This last week, we’ve been hyped about Type…

Starting with Typo London, a three-day conference with broad range of speakers, covering visual communication, film, emerging media, design, education, technology, information and typography.

One of the highlights of the conference was Nat Hunter from Airside, the only female speaker of the day. She made hugely inspirational talk on user experience and the importance of storytelling.

Typo London 2011: Telling Stories with Nat Hunter

Nat Hunter, creative director at Airside, explains how her company approached a 2009 project for the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art.

The Power Gap by Airside

Created in 2009 for the National Gallery of Contemporary Art (NCGA) in Sunderland, The Power Gap explains the complex relationship between power and the people and was developed in conjunction with left-wing think tank Demos.

Infoasaid – Communication Is Aid by Airside

Commissioned by Infoasaid, the objective of the animation is to make viewers aware of the need for aid agencies to establish two-way communication with crisis-affected communities as well as to legitimise communications as a valid form of aid in itself.

The extremely talented Eva-Lotta Lamm sketched the talks as they happened.

While we’re on the subject of typography, I would like to highlight a new book, Type Navigator: The Independent Foundries Handbook. It’s a comprehensive guide of the best independent sources for quality fonts, an essential tool in any graphic designer’s arsenal.

And last but not least, I’d like to mention the launch of The Type Foundry, the Cure Studio portal which showcases the work of some brilliant illustrators and typographers. Currently the foundry features 18 typefaces from 14 different designers, but they’re aiming to add a new typeface every week.

James Hurst, Cure Studio director, says, ‘We wanted them all to be new and interesting, or of the particular style of the illustrator or artist. One of the things we’re keen to do is not to limit it to typefaces that work as type, so we set it up in a way that means there are also Illustrator files that are too complicated to act as “workhorse” typefaces.’