3rd ICTVC - BRIEF REPORT

This year Thessaloniki was the centre of typographic and visual education, as the 3rd International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication took place on June 2007.

The conference was organised by the University of Macedonia Press and Altervision, with the support of the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication - The University of Reading, ATypI and the co-operation of Redfish and the Thessaloniki Design Museum. This year's theme was 'From Verbal to Graphic'.

The 3rd ICTVC started off on the 18th of June with two-day workshops on bookbinding (Vangelio Tzanetatou), typeface design (Gerry Leonidas, Eirini Vlachou and Eva Masoura), calligraphy (Michail Semoglou and Keith Tam) and typography (Graphiki Compania).

The main conference took place from the 20th to the 23rd of June with more than 70 speakers from around the world. Delegates had a chance to sit through a variety of topics such as the typographical world heritage of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the one laptop per child project, arabic logotypes, the art of protest posters, design concepts in publishing, an anthology of Greek typography, the stenciled text, the role of semiotics in visualising language, polish avant-garde, programming for designers, humanising font technology, e-paper vs paper, to name a but a few. The 'ICTVC distinguished lecture series' was given by professor Peter Karow on Digital typography and artificial intelligence. One of the highlights of the conference was the screening of the long anticipated Helvetica film by Gary Hustwit. The movie was presented at a beautiful local theater followed by food and drinks.

During the conference Petr van Blokland set up 'The Design Game', where participants were requested to design a solution for a customer. The designers were challenged to get the information needed from the customers by figuring out the appropriate questions. Dan Karr and Julia Ferrari gave a typedesign and punchcutting demonstration, the QuarkXPress team presented QuarkXPress 7 and Dimitris Arvanitins and Angelos Bakas run a poster masterclass.

Also, two exhibitions were held, the first was the 'Design Agon' where participants were asked to submit a poster on the conference theme 'From Verbal to Graphic' and the second, 'Hellenic Alphabet', where participants were asked to design original greek characters for a specific greek sentence 'ένα αδιαμφισβήτητα ξεχωριστό γεγονός'. At the end of the conference the winning entries for the hellenic alphabet competition were selected by the committee, congratulations to Alice Savoie and Thomas Grace for the text typeface and display typeface category respectively! [http://ea.backpacker.gr]
On the final day of the conference, delegates had a chance to take the Thessaloniki Typo Tour visiting museums and archaeological sites.
[http://www.ictvc.gr]

Throughout the year, the University of Macedonia Press organised a series of additional seminars due to the upcoming ICTVC. In October, Dr. Klimis Mastoridis talked about 'Design, cut and production of Greek types in the 19th and 20th century', in November Michail Semoglou gave a two-day workshop on calligraphy, in February Gerry Leonidas, Eirini Vlachou and Eva Masoura gave a two-day workshop on typeface design and in March Vaggelis Hatzitheodorou talked about signage systems.

UoM Press also run a 50 hour educational programme themed 'Typography and Visual Communication: Tradition and new technologies within the context of Greek reality' from the 16th of February to the 23rd of March. The programme covered topics such as history and theory of typography, training through everyday practice, designing multipage publications using grids and repeating elements, from manuscripts to books, greek and foreign publishing centres: a comparison, information and typographic arrangement over the web.