Author Archives: Type Tasting

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About Type Tasting

Sarah Hyndman is a graphic designer, author and public speaker.

Wake Up and Smell the Fonts at TEDxBedford

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Sarah Hyndman, Wake Up and Smell the Fonts at TEDxBedford

TEDxBedford 2014 is taking place on the afternoon of the 15th November 2014 at The South Bank Arts Centre, Bedford College. A diverse range of speakers will join us to share their ‘ideas worth spreading’ relating to our theme ‘by Design’.

Designer Sarah Hyndman explores typography as we experience it in our every day lives under the banner of Type Tasting. Since the launch in 2013 she’s curated an exhibition at the V&A for the London Design Festival, been interviewed on Radio 4’s Today, taken Type Tasting to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and has been commissioned to write a book.

Sarah has been a graphic designer for over 15 years, working in agencies before setting up design company With Relish. After studying an MA in Typo/Graphics at the London College of Communication she was invited back as a guest tutor.

Sarah will share with us a story of type and invite us to consider our emotional response to the printed word. Each font/typeface has a personality that influences our interpretation of the words we read by evoking our emotions and setting the scene. We all understand this instinctively but it happens on a subconscious level. Sarah will show us that conscious awareness of the emotional life of fonts can be entertaining and ultimately give us more control over the decisions we make.

 

‘Typography Lab’ D&AD workshop

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I’ve been having fun working with the D&AD to write a new typography workshop with them called ‘Typography Lab’. The first session runs in September in their wonderful new workshop space near Brick Lane. It’s going to be a jam packed day of exploring, choosing and customising typefaces in typical Type Tasting style.

TYPOGRAPHY LAB

The Session
Join typography expert Sarah Hyndman on a journey into the world of typefaces. Learn to use “the machine”, a proven process for choosing the right typeface, experience the joy of “typography yoga” and take the font “taste test”. Discover how to use typefaces to make an emotional connection that enhances the impact of your designs.

The Leader
Sarah Hyndman, Graphic Designer and Type Tasting Founder

Sarah Hyndman is an experienced graphic designer with over 15 years’ experience including running the Experimental Typography course at the London College of Communication. Sarah organised the creative typography exhibition at the V&A, as well as setting up her own design company With Relish in 2003. She is currently writing a Type Tasting book.

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The Outcome
• Understand how typography delivers messages and creates emotional connections
• Apply a proven process for choosing typefaces
• Talk confidently about typography with clients and your team
• Explain how small changes to your typeface can radically change the associations it generates
• Communicate with your team to maximise the effectiveness of the briefing process and outcome

Who is it for?
Typography Lab is for anyone who is curious about how typography can be used to elicit an instinctive response. It’s perfect for junior creatives and non-designers and explores the experience of typography from both the designer and the readers’ viewpoint.

Find out more and book

More about D&AD workshops

Photo of Sarah by Rita Abreu

From Dalston to Punk, a weekend of talks

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It was a weekend of talking typography with four Type Tasting talks, three of which were sold out ahead of time. The talks were 45 minutes with slides, props and quizzes which revealed how typography evokes associations long before the words have been read. For those of you who came along thank you for being so interactive and for asking great questions, the links and references are below.

On Saturday Sarah Hyndman shared her observations on the typography seen in Dalston, London, and explained what this reveals about the area and how signage is the visual DNA of an area.

“Thank you for the very enjoyable Dalston Type Safari talk on Saturday. A unique & interesting way to ‘read’ the city.” Sophie Nellis

“Thanks for the ‘type tasting’ talk you gave at the weekend as part of the Stoke Newington Literary Festival – great fun, and I enjoyed it.” Paul Richards
 

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The history of type told in ten album covers

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The history of type told in ten album covers

£4 (45 mins), booking essential
Sunday 8th June at 14.30 (sold out) & 17.00 (sold out)
Venue – Type Tasting studio, Chocolate Factory N16

​A talk about typography: from ACDC to Pulp, through prog rock, grunge and punk… the typography on record covers reveal a great deal about the history and development of type, and also charts the evolution of popular culture. The talk takes place in the Type Tasting studio and is part of Open Studios weekend at the Chocolate Factory N16.

