According to the Miriam Webster Dictionary, to toot one’s own horn means “to talk about oneself or one’s achievements especially in a way that shows pride or too much pride”. We use this term as a way to reclaim some of the gender gaps in tooting one’s horn and challenged ourselves to come up with one good thing that happened, professionally or personally or a little bit of both, during this emotional / physical / mental wreck of a year.

Now, without further ado, and in no particular order, let the horn-tooting begin!

🎺 Kara Gordon
I bought into a co-op! Officially committed to Brooklyn for the long-haul.

🎺 Laura Serra
Relationships refined, Vaccinations, more personal projects, improved health, more satisfying illustration jobs, docent program at Letterform Archive, got a new illustration rep, Christmas in France (if I don’t jinx it now.)

🎺 María Ramos
I was part of the core team organizing an in-person national design event. A challenging and wonderful learning experience.

🎺 Dyana Weissman
I got a nice raise, and I didn’t even ask for it.

🎺 Laura Meseguer
I released my typeface family Qandus Latin, and had my first solo exhibition 🙂

Photo by: Marina Roca

🎺 Carolina Giovagnoli
I closed my lovely 10-year-old-project, Andada ht. The research I have finished with the help of the mentorship program. The font family is now available on Google Fonts. I’ve started my own self publishing project. I’m happy and thankful with you, my family and friends.

🎺 Ulrike Rausch
My color font LiebeHeide was honoured with 6 (SIX!!!) awards this year! 🤯 🚀 🤪 🥳
I submitted my work already several times in the past, but never won anything. Seems LiebeHeide wanted to make-up for that. 😀

🎺 Isabella Aragão
Launch of the virtual group exhibition “Experimentando tipos em homenagem a’O Gráfico Amador” with graphic arts developed by Design students, artists and designers using lead types and letterpress machine from LPG of UFPE, which were donated by the important Brazilian artisanal publisher in the 1950s called O Gráfico Amador.

🎺 Liron Lavi Turkenich
In addition to welcoming baby Tom to the world, I was humbled and honoured to have Aravrit words which I designed, become a 13-meters sculpture in Expo 2020 in Dubai. This sculpture is the main artwork for the Israeli Pavilion. This is such an exciting event both for me, as the creator of Aravrit (a hybrid writing system merging Hebrew and Arabic) and for type, to be a centerpiece.

🎺 Emilie Rigaud
PhD research about Japanese type design history is going smoothly! First year was difficult but this second year is pure joy, and the two days conference that I organized last October at Inalco university (Paris), gathering French and Japanese researchers and designers, was a success.

🎺 Elena Schneider
We had the best summer here in the North of Iceland, weather wise. It took less than 15 minutes to get dressed (per person) before leaving the house and we got loads of strawberries in the garden.

🎺 Maria Glenda Bellarosa
I got a new job! I started in November as the Library Manager at Type Network. It is new and challenging as I had previously been doing OpenType development for global scripts. It’s going well and I enjoy that I have the privilege of working with @Dyana.

🎺 Namrata Goyal
I was able to take a sabbatical this December (after thinking about it for months, I finally asked). I took the time to rest, and travelled with my mother.

🎺 Pooja Saxena
After years of fiddling around with them, I finally published my very first, very small graphic memoir, featuring pixel illustrations! I told the story of my experience with birdwatching, a hobby I discovered this year.

🎺 Dina Benbrahim
I started my endowed position at the University of Arkansas on August, and it is been such a fulfilling environment. I am grateful to work and be surrounded with fierce feminist women. I am constantly inspired by them.

🎺 Nora Gummert-Hauser
DEAD & ALIVE 03 – Footballer’s Birthday Calendar
Explore decades of football history with 366 inspiring characters.
In 2021 we have created the world’s first typographic birthday calendar where you can discover with which footballer or female footballer you share your birthday with. Designed in 12 different shades of green!

🎺 Luisa Baeta
After several years as a branding freelancer, I accepted a full-time job this year! I’m now a designer at Atlas Obscura, it’s still new but so far I’m loving it, the team is great and I am really excited to be setting down roots and working on projects for the long-term.

🎺 Irina Koryagina
I guess, in a teeny-tiny way, I’m glad that even during this rollercoaster-of-emotions kind of year, is-the-world-ending-kind-of-year, I-don’t-have-energy-for-much kind of year, I still had enough enthusiasm to keep messing around with my personal project of speculative book covers called And Then You Read. Every time I think it’s good to stop now and do some billable or even just real-world work, after a few weeks or a few months I read a cool book, have a visual idea, and get right back to it. It’s up to sixty covers now and still going strong. Kind of.

🎺 Chris Campe
This fall I received my first literary scholarship for the novel I started to write two years ago. I see myself primarily as a designer and I was not sure if my literary writing was any good, so this external validation means a lot to me and motivates me to continue working on the book.

🎺 Amy Papaelias
With the help of many here, the seed of an idea for an Alphabettes book project is finally planted in the universe. While still in the early germination stages, the goal is to not only document the group’s history but to also encourage the kind of participatory, DIY feminism we’ve always practiced here through articles, interviews, commentary, and more. To be continued…

Comments are open if you’d like to toot your horn!
Happy New Year, let’s use it for more collective ass-kicking and horn-tooting.

The Malee Scholarship awards $6000 USD annually to a woman of color ages 16 and over. The deadline for the first application is April 15, 2020. We asked Chantra Malee Montoya-Pimolwatana, co-founder of Sharp Type and namesake of the scholarship, a few questions about how the idea started, the site’s beautiful branding, and the application process.

When did you realize the scholarship was necessary to help address the lack of representation of women of color in type design?
I grew up in a small New England town that was heavily rooted in the Anglo-American tradition and culture. I was part of a small percentage of people of color there, and I often felt isolated. I’ve taken that experience with me everywhere in my personal and professional life. When I first got into the type business, it was not much different than other industries I had worked in, primarily represented by a single demographic. But this time I was in a position to make a difference.

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We’re a few months into 2019, but it’s never too late to look at how women were represented at conferences last year. Especially since there were a couple of standout events.

We salute those type conference organizers who decided to use their 2018 chapter as an opportunity to improve their speakers lists towards gender equality and elevate women’s voices. We can’t wait to see this dedication continue to inspire others.

In order of percentage of female speakers:

100% Ladies, Wine & Design Berlin Conference, DE – Berlin
85% Women in Print, UK – Birmingham
73% Tipografía México, MX – Monterrey
71% Script, print, and letterforms in global contexts: the visual and the material, UK – Birmingham
61% (+38.89%) DiaTipo, BR – São Paulo
50% (0%) Typographics, US – New York City
49% [.01% gender fluid] (+6.06%) TypeCon, US – Portland, OR
44% Ampersand, UK – Brighton
41% (+4.5%) ATypI, BE – Antwerp
39% (+5.10%) Typo Berlin, DE – Berlin
36% Dynamic Font Day, DE – Munich
31% EDCH, DE – Munich
30% Type Drives Culture, US – New York City
28% (-5.56%) BITS, TH – Bangkok
27% Typofest, BU – Sofia & Plovdiv
26% (+16.31%) Typo Labs, DE – Berlin
25% (+12.5%) Kerning, IT – Faenza
25% (+25%) Robothon, DL – The Hague
24% Fontstand Conference, HR – Zagreb
8% All Eyes On Type, NL – Rotterdam

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