TYPO Labs 2018 Berlin, April 12–14

Ana Regidor
Ana Regidor Posts: 6
in Events


TYPO Labs
How far can we go?
April 12–14, 2018 

TYPO Labs aims to connect font engineers and practitioners with OS developers, CSS experts and academics. The purpose is to provide a platform for the exchange of best practices, advance the state of the art and encourage the integration of new type technologies into future digital communications.

Created for developers by developers, the third TYPO Labs will cover the full stack of font developments, including OpenType Variation, CJK deployment and type challenges in the field of VR and AR. 

Early Bird Tickets available until December 31!

http://typotalks.com/labs/2018

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Comments

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,887
    James: That was the talk I gave at the Kerning Conference this past spring—

    But there is plenty more to say! Looking forward to Typo Labs again.  :)
  • Ofir Shavit
    Ofir Shavit Posts: 397
    edited August 2017
    James Montalbano said:
    "How Come It Took So Long To Get Here?"
    Good question. 

    In direct relation to this question I have a strong need to mention Fontark, maybe even as a test case.

    Launched at Sept 2013, developed and enhanced up until 2015, Fontark represents, what I'm sure of, and many of those that really got to know it, a most significant innovation in type-design-tools. 

    One that in many cases, reduces the efforts and time of first-mid type design stages by 90%. Yes....Ninety! percents!

    Fontark is capable of doing that for a combination of complimentary... New concepts, solutions and technology, but mostly for it's innovative concepts.  

    (90%!!!!)

    Fontark is cross-platform, available to work instantly without downloading or installing, always updated, including a built in skeletal mechanism, fluid grid and real time flexible cross-glyphs-synchronisation. Amongst the rest.

    It is not perfect, but the concepts, ideas and proofs are there and live, not just as a demo or vision, but real practical tools. And we have piiiiles of piles of improvements and ideas for it just waiting to be realised, mostly lacking the resources to do it.

    We ,the Fontark team, will probably not be at Typo-labs (still considering it).

    But, it is, 2017....017....17......7!

    We are always (almost instantly) more than ready to fully demonstrate and discuss it's concepts and capabilities to anyone of interest from anywhere. (90%!!!) We're just few clicks apart.


  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Ofir Shavit
    Ofir Shavit Posts: 397
    edited August 2017
    James, Fontark is a design-Tool, it is focused on designing type faster and easier. It's output is an OTF font file ,so it has nothing to do with the OTF spec (It may influence it in the future though). 

    It is just a set of several complimentary solutions, some old, some completely new(!) that compresses weeks and days of work to hours and minutes. 

    Unfortunately there is no better way to understand what it does and how, than a direct demonstration of it, Fortunately this is very simple these days, and requires only several minutes.

    Hrant H. Papazian said:
    I was fortunate to get such a personal demo recently, and was much more impressed than I expected. FontArk is powerful and flexible, and for many type designers could replace most of their process. Most reassuring is that it's not too tied down to skeletons.

  • Jens Kutilek
    Jens Kutilek Posts: 361
    Ofir Shavit said:

    We ,the Fontark team, will probably not be at Typo-labs (still considering it).

    But why not? You could reach a lot of people at once, more than you can reach by giving screen-sharing sessions of several minutes ;)

    Maybe ask @Ana Regidor for a spot in the TypoLabs program? I believe speakers are paid, if that's what's keeping you back.
  • Hin-Tak Leung
    Hin-Tak Leung Posts: 361
    Somebody did suggest that I asked for a spot to talk about font validator, and I did fire off a e-mail a couple of weeks ago to another person, but I haven't heard back. So I might as well do it here. So @Ana Regidor , could typolabs be interested in having me talking about font validator and stuff?
  • Bianca Berning
    Bianca Berning Posts: 21
    I'm confused. Is TYPO Labs inviting speakers or are proposals welcome?
  • Jens Kutilek
    Jens Kutilek Posts: 361
    edited August 2017
    Actually I don’t know for sure. There is no official call for proposals. I just figured if you have anything to share that may interest the type community, the organizers may be grateful for a hint.