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Sarah Hyndman set up Type Tasting in 2013. Since the launch she’s curated a mass participation Type Tasting exhibition at the V&A with the London Design Festival, been interviewed on Radio 4’s Today and recently took Type Tasting to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Click on your chosen start time to buy tickets: 14.30 (sold out) / 17.00 (sold out)
Limited to 20 people. General interest, not just for designers.

What would Monotype’s Burlingame typeface taste like?

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To celebrate their 5,000th Twitter follower, Monotype commissioned Type Tasting’s Sarah to create an edible version of their newest typeface release, Burlingame.

Burlingame was developed by Carl Crossgrove following pioneering investigations by Monotype into the legibility of vehicle displays. The research revealed a set of optimum criteria for dashboard display fonts: large counters and x-heights, simple shapes and a loose spacing of characters. It was found that a humanist sans serif typeface with these characteristics reduced male drivers’ glance time significantly.

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Fonts: A love story. A talk about typography by Sarah Hyndman.

 

Type Tasting founder Sarah Hyndman explains why she thinks fonts and typefaces matter, how they add richness to our lives but can also be used to influence us. She does this by telling stories of her experiences from being a child to growing up and becoming a ‘typography professional’ in this entertaining 10 minute talk.

“…as a bit of a type geek myself, your take on the topic is pitch perfect and inspirational” Daphne D

Sarah explains that “I first fell in love with type in the 1970s, an era I remember as being in faded Polaroid colours and always hot like that summer of ’76”. She describes how, as a child, she was transfixed in a sweet shop looking at the words popping and fizzing with excitement on the sweet wrappers. How she later went on to become a ‘typography professional’ or a graphic designer, which is where she learned how type evokes emotions and that these can transform the meaning of a word. Also that type can enchant, inspire wonder…and coerce.

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Typeface mash ups

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Mr Cromso is a designer and street artist living in Paris, France. He’s been working on a self initiated project called Mixtype which asks the question “what would happen if letters from different type families procreated?” This is similar to an idea we’ve been playing with here at Type Tasting so I challenged him to do a Mixtype combination of a Blackletter typeface + Comic Sans, two hand drawn influenced styles separated by centuries (and opinions). After pronouncing it “a totally crazy choice!” he sent over the above composition. We like how this works, what do you think? What two typefaces would you like to see combined?

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Fire and ice: elemental typography

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The making of the fire and ice ‘A’s.

The ice ‘A’ was an idea I had while walking along on a hot summer day, I was thirsty and really fancied an ice lolly. I started by building a 20 x 20cm silicon mold created by pouring the model making mixture over a cardboard reconstruction. This was then filled with water and fruit and left to set in the freezer (which took the best part of a weekend). I photographed it myself in my studio by suspending on fishing twine, back lit against a black background. The photo shoot had to be quick as I used a hairdryer to make the ice shiny, but this also meant that the ‘A’ melted quickly. Then it was just a case of Photoshopping out the twine and any background clutter.

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What would that typeface taste like?

“The next typeface you use, what would it taste like?” was the question I posed at the end of the talk on Edible Typography at Eye Magazine’s Type Tuesday. Here are some of the suggestions…

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Angela Lamb’s first typeface of the day was Lavanderia which she describes as “delicate – it tastes of spun sugar. sweet, but brittle”. Lavenderia is designed by James T. Edmondson and is based on lettering found on Laundromat windows of San Francisco’s Mission District.

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Karina Monger and the Ferrier Pearce design team came up with the following list:

Museo: Bacon wheat crunchies

Arial Rounded: Spaghetti

WC Roughtrad: Flaky Pastry…

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