PORTLAND, Oregon — As the premier gathering for the international typography and lettering community marks its milestone 20th anniversary, the annual TypeCon conference has transformed the Rose City into a vibrant hub of creative energy, historical reflection, and technological anticipation. Among the key participants helping to anchor this year’s festivities is the Adobe Typekit team, boasting a robust presence that bridges the tactile, ink-stained heritage of mid-century print shops with the cutting-edge horizons of digital design software.
From rare, hand-carved circus broadsides dating back to the 1930s to exclusive previews of upcoming software mechanics for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, TypeCon 2017 is shaping up to be a watershed moment for type designers, typographers, educators, and enthusiasts alike. As attendees navigate the bustling schedule of keynote speeches, workshops, and social mixers in Portland, the Adobe Typekit delegation has laid out a comprehensive itinerary designed to celebrate the past, engage the present, and inspire the future of visual communication.
Main Facts: A Milestone Convergence of Craft and Code
At its core, TypeCon serves as the flagship annual conference hosted by the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA), a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion, study, and support of typography and its allied arts. Celebrating its twentieth year, the conference brings together a diverse cross-section of the global design community. This year, the partnership between Adobe Typekit and the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum stands out as a centerpiece of the conference experience, merging physical preservation with digital accessibility.
The collaboration highlights a shared mission: safeguarding the rich history of wood type manufacturing and letterpress printing while pushing the boundaries of how letterforms are created, manipulated, and deployed in modern computing environments.
Key Highlights of Adobe’s TypeCon 2017 Involvement:
- The Hamilton Wood Type Exhibition: A curated display of 10 to 12 rare, vintage circus and entertainment posters originating from the 1930s to the 1950s.
- Live Letterpress Printing: Interactive demonstrations during conference breaks, utilizing original wood blocks from the Hamilton collection, allowing attendees to take home authentic physical souvenirs.
- Software Innovation Previews: A joint presentation by Adobe’s Steve Ross (Typekit) and Wayne Hoang (Illustrator/InDesign team) offering a first look at experimental and upcoming type-handling tools.
- Community Engagement: Adobe’s continued sponsorship of the SOTA Spacebar networking and gaming event, alongside a prominent morning keynote by senior typeface designer Paul Hunt.
Chronology: A Day-by-Day Guide to the Adobe Experience
For those attending TypeCon 2017, navigating the dense schedule requires strategic planning. The Adobe Typekit team has mapped out a series of touchpoints spanning the duration of the conference, ensuring that participants have ample opportunity to experience historical retrospectives, technological breakthroughs, and community-driven events.
Throughout the Conference: The Living Archive
From the moment registration opens until the final closing remarks, conference attendees have unrestricted access to a special archival exhibition mounted in partnership with the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. Located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, the museum is world-renowned for rescuing, cataloging, and preserving the physical artifacts of American printing history.
The showcased posters—bold, vibrant, and packed with the energetic vernacular characteristic of mid-century traveling entertainment—were acquired by Hamilton in 2016 from the historic Enquirer Printing Company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Printed using hand-carved wood blocks, these artifacts represent a golden era of commercial street advertising where visual impact was paramount.
Adding a dynamic element to the static exhibition, representatives from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum are stationed on-site with select original blocks. During conference intermissions, attendees can witness the rhythmic, mechanical thump of the proof press in action, walking away with fresh, ink-on-paper prints that tangibly connect modern digital workflows to centuries-old traditions.
Friday, August 3: Software Previews and Interactive Networking
As the conference hits its stride on Friday, attention pivots toward the intersection of technical innovation and community camaraderie.
- The Midday Technical Reveal: Around lunchtime, Steve Ross of the Adobe Typekit team takes the stage alongside Wayne Hoang, representing the core Adobe Illustrator and InDesign engineering teams. This session offers a highly anticipated sneak peek into the pipeline of upcoming type tool features. For professional designers and production artists who rely on Adobe Creative Cloud daily, this session provides valuable insights into how software developers are addressing modern layout challenges, variable font integration, and advanced OpenType feature management.
- The Return of the SOTA Spacebar: As Friday evening unfolds, the conference shifts from formal instruction to relaxed socialization with the return of the SOTA Spacebar. Co-sponsored by Adobe, this beloved conference institution is playfully described by organizers as "a game, wrapped in a conversation, finished with a selfie." Designed to break down social barriers among veteran designers, students, and first-time attendees, the Spacebar challenges participants to complete interactive tasks, exchange ideas, and capture the moment, with fun prizes awarded to successful contenders.
Saturday, August 4: Language, Culture, and Emoji
Kicking off the weekend programming on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m., senior Adobe typeface designer Paul Hunt takes center stage to deliver a keynote address titled "Language, Culture, Emoji."
As pictographic communication continues to evolve into a universal digital lexicon, Hunt’s presentation explores the sociological, linguistic, and design implications of emoji within contemporary typography. The session challenges traditional boundaries of what constitutes a "character" in a digital font file, examining how cultural contexts shape the creation and interpretation of these ubiquitous visual symbols.
