Automatic Type Design 3

Automatic Type Design 3
digital typography yesterday and tomorrow

Atelier national de recherche typographique
ENSAD Nancy
17–21 February 2025

Automatic Type Design is an international symposium focused on digital font technologies, from design to production. In its third edition, it aims to examine digital type design and typography, their concepts, and challenges from both historical and forward-looking perspectives.

We seek to critically review how past technological advancements have shaped our current understanding of fonts and letterforms. Additionally, we aspire to glimpse into the future to anticipate upcoming developments. In particular, we hope to critically assess the applications of machine learning, exploring its potential and limitations. The conference welcomes designers, technologists, historians, and researchers.
See previous editions:
— Automatic Type Design 1, 2014
— Automatic Type Design 2, 2016

Wednesday, February 19th
Session 1: Yesterday

Amphi 200 & Amphi 100, Mines Nancy, Campus ARTEM

9h45
Thomas Huot-Marchand (ANRT Nancy, FR) Davide Fornari (ECAL/HES-SO). Welcome address

10h
Keynote: Ferdinand Ulrich, Patrick Baudelaire. Digital type from the day before yesterday and tomorrow

10h45
Julie Blanc and Clémence Imbert (HEAD-Genève, CH). Typesetting and Publishing Tools: Beyond WYSIWYG

11h15
Maurice Meilleur (Iowa State University, USA). From score to algorithm to diagram

—

14h
Keynote: Anushah Hossain (University of California, Berkeley, USA). Creativity or Constraint? The Limits of Text Technologies for Non-Latin Scripts

14h45
Abeera Kamran (University of Reading, UK). Reading Nastaʿlīq: from print mastery to web failures

15h15
Kostas Bartsokas, Eleni Beveratou, Gerry Leonidas, Natalia Qadreh, Emilios Theofanous, Irene Vlachou, and Alexios Zavras (University of Reading, UK). Consequences of being early and a few: unfinished business for Greek typography

16h
Fraser Muggeridge (Leeds Beckett University, UK). Justified and unjustified setting (at the same time)

16h30
Olivier Lebrun (Paris, FR). Energy Made (Them) Visible, Chap. III, Jean Crampilh-Broucaret and “le plancher de Jeannot (1971-1972)”

17h15
Keynote: Scott Kim (Stanford University, USA). Knuth, Hofstadter, Warnock — An Eclectic Typographic Synthesis

18h
Roland Früh, Sophie Wietlisbach (ECAL/HES-SO, CH), Anna-Lena Wuerth (Hochschule Mainz, DE). Book launch of ‘Impact Type’ – about technological innovation, type design, and typewriters

19h
Opening of the exhibition Univers. From Light to Matter, curated by Tânia Raposo and Varya Goncharova (ANRT Nancy, FR)

Thursday, February 20th
Session 2: Tomorrow

Amphi 200 & Amphi 100, Mines Nancy, Campus ARTEM

9h
Keynote: David Březina (Rosetta, CZ). What is a universal script grammar?

9h45
Ann Bessemans (Hasselt University, BE). The automatization of rhythm deduction in type

10h15
Giulio Galli (Hasselt University, BE). The challenges of defining typographic parameters

11h
Keynote: Kai Bernau, Alice Savoie, Matthieu Cortat Roller, Radim Pesko (ECAL/HES-SO, CH). Beyond “Beyond Bézier”

11h45
Niteesh Yadav (Pocket FM, IN). Beyond Screens: Reimagining Typography in Immersive Realities

—

14h
Francois Chastanet (isdaT Toulouse, FR). Breaking the glass ceiling of open-path fonts’ export (and use)

14h30
Filip Paldia and Samuel Čarnoky (Faculty of Arts – Technical University of Košice, CZ). Generating fonts with transformers and normalised datasets

15h
Petr van Blokland (TypeMedia, KABK The Hague, NL. Cooper Union, USA). Combining machine learning and rule based digital assistants to create short design cycles for type design projects

16h
Keynote: Gary McGraw (USA). ML/AI, Typographic Design, and the Four "I"s

16h45
Erik van Blokland (TypeMedia, KABK The Hague, NL). See Also: the cosine similarity in type design

