Looking at the details of BITS MMXI (Part 1)

➜ Bangkok International Typographic Symposium, 28th-29th October 2011 — this was silkscreened on the back of every staff’s t-shirt who was walking around Alliance Française preparing to launch the event on the 25th of May 2012. Looking at it conjured up memories of the disastrous flood in 2011 that hit numerous parts of Thailand including its capital, forcing the conference to shift to the following year. For most attendees, this was quite understandable since the flood pretty much halted every event in the country. For the organizers, it was simply more work. However, the excitement and energy that sprouted at the start of the day may have swept all their exhaustion away. It was a calm and cloudy morning with mild rain across certain parts of Bangkok. A perfect time to sleep and rest after long hours of work. At the entrance of Alliance Française auditorium, a crowd of people stood waiting for the gates to be opened. Several familiar faces and scores of new ones populated the area. It was, indeed, a good time to meet up, chat, have fun, and enjoy a mixture of casual and serious talks on typography.

Presented by Alliance Française, Goethe and Japan Foundation; and organized by Cadson Demak in association with ThaiGa, BITS was officially held for the second year on the 25th-26th of May 2012 with a new line up of veteran and aspiring typographers and designers including internationally well-renowned names such as Tnop Wangsillapakun, Sebastien Morlighem, Akira Kobayashi, Keith Chi-hang Tam, Anisa Suthayalai, and Akiem Helmling; while the local speakers were Smich Smanloh and Jakkrit Anantakul. Besides the main lecture sessions, the six international speakers ran typography workshops managed and facilitated by Pongtorn Hiranpruek.

Inside the auditorium, the crowds fluttered in to find their seat with some soft lighting to lead their way. A crisp BITS MMXI logo on a sterile white background displayed itself boldly on the stage’s projector screen. Original ambient music scored especially for the event filled the hall, spicing up the atmosphere. When all were properly seated and the lights dimmed, Anuthin Wongsunkakon and Wee Viraporn kicked off the show. A short introductory film starring previous year’s speakers gave a warm welcome to both new and returning audience, with formal opening speeches made by the host and organizers.

Tnop Wangsillapakun, a prominent Thai graphic designer based in Chicago was the first speaker to take the stage. A well-known figure among junior and seniors designers alike. We have probably came across his work on several occasions, especially when browsing Corbis, the stock photo agency giant, between 2004-2007. Its previous logo was crafted by him during his days at Segura Inc. Nevertheless, he had come a long way after that and the works he chose to present in this conference were obviously more recent, but no less compelling. Titled, ‘Customize Your Personality’, his lecture essentially outlined his thought and design process behind his typographic works. Although he sees himself as more of a graphic designer, his marriage to type is as happy as a typographer’s. He did try his own hands on designing fonts, which he dubbed Ready-To-Use Types, and came out with several typefaces such as B Positive, Square 45, One AM, and Fliptura. His usual works, though, composed mainly of brand identity and print projects, some of which he used existing fonts while also modifying them to a certain extent, treating them as a form of lettering and ending up with a new identity for a brand. This process is most pronounced in Futatsu, Fast Pay, and Maria Pinto. Once the modification of a typeface is so drastic, to the extent that it’s impossible to trace its roots, it becomes a bespoke type. And of course, one would normally see it in an identity project. One of his rather interesting works was his series of experiments on Word Recognition, which was based on the notion proposed by an American psychologist named, James Cattell, that we recognize a word not by the individual letters but by the shape the letters formed. In other words, we read shapes. The letterings he designed were beautiful, though hardly legible at first glance. But upon a moment of observation, we could perceive their familiar forms and draw out its meanings. It challenged our mind and the way we read. At the end of his lecture, one question arose that was worth noting especially for the younger generations. An audience asked him to reflect back on the Thai design industry. His answer, obvious to many but more than often overlooked, was that the new waves of designers should place more emphasis on the process and not take inspiration from contemporary (graphic) design as this is not how inspiration should be defined. In an age where design tools continue to advance and the access to creative works on the web expands, to the extent that we may forget what process and inspiration are, his words are worth reflecting. Seriously.

