Typographics 2018 branding

Typographic identity designed for Typographics 2018, an annual festival held in New York City that explores the roots of modern typography and current trends in the field. Each year, more than 600 design professionals and type enthusiasts attend.

The 2018 typeface played with the idea of optical illusion and hypnotic concentric lines. Thanks to a collaboration among typeface designers, graphic designers, and Cooper Union undergraduates, the first use of the rippling white lines around the word “Typographics” set in the outline version of Faction by Shiva Nallaperumal was used as the hero image of the festival website, then reworked for different conference collateral such as postcards and tote bags. Using Drawbot, the words OBSESS and INDULGE were set in the solid version of Faction in white on a black background, but this time lines were interpolated to space between an outer rectangle and the word’s outline. To balance the display typeface, the designers chose a secondary one, Canal by Coppers and Brasses, which was used for body copy, captions, and subtitles.

Along the west side of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building is a colonnade of windows that have become an important face of the Typographics festival. With Faction used only in black and white set in differing weights, the windows, which spelled out the word Typographics, playfully expanded the conference identity. An accompanying video resulted in a lively virtual stroll along the letters.

The animation shown below (by Jonathan Katav was played on stage at the start of each day of the conference.