Type Factory
2009 ISTD Student Assessment
Typography forms written language. Type Factory is the place where four different spaces meet and talk through the use of typography, where everything is based on the use of words for communicating. Type Factory has a flexible, mutant and ever changing identity, as language has. Although each of the four spaces that conform Type Factory is identified with a particular typographic family, it is typography in itself who shapes the identity. Type Factory covers typography in a comprehensive manner and expresses its diversity without limiting its communications to a particular typographic family. Type Factory is a homage to typography, to its richness and complexity. Type Factory recognises typography as an essential cultural outcome developed during centuries of human history. Type Factory sums up many values, many fonts that should all have a space in a typographic museum where the only limit is quality and the impact of any given typeface upon society and culture. The identity relies on these premises and is not attached to any building in particular, nor to any style, nor to any idea preconceived. The Times Talks space is meant for lectures. Its identity is represented by the typography Times that represents speech, clarity and information. Its colour is red, communicating the live opinions, discussions and even controversy that might be held. Cooper Coffee is represented by the typography Cooper Black " friendly, funny, comfortable and very familiar, it invites friends to come in and have a nice cup. A natural green is the colour of Cooper Coffee’s communications. Baskerville Bookshop is represented by the typography Baskerville "legible and clear, ideal for textbooks, itself an icon of printing and editorial design. Cheerfull magenta invites to read books as an adventure, inviting to redescover how amusing reading might be. The Helvetica Hall holds the type museum. This is the place where the most important typefaces come alive, where the history and the present of type is explained to visitors. The well-known classical, display and digital typefaces, the technical and formal typographic developments, both for print and screen, show themselves side by side with reknown type designers and their achievements. In order to embrace so many different fonts, an impersonal representative of international design, Helvetica, offers its spirit, its name and its looks to identify this place. Neutral, cold cyan is the colour chosen for its communications. For external communications, type is used as image. Both the name Type Factory or simply TF "as used in external communication" are letters that change form through the use of different typographic families: in a visually stunning and colourfull approach, the four typefaces and colours of the four spaces are shown. For internal communications, famous typographic quotations and several typographic topics are used in an open dialogue with the visitors. In addition, Times Talks publishes a series of small format booklets for each conference that is held monthly, aiming to become a collectable set of highlights of typographic designers. All these prints "posters and brochures" are standardised A formats.
