The inaugural experimental type festival Inscript took place online from 12-16 October 2022, when across five days of talks, demonstrations, and portfolio presentations, virtual attendees could engage in new ways of working with typography and type design.
Moderated by Ksenya Samarskaya, managing director of Type Director’s Club (TDC), and put on by the Inscript Collective, the event attracted almost 1300 visitors, all of whom can access video recordings of the talks in the six months after the event. With 30 speakers, the festival showed the many new ways type can be explored through technology, including artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual realities, creative coding, physical computing, and innovative use of traditional craft.
Read more in the recap over at Eye Magazine.
Curators
Tamye Riggs
Association Typographique Internationale
Tamye Riggs is a type geek, a writer, an editor, and a team builder. Riggs is completely in love with design and language. She is currently the executive director of ATypI; past executive director of SoTA and TypeCon; and past general manager of FontShop. Bringing the right people together at the right place at the right time is one of her favorite things to do.
Ksenya Samarskaya
Type Directors Club
Ksenya Samarskaya is a strategist and creative practitioner focusing on all things typographic, pedagogical, and with regenerative futures on her mind. Samarskaya is an AGI member and runs a type and branding practice, Samarskaya & Partners. In the past, she’s served on the boards of AIGA/NY and ATypI, as the director of TDC, and has taught type and creative strategy worldwide.
Alex Slobzheninov
Contemporary Type
Alex Slobzheninov does everything related to typography—uses type, makes type, and makes tools to make type. Based in Prague, he is the founder of Contemporary Type and part of Pangram Pangram, having previously worked with &Walsh studio. Slobzheninov has been featured in publications including It’s Nice That, New Aesthetic, PRINT, and Slanted; and has won the TDC Ascenders and ADC YG rising star awards.
Presentations & Discussions
- PresentationPresentationWed, Oct 12
11:00 AM GMTFrom Glyphs to Glyphs
Playing around with the image to image translation models to help us imagine what-ifs in designing types.
Yehang Yin
Designing and computing shapes of types. Based in Hangzhou, China.
- PresentationPresentationWed, Oct 12
11:30 AM GMTTIME / NATURE / EVOLUTION
During the conference I will unpack 3 dimensions (TIME / NATURE / EVOLUTION) in which intersection my work and vision is centered. A visual narrative of my typographical journey where typography loses its rigor and its function towards a continuous evolution that generates what I call Aesthetic Imperfections, and how these can be influencing new scenarios of AI and ML.
Gianpaolo Tucci
A multidisciplinary designer with +15 years of experience in creative direction, product design, UX and visual design for a variety of (very well) established brands (enter NOKIA, EBAY, PUMA, Zalando, HERE & more), Tucci has shaped, reshaped and released products used by billions via his career path across the globe.
- PresentationPresentationWed, Oct 12
12:00 PM GMTMaking Type Move (in the Third Dimension)
A small talk about how (and why) you can make type move in the third dimension.
Rob Stenson
A programmer and designer who lives in Southern California. Rob makes videos occasionally, audio plugins at Goodhertz, and various typographical tools at Coldtype.
- PresentationPresentationWed, Oct 12
12:30 PM GMTTECH+TYPE+MOTION
A transition is happening in my workflow: the final result of a creative process is now the product of a procedural system, which can be subsequently adjusted at any point in the pipeline and in turn, delivers a completely new output each time. In a live demo I will show you how I set up a procedural “organic type growth effect” where you can input a word or letter based on which the entire apparatus adjusts.
Dennis Hölscher
Dennis Hölscher is a Cologne-based graphic, motion, and 3D artist. He focuses his work on the combination of typography and abstract, mostly algorithm-based generative form designs in three-dimensional space.
- PresentationPresentationThu, Oct 13
11:00 AM GMTForm Follows Formula
A story of an ongoing attempt to create a type family based on a mathematical algorithm.
Anatoly Grashchenko
Anatoly Grashchenko is a Russian-born, Berlin-based creative coder, graphic designer, art director and educator. Anatoly found his passion at the intersection of creativity and technology, specializing in delivering custom tech solutions and bringing a generative approach to design processes.
