During the workshop, the participants will get to know the uncanny world of variable fonts. Flexible, adaptable fonts are mentioned everywhere – but what possibilities do they offer? How are they developed and how can they be used? During this week, participants of the workshop will be given the opportunity to experiment with this font technology, realizing their own ideas. Even though variable fonts are a digital technology, the workshop starts with analogue technologies. Equipped with wax, we shall develop experimental letter forms, on the very brink of readability, using the bandwidth between positive and negative space. Based on these experiments, the participants will develop the vocabulary of the individual typefaces and translate them into digital drawings related to the variable font axes. We shall then extend the fonts to cover a basic Latin character set and include at least two axes. In addition, a motion-based showcase or documentation of the fonts will be developed as a final step of the workshop.
Fabian Harb – together with Johannes Breyer – is directing Dinamo, a digital foundry offering retail and bespoke typefaces, software, and consultancy. Based in Basel, they have been teaching internationally and, since 2018, they have also been members of AGl. So far, Dinamo has released more than 20 typefaces, oscillating between commercial and cultural contexts. Omnigroup is the shared practice of Simon Mager and Leonardo Azzolini, a Lausanne-based design studio that operates within the fields of graphic and type design, web development, visual identities, and education. In 2022, together with Dinamo, they will publish a typeface project based on the work of seminal Swiss type-design educator Walter Käch. Dinamo: http://abcdinamo.com Omnigroup:https://omni.gr
The Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE) / The Basel School of Design offers workshops for students, educators and graphic designers.
The workshops afford insights into topical themes of visual communication in a study programme reflecting the rich tradition of the Basel School of Design. Practical exercises with a high level of professionalism form the core of the workshops focus. Reflection as well as contextual knowledge will be conveyed by way of input sessions, allowing participants’ work to be judged within a contemporary, future-oriented context relevant to professional practice. The trinational Rhine River Valley is a unique cultural environment with easy access to France and Germany and to sites such as the Vitra Design Museum (G), the Isenheimer Alter (F), or Ronchamps (F). In Basel, the Fondation Beyeler, Tinguely Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Schaulager, and Museum of Contemporary Art are world-renowned. Besides its museums, Basel offers a rich mixture of cultural events.
Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)
Through digital media and the democratisation of communication channels that goes hand in hand with it, the critical handling of their visual and interaction-based design has become decisively more important, because the social relevance of information and communication has thus fundamentally changed.
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