Sheridan hosts international panel and film on old and new of type design

Next Monday evening (September 21) Sheridan College is hosting an international panel of type and design experts to talk about where typography has been and where it's going. Panelists will be Matthew Carter, Rod McDonald, Allan Haley and Charles Nix of Monotype.  They will discuss the value of the abandoned punch-cutting process for type designers today, who create fonts now using computer-based, digital technology.

TypeForming: The Evolution of Typefaces will features both an exhibition and world premiere screening of a digitized and expanded film by the renowned typographer Carl Dair -- the man who designed Cartier, Canada's first Latin typeface for the 1967 centennial. 

"The film, Carl Dair at Enschedé: The Last Days of Metal Type features a digitized version of the 1957 silent film shot by Dair while studying in Holland with one of the last great European letter punch cutters, Paul Rädisch. It begins with a prologue by noted Canadian type designer Rod McDonald, who in 1998, updated and expanded Dair’s Cartier typeface for digital technology. The film is narrated by Matthew Carter, one of the world’s leading typeface designers who also studied with Rädisch. Carter explains the historic art of punch-cutting and casting in which the hand written letters of scribes were engraved into steel to produce the typefaces used in printing presses. In the interview that follows, Carter reflects on his own time at Enschedé and discusses the dying days of a highly complex and exacting manual technique. Co-produced by Sheridan College and Massey College at the University of Toronto, the film reveals the beauty and skill involved in this obsolete art form and adds to the world’s body of knowledge on making typefaces.

The event, co-sponsored by Massey College and Monotype, takes place at Sheridan's Trafalgar Campus,  1430 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, starting at 5 pm.