- PresentationPresentationThu, Oct 13
11:30 AM GMTTactile Typography
My talk presents typographic projects which work with tactility and analoge methods. Traditional craft is combined with an unconventional and innovative use.
Laura Hilbert & Sarah Stendel
- PresentationPresentationThu, Oct 13
12:00 PM GMTBasile Fournier
Basile Fournier is a creative studio focusing on graphic design and computer-generated imagery. Its practice oscillates between physical and virtual realms, engaging with cultural and corporate brands to generate various narratives and languages using new technologies. The studio operates in the fields of fashion, culture and luxury.
- PresentationPresentationThu, Oct 13
12:30 PM GMTType in 3D/AR/VR
Tabitha Swanson
Tabitha Swanson is a Berlin-based multi-disciplinary designer, creative technologist, and artist. Her practice includes 3D, animation, augmented reality, digital fashion, graphic design, and UX/UI. Commercially, Tabitha has worked with brands including Vogue Germany, Nike, Highsnobiety, Reebok, Origins, and others to create beautiful work in the creative tech and design sphere. Artistically, her work is used as a form of therapy, often composing questions rather than answers, and trying to faintly touch the unseen edges of human existence.
- PresentationPresentationThu, Oct 13
01:00 PM GMTA typography for samba in the greatest show on Earth
Over 7k people were involved. Professionals and lovers of Rio’s Carnival, outstanding samba personalities that inspire us. The new Rio Carnaval brand represents samba’s community. The power of the collective, the infectious energy, the ability to transform the ordinary in extraordinary. The flag represents the soul of the samba schools, and our great inspiration was its evolution on the avenue, in the hand of the flag bearer, with fluid and rhythmic movements. A lively and organic typography that reacts to Samba.
Tátil Design
Tátil is a branding, design, and innovation consultancy with offices in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, London, and Paris. The studio harnesses the power of design lens as a versatile tool for multidisciplinary collaboration, enabling us to grasp people's needs and desires, craft innovative strategies, and create business-oriented experiences that deliver value for both brands and individuals.
- PresentationPresentationFri, Oct 14
11:00 AM GMTProcedural Type Design
Procedural thinking, technological coexistence, and progress as relief and intensification.
Daniel Wenzel
Daniel Wenzel engages in graphic and type design, and specializes in utilizing animation tools and code. Daniel is always interested in collaborations with designers, developers, and publishers around the world. He is currently a Senior Art Director at DIA Studio.
- PresentationPresentationFri, Oct 14
11:30 AM GMT3D Type in Space
Vincent Wagner
Vincent is a Vienna-based lettering artist with a graphic design and 3d background and a considerable obsession with everything typography and lettering. He also runs a 3d type foundry, Type Computer, where he offers a growing list of retail typefaces and gives away some libre typefaces as well.
- PresentationPresentationFri, Oct 14
12:00 PM GMTType in Motion: Code as a Design Tool
Vera van de Seyp
Vera van de Seyp is a computational designer and educator. Her work explores generative design tools, computational typography, artificial intelligence, and finding systems in chaos. She teaches and gives workshops and lectures to inspire makers to code and make their own design tools.
- PresentationPresentationFri, Oct 14
12:30 PM GMTType as Image
Sanchit Sawaria
Sanchit Sawaria is an Art Director hailing from New Delhi and now based in Brooklyn, New York. Sanchit’s practice has a holistic approach that harnesses his love for creative communication. He is a generalist that loves to try new things and expand his skillset along the way.
- PresentationPresentationFri, Oct 14
01:00 PM GMTKiel Danger Mutschelknaus
Kiel Danger Mutschelknaus is a motion and generative designer from Maryland. Kiel’s studio focuses on crafting generative tools to create bespoke typography, image, and motion work.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
11:00 AM GMTDigitalized Craftsmanship: A Look into Chinese Typography of the Neon City Hong Kong
Through a deeper look into Chinese typography within her home city and its street signs, Hong Kong, the tech is challenged in calligraphy, especially in a visually rich and complex language. In a digitalized world, this form of art has been steadily declining, which has caught Jen’s attention to explore this heritage. Jen endeavors to raise the importance of better understanding the values of craftsmanship and technology so that both industries can collaborate and progress without losing either one.
