Author Archives → Amy Papaelias

Book Alert: Alphabettes Soup!

Next year, Alphabettes turns 10, and we’re celebrating with a pot-luck book! Alphabettes Soup: Ten Years of Feminist Approaches to Type will be served up — piping hot — in September 2025, published by Bikini Books, a feminist publisher based in Porto. Read all about it here: bikini-books.com/products/alphabettes-soup-2015-2025-ten-years-of-feminist-approaches-to-type

Help us make the Soup!

To date, we’ve raised about half of the total amount we need to bring this book to boil. We still have a long way to go, and this is where we’d love your help! All funds go to the printing and production, as well as offering honorariums to authors. You can also help us spread the word.

➤Are you a company, and would you like to sponsor this book? Reach out at sponsorships@bikini-books.com.

➤Are you an individual who would like to make a donation? 💚 DONATE VIA PAYPAL 💚

All sponsorships and donations will be acknowledged in the book. Every spoonful of your support helps! 🥄😘

Join the Alphabettes Soup Mailing List!

Receive updates on the book’s progress, pre-sale announcements, and invite you to our launch events. Stay tuned for next steps! 🥣😘👌💚

 

Alphabettes Variety Show: June 13, 2024

We’re back for the Alphabettes Variety Show at the TypeLab at Typographics on Thursday, June 13, 2024, 12:45-1:20p EDT! This year some of us will be at 41 Cooper Square, but you’re also welcome to join from the comfort of wherever you are via the livestream or sign up for the TypeLab Zoom link to participate, ask questions, share soup recipes, etc.

Now in its 7th edition, but first back in Cooper Union since 2018, the Variety Show includes live interviews, interactive activities, and fun things. While we can’t guarantee more dance lessons or birthday cakes, we might have a few more surprise up our sleeves. Stay tuned to find out! ⭐️

2024 Variety Show graphic features Tiny Grotesk by Robin Mientjes.

Very Cool Thing: Words on Type

The last time Lisa Huang shared a Very Cool Thing on Alphabettes, she published her research on Noto Sans Nüshu script, and the community of women behind it. Two and a half years later, Lisa is back to answer some questions on her newest Very Cool Thing, Words of Type.

Tell us about your new project and Kickstarter campaign!
Words of Type is an encyclopedia of typography, with each term illustrated, described and explained into multiple languages. Each term is explained in concise and straight forward terms to be easily understood, and illustrated by multiple artists to bring visual variety and fun. To bring the various typographic cultures closer together, there will be not only terms from Latin typography, but also those of other writing systems. To give a (literally) better access to typographic knowledge, it’s going to be a website that gives free access to everyone, everywhere. And it will grow and evolve over time, with more languages and words.

Continue reading →

Alphabettes Variety Show: June 15, 2023

Variety Show text with a gradient background and animated text

Alphabettes Variety Show is back for its 🤯6th edition🤯 of live interviews, interactive activities, and other surprises as part of TypeLab at Typographics. We’ll be mostly online again but if you’re in NYC, go check out the in-person TypeLab at Cooper Union.

Grab your mug of tea or beer or anything in between and join the TypeLab Europe channel on Thursday, June 15 from 11-12:00 (EDT/UTC-4)! Register here or check out the full list of event on the TypeLab site.

2023 Variety Show graphic by Sandra García featuring the soon-to-be-released typeface Sandhouse!

Who is an industry leader?

a white coffee mug with the text, Industry Leader, set on it in the font Lobster

Who is an industry leader?

What makes one qualified to use this title? Is there a certain amount of time someone needs to be professionally active in a field to call themselves one? Is it others’ perception that matters? How are these concepts tied to gender, class, race, geography? Why do structures exist to perpetuate the use of the term and why do we think this is acceptable?

I’ll be sitting here thinking about these questions while sipping my tea.

Not your average type conference: Typefobia, this weekend Feb 4–5

A few weeks ago, I found the most wonderful surprise in my in-box: a 15-page PDF outlining what appeared to be a kind of alternative typographic universe: an “anti-conference about the ‘culture’ of letter design”. It’s Typefobia, happening this weekend, February 4 and 5, online and in Puebla, México.

a blue sky with white puffy clouds with yellow text "Hiiii!" in Comic Sans

This is not your average type conference and Typefobia organizers, Romina and Karly, answered some questions about how this weekend intends to challenge industry / academic expectations and reimagine what a design conference can be.

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Leaving a Mark: Ezhishin Interviews

Next month, the Type Directors Club will present Ezhishin, a conference focused on Native North American typography. From Friday November 11 – Sunday November 13, the virtual conference will feature the voices and work of Native North American type designers, lettering artists, design educators, printers, researchers, and more. This Q&A with four the Ezhishin presenters, Violet Duncan, Jessica Harjo, Monique Ortman, Sadie Red Wing, and Kathleen Sleboda, highlights some of their ways of working, recommended readings, and what leaving a mark means to them.

Violet Duncan

Violet Duncan is Plains Cree and Taino from Kehewin Cree Nation. Touring nationally and internationally since 1991, she has performed for audiences across the United States, Canada, and Europe through work as a Native American dancer, hoop dancer, choreographer, storyteller, and author. Violet is a former “Miss Indian World”, representing all Indigenous people of North America. After becoming a mother of 4 and seeing the need for Native representation in literature, she took it upon herself to author three award-winning children’s books: I am Native, When We Dance, and Lets Hoop Dance! She has recently joined the family of Penguin Random House with two new children’s books and a middle school novel coming out 2023/24. Violet is the Creative Director of Young Warriors, where she aims to create space for programming of Indigenous performance and practice.

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Overly Ambitious Summer Reading List 2022

four books stacked on a table outside with some yellow flowers and greenery in the background. The books are from top to bottom: The Typographic Medium, The Black Experience in Design, Type Specimens, and Building Ligatures The Power of Type

As the weather warms up and the bugs get buggier (at least in the Northeastern US), there’s nothing like an overly ambitious reading list to get those summer vibes flowing. Here are some Alphabettes-approved books published in the past year or so that will make the perfect stay/vacation companions. Do a public service and be sure to buy these from a local bookshop or request a copy for your local and university library!

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Alphabettes Variety Show: June 16, 2022!

The Alphabettes Variety Show returns to the TypeLab at Typographics on Thursday, June 16, 2022, 13–14h EDT. This year, the TypeLab offers the best of both worlds: if you’re in NYC, check it out in-person FOR FREE on Thursday, Day 1 (Day 2 + 3 are only open to Typographics attendees) OR join in from anywhere via Zoom (registration required) OR lurk on the YouTube livestream.

This year, we’ll feature live interviews from Kyiv, Buenos Aires, Maine, Oslo, and NYC, answer all your burning #dearalphabettes questions, and probably some other things we’ll think of at the last minute. Join us with a beverage of choice or a piece of cake or both!

**RECAP**
Here’s what happened during this year’s Variety Show:
• Kateryna Korolevtseva gave us a short but fascinating overview of her branding and typeface design projects and the context of working from Kyiv at the moment. We hope to see Kateryna speak at more conferences soon!
• Muk Monsalve chatted with us about the recent update to her type family, Elmira on FutureFonts.
• Zen Bastawala talked about moving to Maine and getting to know about the local ice cream scene.
• Dyana Weissman joined us live from the Cooper Union TypeLab

See you next year 🙌