    (I presented at TypoLabs 2016 when I still worked at Monotype, and I was asked to do it as part of my job. So not sure how the procedure for other speakers was.)
  • Bianca Berning
    Bianca Berning Posts: 21
    I'd be grateful to get a confirmation. Maybe @Ana Regidor can help?
    If it's common practice to send abstracts to conference organisers who don't officially call for proposals I think it would be fair to spread the word.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,190
    I agree that an unambiguous process is desirable, and an open call for proposals is the fairest way to let people know that proposals are welcome. That said, I've never known a conference organiser not to welcome suggestions for interesting content, whether in the form of proposals from prospective speakers or recommendations from third parties. That's the case even for heavily curated conferences.
  • Ana Regidor
    Ana Regidor Posts: 6
    edited August 2017
    Hi, good morning! (and sorry for the delay!)
    @Ofir Shavit @Hin-Tak Leung don’t hesitate to send me an Email, I work closely with the program directors.
    Hi @Bianca Berning! Answering your question: we don’t have an official call for proposals BUT of course we are more than grateful for suggestions and interesting content.
    We are looking forward to having some interest conversations during the AtypI :wink: 
  • Bianca Berning
    Bianca Berning Posts: 21
    edited August 2017
    Thanks, Ana. I'll make sure to spread the word.
    FWIW, I'd like to see @Sahar Afshar talk us through variable fonts for justification in the Arabic script, perhaps someone else (Roozbeh?) could talk about the layout engine's struggles with that. 
  • Deleted Account
    Deleted Account Posts: 739
    Not sure what Arabic’s need for a registered xtra axis has to do with Typolab’s curation of presentations? Arabic does not need to give a presentation to say it needs this, or an axis of identical functionality, to be registered. 
  • Bianca Berning
    Bianca Berning Posts: 21
    I'm probably missing your point but I'll expand on my suggestion nevertheless: I'd welcome a discussion of the possibilities of variable fonts for scripts other than Latin. I think exploration in this area has been rather sparse so far and the interaction between fonts and layout engine seems to be the reason the development of variable fonts for Arabic is stalled. I appreciate this might be common knowledge for you but it might not be for the majority of the TYPO Labs audience. If this topic isn't of interest for you, you can always sit that one out.
  • Sahar Afshar
    Sahar Afshar Posts: 6
    Thank you for the interest @Bianca Berning and the mention. 
    I think that it's clear from what Bianca's written above that she isn't asking for someone to talk about wanting to register an axis, but about the possibilities variable font technology offer beyond what we've seen so far (like weight and width changes), an example of which is illustrated above; for proper organic justification of Arabic text.  
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,190
    One of the things I hope to see in any discussion of variable font axes and their programmatic use, is consideration of whether a variable behaviour in context of a specific script can be generalisable across multiple scripts. This is something that didn't happen in the registration of OpenType Layout features for complex script shaping, with the result that we have redundant features used for specific scripts for functionality that could have been handled with a general feature shared by all scripts. Likewise, we have features that could have interesting implementations for many scripts, but which are only available to some scripts.

    I think Sahar's Arabic justification example is a good topic for such consideration. While Arabic presents the need for such behaviour, what is that behaviour if we try to describe it in general terms?

    And Bianca is very right to suggest that any discussion of programmatic variation behaviour that would interact with higher level layout functions such as justification needs to progress to considering software implementation and challenges. In my presentation at the last TYPO Labs, I introduced a number of possible variation behaviours at the glyph level — including variable kashidas, which would be only one part of improved Arabic justification; Sahar's example is much more elegant —, but mostly to encourage people to think about variations at levell. I hope next year's TYPO Labs carries these and other ideas introduced in 2017 further in terms of looking at practicalities of implementation.
  • Deleted Account
    Deleted Account Posts: 739
    Cool!

    Bianca, I was talking about your idea, not you. Your personal attacks are noted though, thanks.

    John, your ideas and Bianca’s should stick together, as they are the same.
  • Ana Regidor
    Ana Regidor Posts: 6
    Hi everybody! 
    Our speaker family is growing! Have a look on our website:
    https://www.typotalks.com/labs/2018/speakers/
    I will try to upload the schedule in January! 

    Best regards and happy holidays!


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