Jen Wong
UK and Hong Kong based graphic designer, Jen believes that design habits are formed on the basis of collaborating techniques, tools, and technology. Jen’s journey includes experimenting with digitalizing Chinese calligraphy, and a common theme across her work has been transforming and reinterpreting traditional practice with digital techniques.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
11:30 AM GMTType on the Intersection
Yehwan will talk about her practice of experimenting types by placing them on the intersection between physical and online space.
Yehwan Song
Korean-born web artist and designer, Song creates anti-friendly, nonuser-centric, unconventional, and diverse independent websites to flip the general understandings of web design and subvert users’ behaviors.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
12:00 PM GMTWhen Pressing Speakers
Richard The
Richard The is a designer, artist, and educator. His work—ranging from graphic design to installations to user interfaces—investigates the aesthetic and cultural implications of an increasingly technology-driven society.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
12:30 PM GMTInternet Type
OKOK
OKOK is an independent creative studio based between Amsterdam and Seoul, creating okok visual digital experiences.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
01:00 PM GMTRealtime Graphics
Andreas Gysin
Andreas Gysin is a Swiss-born graphic designer and generative artist that stands at the intersection of art and technology, crafting groundbreaking code-driven art that transcends the boundaries of traditional art and design.
- PresentationPresentationSat, Oct 15
01:30 PM GMTRule of Three
Akiem Helming and Bas Jacobs, Underware
Zealotry wouldn’t be an inappropriate collective noun for Underware. They not only design typefaces, they live type—they educate about type, they publish about type, they talk about type, they want (and organise) others to talk about type. Representing Underware at Inscript this year will be Akiem Helming and Bas Jacobs.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
11:00 AM GMTConfessions of a professional type bully
His talk will focus on coding “type torturer tools” with Processing and P5js, going all the way from rough sketches to complex custom tools for visual identities.
André Burnier
André Burnier is a Brazilian graphic designer and creative coder, researching the intersection between graphic design and programming—more specifically—how to use programming as a tool to make graphic design.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
11:30 AM GMTCoding Typography
Cotton’s primary design medium is coding, and her talk will focus on the various ways to use code to design experimental type (as opposed to designing with type using code). Specifically, discussing processing type by its pixels as a basis for experimental type (why that's a cop-out!); the notion of designing typographies based on a parameterized grid (and why that opens up possibilities when fed through code); and most importantly, the parameterization of type. Her talk will analyze various ways of inputting “what makes a letter” into code, and explore various outputs and their implications.
Talia Cotton
Talia Cotton is a designer, coder, and educator and a leading specialist in the intersection of branding and technology. She’s fascinated by the notion of working with the computer to generate typography that is both readable and beautiful, but infinite.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
12:00 PM GMTType, Machines & Memes
For Inscript, Dev designed a new set of serif-pixel-letters. Each letter was then run through Pixel-Diffusion, a text-to-image model, pushing the boundaries of AI and Type.
Dev Valladares
Dev Valladares doesn’t like boxing himself into categories or referring to himself in third person. However, he relents when the situation calls for it. He is an interdisciplinary designer, visual artist and someday, celebrated philosopher.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
12:30 PM GMTClimate Crisis Typeface: Saving the World with Type
Korkala and Coull share their journey and process in creating the Climate Crisis typeface, a variable font to visualize the effects of climate change designed for the Nordics’ largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. Talking on subjects including type design and custom briefs, variable fonts and design spaces, working outside your skill and comfort zone, prototyping with unconventional methods, dealing with fear and doubt, and environmental ethics.
Eino Korkala & Daniel Coull
Cape Town-based designer Daniel Coull and Finnish designer Eino Korkala met at the TypeMedia program in the Netherlands in 2017. Their collaborative typeface Climate Crisis, released in 2021, has won numerous awards and been inducted into the permanent collection at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
01:00 PM GMTPlay in Practice
A conversation about 3 year old Chief Creative Officers, creating brand soul, and finding the beautiful in the ugly.
