PORTLAND, Ore. — As the typography and design community descends upon the Pacific Northwest for a milestone celebration, TypeCon is marking its 20th anniversary with a week-long convergence of lettering artists, type designers, foundries, and technologists. Among the prominent corporate supporters joining the festivities in Portland, Oregon, is the Adobe Typekit team, which has rolled out an extensive lineup of exhibitions, live printing demonstrations, software sneak peeks, and keynote presentations.
Celebrating two decades of typography, TypeCon 2017 serves as both a retrospective of the digital type revolution and a forward-looking window into the future of visual communication. For the Adobe Typekit delegation, this year’s conference represents a unique opportunity to bridge the analog heritage of historical letterpress printing with cutting-edge digital tool development.
Main Facts: A Milestone Convergence of Analog Heritage and Digital Innovation
The overarching narrative of TypeCon 2017 is the enduring power of letterforms across mediums—from hand-carved wooden blocks of the mid-20th century to vector-based variable fonts and international emoji sets. At the heart of Adobe’s presence this year is a high-profile collaboration with the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, designed to bring tangible printing history directly to conference attendees.
Through this ongoing partnership, Adobe has helped curate and support a museum-grade exhibition featuring 10 to 12 rare vintage posters. These artifacts are not mere decorations; they represent a salvaged chapter of American commercial printing history. Sourced from the historic Enquirer Printing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and acquired by Hamilton in 2016, the collection showcases vibrant circus and entertainment advertisements dating from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Beyond the static exhibition, the TypeCon experience is heavily punctuated by interactive technical sessions. Adobe has deployed key product personnel—including representatives from the Typekit, Illustrator, and InDesign teams—to engage directly with the user base, gather feedback, and preview the next generation of digital design tools. Furthermore, Adobe-sponsored social events and academic presentations are anchoring the weekend programming, ensuring that the company’s footprint is felt across every facet of the conference.
Chronology: A Day-by-Day Breakdown of Adobe’s TypeCon Schedule
For attendees looking to navigate the bustling four-day conference, Adobe has mapped out a dynamic schedule spanning historical displays, live activations, technical reveals, and theoretical keynotes.
Throughout the Conference: The Hamilton Wood Type Experience
Running concurrently with all conference events, the exhibition of Enquirer Printing Company posters offers a striking visual anchor in the venue. The posters highlight the bold, idiosyncratic aesthetics of mid-century wood type display faces, carved by master artisans before phototypesetting and digital design dominated the industry.
Adding an interactive element to the visual display, representatives from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum are stationed on-site with original wood blocks from the collection. During scheduled conference breaks, attendees have the rare opportunity to witness live letterpress printing. These sessions allow participants to take home authentic, freshly printed souvenirs pulled straight from historical type blocks—a tactile contrast to the digital screens that dominate modern design workflows.
Friday, August 3: Tool Previews and the SOTA Spacebar
The pace quickens on Friday as Adobe moves from historical appreciation into the realm of software development.
Around lunchtime, Adobe’s Steve Ross is scheduled to take the stage alongside Wayne Hoang, a key representative from the Adobe Illustrator and InDesign engineering teams. The duo will deliver an exclusive sneak peek at upcoming type tool features currently in development for the Creative Cloud ecosystem. While details under wraps prior to the presentation have generated significant industry speculation, the session is expected to focus on streamlining typographic workflows, enhancing font management, and introducing smarter layout capabilities for professional designers.
As Friday evening approaches, the social energy of TypeCon shifts toward the return of the SOTA (Society of Typographic Aficionados) Spacebar. Proudly supported by Adobe, the Spacebar has established itself as a conference tradition—described by organizers as “a game, wrapped in a conversation, finished with a selfie.” Attendees are invited to participate in typographic challenges and social games designed to test their knowledge, foster community camaraderie, and reward successful participants with fun, highly coveted prizes.
Saturday, August 4: Language, Culture, and the Evolution of Emoji
Saturday morning brings a deep dive into the sociological and linguistic aspects of modern typography. Beginning at 9:30 a.m., prominent type designer Paul Hunt of Adobe takes the podium to deliver the opening keynote of the day, titled “Language, Culture, Emoji.”
Hunt’s presentation explores the rapidly evolving landscape of pictorial communication, examining how emojis function as a global, cross-cultural visual language. As digital communication relies increasingly on non-textual symbols, Hunt’s talk addresses the technical, cultural, and design challenges inherent in standardizing and rendering these symbols across diverse operating systems and linguistic frameworks.
Following the morning keynote, the remainder of the weekend sees the broader Adobe Typekit team dispersing throughout the various paper sessions, panel discussions, and networking mixers. Conference attendees are encouraged to approach team members to ask technical questions, discuss licensing models, or simply share their passion for typography.
