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Talking fonts live on BBC Radio 4

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Yesterday I was invited to be one of the guests on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live to talk about how we respond to typefaces. I took along some of the games that had gone down so well at the Pop-up Type Tasting at the V&A for the London Design Festival the previous weekend. Above is actor Sophie Thompson playing the ‘Feel Me’ game matching what she can feel to one of the fonts shown, if you came along to the event last weekend you know exactly which font she’s feeling from the expression on her face!

It was such an interesting programme to be on. Sophie is delightful and a pleasure to listen to, and I was excited to meet Peter Bleksley who is one of the hunters on ‘Hunted’ with the most amazing voice. It seems that we would all love the challenge of being on the next series and going on the run in an attempt to evade capture for 28 days. Third guest Trevor Lyttleton founded a charity which works with the elderly and we had a great chat afterwards about the power of typefaces on packaging to trigger nostalgia and bring back memories.

Scroll down for links to listen to the show.

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A glimpse into the Type Tasting studio

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The Type Tasting studio is full of jars of smells, sweets, mystery boxes to identify from the typefaces on the packaging, typographic memorabilia and puzzles. “Walking into the Type Tasting studio was like walking into a mad scientist’s lab” Robert Boick.

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