Thomas Wilder
Thomas Wilder is Global Principal at Wolff Olins, former Executive Creative Director at sweetgreen and former Partner & Creative Director at COLLINS. His work has been recognized by numerous design organizations and publications including the AIGA, The One Show, Graphis, Creative Review, The Type Directors Club, Print Magazine, Computer Arts, Communication Arts, among others.
- PresentationPresentationSun, Oct 16
01:30 PM GMTReimagined Reality
There is so much inspiration in our immediate surroundings that we tend to ignore while we could creativity implement in our work. It is all about training our eyes to really see things, explore the everyday from another perspective, reimagine the world that we live in.
Tina Touli
Tina Touli is a London-based creative director, graphic communication designer, speaker and educator. She thrives on designing multidisciplinary work that involves a variety of techniques, showcased across different platforms and mediums, always with a great attention to detail.
Branding
The brand effect for 2022 was itself created as an Exquisite Corpse of experimentation, with some early failures and happenstance compromises. Thank you to all those that contributed at various junctures—Yehang Yin, Vincent Wagner, Ksenya Samarskaya, Alex Slobzheninov, and with final bobble coding and manifesting into being by Eric Jacobsen.
Select Press
Inscript Type Festival 2023: A not-to-be-missed rendezvous with typography and innovation in the digital realm
Inscript Type Festival 2023: A not-to-be-missed rendezvous with typography and innovation in the digital realm.
Typeroom
Typo Festival Inscript
Die Sprecherliste des Type Festival Inscript 2022 kann sich sehen lassen: DIA Studio, Kiel Mutschelknaus, Tina Touli, Underware und noch viele mehr.
PAGE
Access to the Futures of Type
The experimental tone of ‘Inscript’ left me feeling exhilarated, liberated and impatient to try new these tools and methods in my own work.
Eye Magazine
Inscript has the best conference lineup of the year
Inscript has the best conference lineup of the year
Neon Moiré via Insta Comments
“Inclusive, diverse, bold”: Experimental type festival Inscript returns for its second year
“Inclusive, diverse, bold”: Experimental type festival Inscript returns for its second year.
It’s Nice That
Breaking barriers for a brave new world: Ksenya Samarskaya on Inscript Experimental Type Festival
Inscript brings together practitioners that are pushing forward the future of type — want to know what we’re all going to be doing in a few years? See what’s possible? These are the rooms to be in.
Typeroom
A.I., typography and storytelling: Analyzing the new visual identity of Inscript Festival with Kacper Pietrzykowski
A.I., typography and storytelling: Analyzing the new visual identity of Inscript Festival with Kacper Pietrzykowski
Typeroom
Inscript Experimental Type Festival: the moment to join a revolution dawns online
Inscript is this fall’s must-attend event. And THE virtual portfolio and behind-the-scenes showcase experience for all things pushing the edge of the expected.
Typeroom
Cutting Edge of Type
Inscript was not just a celebration of creativity; it was a testament to the power of collaboration, exploration and experimentation. As we reflect upon the insights shared and connections forged during the [2023] festival, we are reminded of the boundless possibilities that lie at the intersection of typography, technology, and human ingenuity. Inscript inspires and empowers designers to push the boundaries of what is possible, charting a course towards a more innovative and inclusive future.
Eye Magazine
The Daily Heller: Brazen Experiments, Phygital Media and Ferrofluid, Huh?
“A virtual event for sharing the wildest experiments or latest innovations, Inscript highlights industry experts across typography, creative coding, phygital media, and more—from artificial intelligence to type knitting; from augmented realities to massive interactions in the physical landscape; from financial models to ferrofluid.”
PRINT
Inscript: An Online Festival of Technology and Typography
“I think all tools change behavior. And having awareness, and dialogue, about how that happens is immensely beneficial so that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
IDEA
Echoes of Type: Weaving Sound, Code, and Culture – Inscript Type Festival 2024
Inscript embodies the spirit of innovation, encouraging all who join to embrace their curiosity and engage with the future of typography in a way that is both accessible and inspiring. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a newcomer to the field, this festival promises to ignite your imagination and expand your understanding of how typography can shape our world.
Typeroom