handshapes
Claire Danet, Morgane Rebulard, Timothée Goguely, Adrien Contesse
A glyphic system for the transcription of handshapes In the context of Sign Language (SL) study, three distinct functions can define a writing system: the abilities to read, write and search. None of the existing systems (SignWriting; HamNoSys) offers a good compromise. In this work, we present the construction of a graphematic system able to cover all SL handshapes existing in the world, consisting of features based on a phonological description. This multidisciplinary project, summoning type designers and linguists, aims at producing a readable and stable, unambiguous and fully searchable glyphic system that provides a relevant solution to the transcription of SL and the development of an accompanying writing system.

Research project: GestualScript Typannot - Esad'Reseach Unit: De-Sign-e

vendredi 21 octobre 2016

vendredi 21 octobre 2016
Negation
Rejane Dal Bello

32'10

Negation
Rejane Dal Bello
To define type from the negation (sans) of one feature (serif) means that it isn't strictly defined as typography, which makes room for a lot of interpretation and exploration. The idea that we have a starting point with one basic rule to design from (without serif), but at the same time we have infinite ways to interpret it, is the ideal scenario we look for in any design project

vendredi 21 octobre 2016

vendredi 21 octobre 2016
Designing Sans today

1h05'12

Designing Sans today

Round table with Cyrus Highsmith, Gerry Leonidas, Jean-Baptiste Levée, Christina Poth, Alice Savoie - Moderation: Indra Kupferschmid

vendredi 21 octobre 2016

vendredi 21 octobre 2016
Exposition Pangramme
Atelier Design graphique & Typographie de l'Ecole supérieure d’art de Lorraine

1'10

Exposition Pangramme
Atelier Design graphique & Typographie de l'Ecole supérieure d’art de Lorraine
L'Esad d’Amiens accueille l'exposition internationale de caractères typographiques "Pangramme: learning type design". Celle-ci est créée et produite par les étudiants de l'Atelier Design graphique & Typographie de l'Ecole supérieure d’art de Lorraine. Jérôme Knebusch (direction du projet), Francis Ramel (assistant). http://www.pangramme.org

vendredi 21 octobre 2016