After St. Petersburg
ATypI’s 2008 annual conference in St Petersburg was a remarkable success writes ATypI President John D. Berry. Official attendance was 314, well in line with our recent conferences, with a large “local” contingent from Russia. (I put “local” in quotation marks because some of them came from as far away as central Siberia, more than 3000 kilometers distant.)
Posted on 28 September 2008 by John D. Berry, St. Petersburg and Seattle
Two tracks of talks, panels, and presentations were held in the neo-Baroque Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, in the heart of the city at the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt and the Fontanka embankment; both tracks seemed well attended and appreciated. Workshops were held in the Library (Mayakovsky Central Municipal Library), just around the corner. The opening-night keynote speech, a philosophical talk by Oleg Genisaretzky (delivered in Russian, with translation by the indispensable Maxim Zhukov), was given at the Palace, but for the next two evenings we adjourned to a very different venue, the Gallery (Loft Project Etagi), a short walk away, for the opening of the exhibits (eleven in all – a new record?) on Friday and the gala party on Saturday. The Gallery’s rough-industrial feel contrasted with the Palace’s faded elegance, giving us two very different experiences of the cultural venues of St Petersburg.
The main conference was preceded by two intense days of TypeTech, where the technical aspects of digital type are hashed out and investigated in more detail than is possible in a general conference program.
Many of the attendees also took advantage of tours, both before and after the main conference, to the Russian National Library, where a special exhibit of early Russian books was on display as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Civil Type. We saw not only pre-Petrine volumes such as the second book ever printed in Cyrillic type (printed in Krakow in 1491 – as the curator pointed out, one year before the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus) but also the first books printed in the new Civil Type, and even the original printer’s proof of the new types with Tsar Peter I’s own handwritten crossings-out and annotations – the document from which, for obvious reasons, our conference logo was derived.
On Sunday, at the AGM, we saw a dazzling presentation from the organizers of the 2009 conference in Mexico City, Ricardo Salas and Roger Black. The text of Ricardo's introduction will be on the website shortly, and a revised and finished version of the short video will go up at the end of October. The conference will be drawing on talent, enthusiasm, and typographic knowledge from Mexico and the whole of Latin America; we expect it to be an expansive and engaging event.
The Board also approved the venue for the 2010 conference, which will be held in Dublin, Ireland. Organized by Clare Bell and Mary Ann Bolger, the 2010 conference will be held in the heart of Dublin, a city with a rich heritage of books, printing, and writing, and one that's easily accessible from both sides of the Atlantic. Further details will emerge between now and next year's conference.
There were no new Board members up for election this year, which made the Annual General Meeting relatively short. We're sorry to see two of our current Board members leave, as their terms are up and they chose not to run for re-election: Sumner Stone and Erik Spiekermann. It was especially unfortunate that for family reasons Erik couldn't attend this year's conference; Erik has been a pillar of ATypI for many years, and he was very much looking forward to coming. (We had a streak of bad luck in last-minute cancellations; in addition to Erik, speaker Robert Bringhurst had to cancel suddenly, despite his intention and desire to attend, and Carol Wahler, executive director of the Type Directors Club, also found that she couldn't attend, for family reasons. They were all very much missed, but we hope to see them next year.)
The connections made and the ideas exchanged were the heart of the conference, as they always are. We hope to build on them through the year and to see many of you next year in Mexico.
John D. Berry
President