Beyond formal presentations, the broader Adobe contingent maintains an active presence throughout the weekend’s sessions, panel discussions, and social gatherings, offering attendees an open door for questions, feedback, and informal networking.
Supporting Data: The Partnership and Provenance
To fully appreciate the significance of the Adobe-Hamilton collaboration at TypeCon 2017, one must examine the historical weight of the artifacts on display and the broader economic and cultural ecosystem of modern typography.
The Enquirer Printing Company Collection
The 10 to 12 posters featured in the TypeCon exhibition are survivors of a bygone commercial era. Founded in the late 19th century, the Enquirer Printing Company of Cincinnati was a powerhouse in the production of theatrical, circus, and carnival advertising. Before the dominance of offset lithography and digital printing, these broadsides required immense craftsmanship:
- Materials: Carved end-grain maple and cherry wood blocks, combined with movable metal type.
- Aesthetics: Multi-colored block printing requiring precise registration, heavy use of condensed grotesque and Tuscan typeface styles designed for maximum legibility from a distance.
- Provenance: The 2016 acquisition by the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum rescued thousands of printing blocks, antique presses, and historic job-print specimens from potential dispersal or destruction, securing them for educational and archival purposes.
The Evolution of Digital Type Tools
The software preview presented by Steve Ross and Wayne Hoang arrives at a critical juncture in digital design. Over the past five years, the typography landscape has undergone a seismic shift with the widespread adoption of OpenType Font Variations (OpenType 1.8). This technology allows a single font file to behave as an infinite continuum of weights, widths, optical sizes, and slants.
Concurrently, design software must evolve to handle complex scripts, right-to-left layout engines, and non-traditional typographic inputs like emoji. Adobe’s investment in updating Illustrator and InDesign tools reflects the growing demand from creative professionals for fluid, non-destructive type manipulation that bridges the gap between historical aesthetics and modern computational power.
Official Responses and Industry Perspectives
The convergence of historical preservation and digital innovation at TypeCon 2017 has generated considerable discussion among industry leaders, educators, and software engineers.
Speaking on the partnership with the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, representatives from the Adobe Typekit initiative emphasized the necessity of remembering the physical roots of the digital tools designers use every day. "When you look at the raw geometry of a hand-carved wood block from the 1940s, you are looking at the direct ancestor of every digital vector curve we manipulate on our screens today," noted a spokesperson close to the collaboration. "Supporting organizations like Hamilton ensures that future generations of digital designers understand the physical constraints, tactile joys, and mechanical genius that shaped our alphabet."
Conference organizers from the Society of Typographic Aficionados similarly praised Adobe’s multi-faceted involvement in the milestone 20th-anniversary event. SOTA board members noted that corporate partnerships rooted in cultural preservation and community engagement elevate the educational value of TypeCon.
Furthermore, reaction to Paul Hunt’s upcoming session on emoji design underscores a broader industry acceptance of pictographic systems as legitimate subjects of typographic study. As digital communication becomes increasingly visual, type foundries and software developers are forced to grapple with the standardization, rendering consistency, and cultural nuances of global emoji sets. Hunt’s research positions Adobe at the vanguard of this linguistic evolution, proving that the science of writing systems extends far beyond the traditional Latin alphabet.
Implications: Where History Meets the Future of Design
The implications of TypeCon 2017—and Adobe’s prominent role within it—extend far beyond the span of a single weekend in Portland. As the design industry matures, the dichotomy between "analog craft" and "digital efficiency" is increasingly being replaced by a holistic philosophy of creative continuity.
1. The Preservation of Endangered Craft
Institutions like the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum face perpetual financial and logistical challenges in housing, maintaining, and operating vintage printing machinery. Corporate sponsorships and collaborative exhibitions, such as the one mounted with Adobe Typekit, provide essential visibility and public engagement. By bringing tangible pieces of printing history into a contemporary design conference, these artifacts are introduced to younger designers who may incorporate vintage wood-type textures, distressed letterpress aesthetics, and historical layout principles into modern branding projects.
2. The Future of Software Development
The sneak peek of upcoming type tools in Illustrator and InDesign signals Adobe’s ongoing commitment to streamlining complex typographic workflows. As variable fonts and multi-axis design spaces become standard practice in web and print publishing, designers require intuitive, responsive software interfaces. The feedback gathered during TypeCon’s technical sessions directly informs how engineers refine these features prior to public release, ensuring that real-world professional needs drive software evolution.
3. Expanding the Boundaries of Typography
By addressing topics like emoji, language, and cultural representation, conferences like TypeCon challenge the historical Eurocentric bias of traditional typography. As global digital communication platforms connect users across vastly different linguistic and cultural landscapes, type designers must adapt. Adobe’s investment in these discussions highlights a recognition that the future of typography is inclusive, multilingual, and infinitely more complex than traditional metal casting ever demanded.
As TypeCon 2017 draws to its conclusion in Portland, the echoes of the Hamilton proof press and the bright flashes of the SOTA Spacebar selfies tell a compelling story: the typographic community is thriving. By honoring twenty years of collective history while boldly embracing the technical frontiers of tomorrow, Adobe Typekit and its partners have set a high benchmark for what a creative conference can achieve.
