My Providence! What airy hosts
Turn still thy gilded vanes;
What winds of elf that with grey ghosts
People thine ancient lanes!

–H.P. Lovecraft

Overlooking the RISD Beach. Can you spot the State House?

Knowing the risks, I drank from the mythical fountain.* The legend says: anyone who drinks from it will always return to Providence. Seems more like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me: if you like Providence enough to drink from a magical fountain, you’ll probably keep coming back.

The fountain sits in front of the Providence Athenæum, around the corner from College Street, home to both the Rhode Island School of Design and author H.P. Lovecraft. The deep affection he felt for the city is unmistakable. I remember walking down that same street for the first time, rounding the corner of the quad, and the state house—“a delirious marble dome,” as Lovecraft wrote—loomed into view, towering over the city.

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TypeCon2017: Counter! was filled with female faces this year, and I thought that Alphabettes readers would be glad to see some of them.

Faces of 16 of the 35 female presenters at TypeCon2017: Counter! – (top left to bottom right)
Andrea Leksen, Petra Dočekalová, Catherine Leigh Schmidt, Linh O’Briant, Aoife Mooney and Jillian Coorey, Ming Wei, Geri McCormick, Reneé Seward, Elizabeth Carey Smith, Ana Monroe, Frances MacLeod, Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, Rachel Elnar, Charlotte Yue Qin, and Ina Saltz.

In our most accurate count, 48.6% of our presenters were female this year – this includes workshop leaders and speakers in the main program and education forum. You can read more about our 2017 speakers and programming on our website.

Our speakers are chosen via a blind selection process – meaning that the speaker’s name, gender, company, product name, or any other identifying information is removed from their proposal before it is read and ranked by a panel of reviewers. We’ve taken this approach in an attempt to reduce bias and to level the playing field for everyone submitting.

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Here in America, 2017 was a bit of a trash fire, even from my liberal bastion of Brooklyn, NY.
It seemed like every day there was a new attack on something (or everything) I love, and there wasn’t much to be happy about this year. (I did get engaged in July, in Iceland, on a mountain top, while I was wearing Quidditch leggings, to my high school sweetheart.)

But other than that, something that has given me hope this year is the outpouring of protests and resistance and support from so many citizens of America and the world.

On January 20, 2017, the day of the Women’s March on Washington, I was in my childhood bedroom, recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed, so most of my memories of that day are of the images of incredible spirit and impactful posters.

When we show up to protest, and have our voices heard, we bring signs. And signs mean letters. And I love letters.
There was a lot of crying.
And a lot of FOMO.

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Set by Sharon Chu

The fall semester started that week. Someone mentioned in passing that there’s a lot of rain on the way as a hurricane was building. I call Houston my home since 17 years and have lived through a couple of stormy situations, so, my thoughts were focused on projects just handed out to my senior graphic design students, more than on whether rain would cause us any harm.

We started out with an assignment titled The Sound of Letters is the Face of Letters. The premise was to exercise the writing of the Humanist historical script, then move into experimenting with contemporary scripts and lettering, while developing a concept for unique wrapping paper, cards, bags, etc., themed for a special purpose with the intention to coax the students into producing large scale calligraphy and lettering. Getting on with the first part, the students got up close with letter construction, anatomical proportions, and stress while exercising writing with a broad nib pen. We made it through two studio classes when Harvey stalled over the city.

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Traveling is one of the best things in life and something I will remember 2017 for (just like my fellow Alphabettes as we have seen in the past December posts so far). Not only do we get to see friends from afar, document funky lettering, foreign scripts, or drink crazy cocktails, we can also exchange PRESENTS!

Let me show you both the best book and most touching gift I got this year:

Elephant, Piggie, Indra and Sahar (plus Marina and a bit of Matthew Carter in the background)