Pride, Prejudice & Perceptions is an interactive sensory exploration of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, created by AVM Curiosities & Type Tasting for the British Academy’s Literature Week.
Taking inspiration from the typography found in three editions of this classic novel, Pride, Prejudice & Perceptions uses type, sound, sight and scent to serve one story three ways.
By Sarah Hyndman
Type Tasting founder Sarah is on a mission to make typography fun and engaging for everybody, not just designers. She specialises in making the complex topic accessible with originality, humour, a dash of theatre and lashings of audience participation. She delivers interactive talks and events with games and demonstrations that inform, entertain and challenge your preconceptions.
Click on the images above to take a quick tour of the book, which will officially be launched in the US on June 1st.
You can buy it online in the UK here, and in the US here. It’s also in plenty of bookshops, museum and gallery shops, please send a photo if you spot it somewhere, and support your local bookshop.
Take a walking tour of Dalston in East London with author Sarah Hyndman. See how the signage reveals that the area dates back to the 1800s with its own grand department store, pie & eel shop, Art Deco cinemas, a factory that sold paints to JMW Turner, and the market that inspired Eastenders.
Update. There are no Type Safaris departing this year as Sarah focuses on new and exciting projects. If you would like to arrange a private tour for your company please get in touch with sarah(a)typetasting.com.
“Fabulous tour of Dalston… Exploring the urban fabric through type” Sarah Stewart, Londonist
“A unique & interesting way to ‘read’ the city.” Sophie Nellis
It’s time for a type revolution. It’s time to change the way we think and talk about type: for non-experts to join the conversation.
Type Tasting delivers talks, ice-breaker sessions, masterclasses and workshops that make the complex topic of typography accessible and relevant beyond the design studio. We take the type consumer’s point of view and explore the experience of type—how it influences our perception and can alter our decisions.
“Clever, insightful and original, left a lasting buzz and excitement behind!” Charlotte Godfrey, BBC Bristol.
It’s time for typography to be demystified. Design tools are becoming everyday applications and they are used by all of us both at work and at home. Typography—the choice of fonts and how they are arranged—is a fundamental element of design because it is what the voice looks like. Yet it is wrapped up in the language of a specialist discipline and this makes it intimidating for those outside the profession to join in the conversation.
“Sarah brings the power of fonts to everyone” Patrick Burgoyne, Editor of Creative Review.
It’s time for typography to become visible. We live in a time of increasing design awareness and we now ask questions about the messages we are bombarded with in our everyday lives. 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. Conscious awareness of the emotional life of fonts can give us more control over the decisions we make.
Yesterday was a thought provoking and inspiring day judging the Monotype brief for the D&AD New Blood Awards. The brief was to take a cause they believed in and to use the power of type to make a difference. The winning entries were pulled apart by seven of us to reveal surprising layers of creativity, they changed the way we thought about something, and they made us care about the cause. Some causes were big and powerful ones, others were gentle and quiet, articulated in an incredible array of different voices.
I was delighted to be invited to speak at Nicer Tuesdays recently. This is 12 minutes of audience participation including Typography Karaoke (in two teams), the Price is Right and the Type Dating Game. The audience is the star of this talk, you were absolutely brilliant, thank you. “A simple, but very effective demonstration of how type design affects the way we read, the way we respond to commands and even our moods from Sarah Hyndman.” It’s Nice That.
Are we really that influenced by typography? Type specialist Sarah Hyndman seems to think so! And it looks like she made converts out of our students following her talk at Shillington. We had the unique opportunity of being part of Sarah’s ongoing psychological research for Oxford University, and through a series of sensory experiments we all learned a little bit more about both typography and ourselves.
The best experiments involve jellybeans, a lesson Sarah Hyndman was about to reveal. We were privileged to be a part of Sarah’s type tasting experiment, tasting chocolate, jellybeans and smelling fragrances while looking at different fonts to see if they affected our experiences. Our results will become part of the data for the Cross-modal Research Laboratory at Oxford University who are studying how different senses interact.
Read Kate Allen’s full review of Sarah’s talk here.
Kawal Oberoi takes us on a Type Safari in Delhi
“The Quote I chose for Type Safari is “Dil Walon Ki Delhi” (English Translation—City Of People with big hearts—Delhi) which is a expression used for magnanimous spirit of Delhites. To letter this quote in Delhi’s Typographic DNA, I wanted to capture alphabets from signage of local restaurants, cinemas, old shops and public centres that are doing well despite globalisation. A weekend trip around the city got me lettering gems like the logo of Paras Cinema, which exists despite Multiplex cinemas attracting most of the audience. The flavours of Old Delhi—Karims, Pind Baluchi, Dhabas, the firework shops of Old Delhi, the tailor shops that exist from colonial times, the truck stands, the hand lettered exteriors of Herbal Medicine Tents and much more.” Kawal Oberoi
Take up the Type Safari challenge
The combinations of type found on signage reveal a great deal about a city, town or specific area. They reflect the social, economic and historical development of the area and create their own, unique typographic DNA. Take up the challenge yourself and create a composition that reflects the area you live in.
“Fun” “Brilliant” “Inspiring” “Eye-candy” “Enlightening” Amazon reviews
“A fascinating insight into how type can influence our feelings, our senses, and even our taste” Professor Charles Spence, University of Oxford
Bookseller 10 titles not to miss
Why Fonts Matter by Sarah Hyndman is out now, published by Virgin Books (Penguin/Random House).
Type Tasting Blog 