17h15
Closing keynote: NORM (Zürich, CH)

19h30
Opening of NORM exhibition at My Monkey Gallery (Nancy)

Friday, February 21th
Session 3: Demos

Auditorium ENSAD Nancy, Campus ARTEM

9h
Jany Belluz and Robert Pratley (Dalton Maag, London, UK). How to Make COLRv1 Fonts Without a Font Editor: The Feedback Loop Between Design and Technology

9h20
Jeremy Tribby (Countertype, Oakland California, USA). Italic Assistant : a multi-modal approach to automatic italics

9h40
Laurence Penney (Axis-Praxis, UK). Visualizing the mathematics inside variable fonts

10h20
Léna Le Pommelet, My-Lan Thuong (Sharp Type, USA). The OmniLatin Tool

10h40
Cédric Rossignol-Brunet (ESAD Valence, FR). Typographic Program

11h
Filip Paldia and Samuel Čarnoky (LTTR/CORP, Brno, CZ). Beyond The Stroke — The Skeleton Type Design Study

11h20
Marte Verhaegen (RoboFont, BE / Production Type, FR). (Re-)introducing UFOStretch and RoundingUFO

11h40
Gaetan Baehr, Jérémie Hornus, Just Van Rossum (Black Foundry, FR). FONTRA

February 17-18
Workshops

Feb.17-18
Ferdinand Ulrich, Petr Van Blokland. Legacy font editors: IKARUS, FONTOGRAPHER

Feb.17-18
Gaetan Baehr, Jérémie Hornus, Just Van Rossum (Black Foundry, FR). FONTRA

Feb.17-18
Eugénie Bidaut, Antoine Gelgon, Pierre Huyghebaert, Ludivine Loiseau (OpenSource Publishing / ERG / La Cambre Brussels, BE). METAFONT / METAPOST

Feb.17-18
Philipp Koller (Burrowlab & Burrow Berlin, DE). A Parametric Type System

Feb.17-18
Simon Thiefes, Joshua Haymann (Haymann Thiefes Studio / HAW Hamburg, DE). Typo Meter — Unmeasured typography

Feb.17-18
Emile Greis. Tectonics Typefaces

Feb.18
Frederik Berlaen, Marte Verhaegen (Robofont, BE). Hé is this ROBOFONT?

Location
The conference will be held physically at ENSAD & Mines Nancy, ARTEM Campus, Nancy (France).
Registrations are closed, we are full :)

The symposium will be livestreramed on this page (no registration needed)

Subscribe to ANRT newsletter

Location
The conference will be held physically at ENSAD & Mines Nancy, ARTEM Campus, Nancy (France).
Registrations are closed, we are full :)

The symposium will be livestreramed on this page (no registration needed)

Subscribe to ANRT newsletter

Location
The conference will be held physically at ENSAD & Mines Nancy, ARTEM Campus, Nancy (France).
Registrations are closed, we are full :)

The symposium will be livestreramed on this page (no registration needed)

Subscribe to ANRT newsletter

Curated by
Thomas Huot-Marchand, ANRT (FR)
Alice Savoie, ANRT (FR) – ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
Anushah Hossain, UC Berkeley (USA)
Davide Fornari, ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
David Březina, Rosetta Research (CZ)

Organized by
Atelier national de recherche typographique / École nationale supérieure d’art et de design de Nancy
in partnership with écal / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)

Curated by
Thomas Huot-Marchand, ANRT (FR)
Alice Savoie, ANRT (FR) – ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
Anushah Hossain, UC Berkeley (USA)
Davide Fornari, ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
David Březina, Rosetta Research (CZ)

Organized by
Atelier national de recherche typographique / École nationale supérieure d’art et de design de Nancy
in partnership with écal / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)

Curated by
Thomas Huot-Marchand, ANRT (FR)
Alice Savoie, ANRT (FR) – ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
Anushah Hossain, UC Berkeley (USA)
Davide Fornari, ECAL/HES-SO (CH)
David Březina, Rosetta Research (CZ)

Organized by
Atelier national de recherche typographique / École nationale supérieure d’art et de design de Nancy
in partnership with écal / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)