Join the TDC at Parsons for an evening double feature!

In Letters We Trust | Tobias Frere-Jones
For centuries, letterforms have been a means of security for citizens and governments alike. This talk will explore the ways that letterforms have been used in plain sight and in secret, to thwart forgery. Some strategies have relied on high-profile collaboration, and others on home-grown cunning. Interwoven is a story of war and peace, technology, culture and economics. The narrative will focus on banknotes from the American Colonial period to the present day, with additional examples of passports, government permits and lottery tickets.

Journey to the Dark Side of Contrast | Nina Stössinger
It is one of the most fundamental conventions in Latin typeface design that verticals are made thicker than horizontals. But what if they aren’t? Designers who have challenged this rule often emphasize the outrageous strangeness of letters wearing their thicks and thins the “wrong” way. So is “reversed contrast” just a recurring but ultimately useless provocation – or might this largely neglected quadrant of design space yet yield promising, perhaps even useful new solutions? A tale of convention and contrast, exploration and experiment, of breaking and making the rules of design.

Over 25 years, Tobias Frere-Jones has established himself as one of the world’s leading typeface designers, creating some of the most widely used typefaces, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten and Retina. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006, Royal Academy of Visual Arts The Hague (KABK) awarded him the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs. In 2013 he received the AIGA Medal in recognition of exceptional achievements in the field of design.

Nina Stössinger is a Senior Typeface Designer at Frere-Jones Type. Originally from Basel in Switzerland, she graduated in multi-media design from Burg Giebichenstein University of Art Halle/Germany. She went on to receive a CAS in Type Design from Zurich University of the Arts, and an MA in Type and Media from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Nina teaches type design at Yale University School of Art, serves on the Board of Directors of the Type Directors Club. Her published type designs include Conductor (with Tobias Frere-Jones), Nordvest, and FF Ernestine.