Disco Inferno

Shut Up and Eat Your Helvetica!

Typecon Day 3-5-- Wrap Up!

The OW team had a whirlwind Typecon experience. There has not been a lot of time to post but I am trying to catch up.

Following the Sagmeister talk with the weird story about the Manatee, we moved up to UB Thursday night to see a presentation from Dutch design team NLXL. They mixed some examples of their work with things that inspired them. Following the presentation they played some techno and dance MP3s and NLXL's Oscar mixed some video clips. Pretty cool.

After a full day of presentations highlighted by Doyald Young discussing his book Dangerous Curves and Dard Hunter III discussing the family legacy, the evening at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery starred Erik Spiekermann. Eric, who earlier in the day had patted me on the chest as he flipped my name tag around for me, was funny, foul and took quite a few swipes at Helvetica's bastard child, Arial! Very entertaining. The late night Friday night moved to the 'Hawk with some punk rock DJed by Mixwell Einstein and myself, Odiorne (they rocked Morning Star) and a weird band from Toronto, the Serrifics. Big Black, Primal Scream, Iggy-- we had it all for the people.

Saturday featured another full day of speakers starting with Ken Barber from the famous House Industries and old timer Mike Parker who remarked that he "has probably forgotten more about Times Roman that most people in the room know..." I am not so sure about that, there were some serious type-geeks in the audience. J. and I took some new friends to a great lunch at Betty's and then more speakers. There was alos a great type-themed poster show put together by You Work For Them (see some poster photos on Julian Montague's blog).

Saturday night was the grand ball where I basically DJ'ed cool wedding music. Now I never play songs I don't like, but I play all the alt. 80s' songs and 70's funk, disco songs I had. I had a little fun playing some Underworld, Chemical Brothers, and Daft Punk, but I expected more from a crowd of creatives. I had a whole bin full of house, groove and really great music I never touched. Kinda of disappointing.

All in all, the Typecon was a bit too much type, even for me. Because of the event I met a lot of great new friends and met a lot of cool people. But 7 days of type-themed events have burned me out. I haven't gone this long without a good night sleep in quite a while. And while I was at the Allen Street Hardware at 3:15 AM, I know I had had enough.

j. and spend Sunday wrapping things up, picking up the DJ gear and leftover W2R apparel from the Hyatt and sneaking out to see the new Batman movie (and it is really good!). I got a lot of stickers and buttons, a cool shirt screened from my new buddy from Colorado and some inspiration to be more creative in general, but I am typed-out for a while.

Having this international conference in town was super. I did hear some German designers complaining about the desolate downtown, but a lot of other out-of-town folks enjoyed our architecture, our food, the hospitality of the warm buffalonians, great music and nightlife and lot of type-geek camaraderie. Next year, Typecon will be in Atlanta- ho hum.