Supporting Data: Preserving the Legacy of American Wood Type
To fully appreciate the significance of the Adobe-sponsored Hamilton Wood Type exhibition at TypeCon 2017, it is necessary to examine the historical and material context of the artifacts on display.
The posters featured in the Portland exhibition originate from the Enquirer Printing Company, a legendary commercial print shop based in Cincinnati, Ohio. For decades, Enquirer produced millions of vibrant, multi-colored posters advertising circuses, carnivals, musical acts, and theatrical productions traveling across the United States. Utilizing oversized wood type, hand-carved illustration blocks, and vibrant stock inks, these posters were masterpieces of functional, ephemeral design meant to catch the eye of passersby from moving streetcars and storefronts.
In 2016, the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum—located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin—secured a massive acquisition of printing blocks, posters, and archival materials from the retiring Enquirer Printing Company. This rescue mission saved countless tons of typographic heritage from potential destruction or dispersion into the antique collector market.
- Collection Timeline: 1930s – 1950s
- Origin: Enquirer Printing Company (Cincinnati, OH)
- Preservation Archive: Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum (Two Rivers, WI)
- Exhibition Scope: 10–12 rare circus and entertainment posters, accompanied by live printing demonstrations utilizing original wood blocks during TypeCon conference breaks.
The collaboration between Adobe Typekit and the Hamilton Museum underscores a vital philanthropic and cultural commitment within the tech sector. By supporting the preservation and public exhibition of these physical artifacts, Adobe helps maintain a vital link between the physical origins of typography and the modern digital tools used by millions of designers today.
Official Responses and Industry Perspectives
The partnership between Adobe Typekit and heritage institutions like the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum reflects a broader shift in how major software corporations interact with the design community. Rather than viewing digital tools in a vacuum, industry leaders increasingly recognize that the future of type design is inextricably linked to its physical past.
Representatives from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum have consistently praised corporate partnerships that allow them to take their collection on the road. Bringing original blocks to events like TypeCon not only educates younger generations of digital designers about the physical limitations and aesthetic strengths of wood type, but it also generates vital awareness and financial support for the museum’s ongoing preservation efforts in Two Rivers.
Meanwhile, Adobe’s delegation in Portland has emphasized listening to the community. In statements surrounding their participation in TypeCon 2017, Typekit team members noted that face-to-face interactions at milestone events like the conference’s 20th anniversary are indispensable for product roadmapping. Whether discussing the nuances of OpenType feature support, variable font implementation, or international character sets, the feedback gathered from working designers directly influences how software engineers approach upcoming updates in applications like Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop.
Paul Hunt’s keynote on emoji design further highlights Adobe’s engagement with contemporary typographic discourse. As visual symbols become codified into official Unicode standards, the boundary between traditional typography and graphic iconography continues to blur. Hunt’s research into how culture shapes language—and how design facilitates that expression—positions Adobe at the forefront of modern linguistic adaptation.
Implications: What TypeCon 2017 Signals for the Future of Typography
As TypeCon 2017 draws to a close in Portland, the ripple effects of the announcements, exhibitions, and conversations held during the four-day event will be felt across the design industry for years to come.
1. The Convergence of Analog and Digital Workflows
The popularity of the Hamilton Wood Type live printing station demonstrates that digital natives possess a deep, tactile hunger for analog processes. The imperfections of letterpress printing—uneven ink distribution, wood grain textures, and heavy impression depth—offer a counter-balance to the pixel-perfect precision of digital screens. As software developers like Adobe continue to refine digital type tools, incorporating organic textures and emulating traditional printing effects remains a major trend in graphic design.
2. Rapid Evolution of Creative Cloud Type Tools
The joint presentation by Steve Ross and Wayne Hoang on upcoming Illustrator and InDesign type features signals Adobe’s ongoing commitment to modernizing typographic workflows. With the rapid adoption of variable fonts—which allow weight, width, and optical size to be adjusted along a continuous spectrum—designers require more robust, intuitive software controls. The sneak peeks provided at TypeCon offer a glimpse into how Adobe plans to handle these complex typographic parameters in future software iterations.
3. Broadening Definitions of Type and Language
Paul Hunt’s exploration of “Language, Culture, Emoji” points toward a more inclusive, globally expansive definition of what constitutes typographic design. As digital communication transcends alphabetic boundaries to incorporate complex visual lexicons, type designers and software engineers must collaborate to ensure that emoji sets are culturally sensitive, universally accessible, and technically robust across all digital platforms.
Conclusion
Celebrating 20 years of TypeCon in Portland has proven to be a watershed moment for the design community. Through its multifaceted presence—highlighting historical preservation alongside future-focused software engineering—the Adobe Typekit team has reinforced its role not merely as a software vendor, but as an active, invested steward of typographic culture. As attendees pack their bags, carrying home freshly printed wood-type souvenirs and new insights into digital tool development, the lessons of TypeCon 2017 will undoubtedly shape the visual landscape of tomorrow.