Sebastian Morlighem was the second speaker of the day. Unlike other lectures, his talk revolved around the history of typography and the classification of type (in France) rather than contemporary design works. Truthfully, it was a difficult subject especially for us Thais. Many times, when we are able to comprehend a certain matter, it’s often because we can put the general ideas in our own context. This helps us relate to the subject at hand easily. However, to dig up centuries old of type history in a country where the significance of typography is just an infant proves rather daunting. For instance, when he talked about the history of Didot and the stories of the Didot brothers, how they work and compete with each other, it very insightful and informative, but whether the audience can understand or see the value in it is a different matter. We know the typeface, Didot, some may have used it, but few are aware of its origin. And to trace it so far back, throwing out brand new information, could either be a revelation or just all Greek to the audience. Although the content of the lecture was obviously very French and may appear irrelevant to a bunch of Thai masses, it shows the depth of history one designer could draw upon. The question is, when and where can a Thai designer acquire such profound scope of his own type history? Will a century be enough to document a satisfying journey and evolution of Thai type? Nowadays, we may not see the use of Didot fonts that much and there are obviously a limited number of options and revivals especially of the earlier model. Sebastian did bring up an example, FF Acanthus, designed by Akira Kobayashi, saying how glad he was that someone actually revived it. Very often, we look back to the past to create something new. Whether small or big, one never knows. And the fact that it could be big, should confirm the significance of history.

Sebastian’s last slide of FF Acanthas unintentionally but fittingly lead us to the next speaker, Akira Kobayashi, a Japanese-born typographer currently working for Linotype in Germany. Modest in appearance and manner, he chose to speak in Japanese and let the translator do her job even though his English was more than understandable. Akira himself was a very experienced designer who was fortunate enough to have the chance to work with eminent typographers such as Hermann Zapf and Adrian Frutiger. And it was probably the demanding quality involved in his work that shaped him into what he is today — a perfectionist. He once submitted a printed out specimen of a typeface he was working on to Frutiger. It was already very well crafted but the old man replied upsettingly, ‘Akira, the lowercase O is not in the middle.’ In fact, it wasn’t. After going back to check the file on his computer, Akira found that it was a little too much to the right. The difference was microscopic, just one em apart. The perfectionism and craftsmanship he learned was also incorporated into his new typeface, Akko and Akko Rounded, in which he illustrated the design process for almost his entire lecture. Akko was drawn upon some of the fonts he designed previously including ITC Woodland, Adobe Calcite, TX Lithium, Eurostile Next, Eurostile Candy, Din Next, and Din Rounded. That was a handful of inspiration. And to add to the impressiveness, he designed the rounded version first. This was rooted back to his Japanese origin. Contrary to the signages in Germany where types are boldly and strongly used, Japanese signages usually utilizes rounded types to portray a sense of friendliness. As a result, roundedness came quite natural to him. Another interesting aspect of this designer was that he rarely work on Japanese typefaces. Probably because of the amount of time needed to invest in a complete set of font — it would take approximately two years to produce a typeface. Although the Kana version offers a more reasonable timeframe, it still takes a considerably longer time than designing Latin characters. Hearing this, Thais could consider themselves lucky.

The conference closed its first day with ‘The Beginner’, a talk by one of the local speakers, Smich Smanloh. Unlike the previous three speakers, Smich is a newcomer in the type industry. His presentation was a welcome sight as something for the audience to easily digest. And he did have some interesting things to offer, especially for aspiring type designers. Smich was a graphic designer who spent his daytime working for an advertising agency and nighttime crafting letters. He was also a member of Katatrad, an exhibition and foundry built to support young Thai designers. For the exhibition, he developed Garavek, a Thai font full of reminiscences of Bodoni and Didot. For the foundry, he submitted a new font instead — Ton. Ton is an interesting display font that tries to cover up as much space as possible. In other words, to leave a minimal amount of space for the counters. It is intriguing in the fact that we usually requires negative space to render a font legible, but this time the designer wishes to minimize it and still keep the legibility to a reasonable extent. And it turned out, after overcoming a whole load of challenges, quite charming. A fat, cute, attention-grabbing and practical font for display purposes. While working for an advertising agency, he also developed a Thai version of Uniqlo’s typeface for the ease of using it in advertisements, since the Thai font that Uniqlo chose didn’t really complement the Latin version. Smich’s design was originally accepted but for unknown reasons, it was later dropped for less suitable font. Surprisingly, no one in the audience seemed curious to know why. One thing worth complimenting was the fact that Smich continually returned to improve his original designs, whether it was his very first font, Garavek, or Ton. It’s a habit necessary for every typographer. Veteran type designers might not feel compelled to talk about such obvious matters, but for beginners, the value of always coming back is worth noting.

 

To Be Continued….
Looking at the details of BITS MMXI (Part 2)