1983 ATypI Working Seminar papers

Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) is a global forum and focal point for the type community and business. Members include type designers, type publishers, and typographic designers. ATypI is a non-profit organization founded in 1957 by Charles Peignot. They have members in over 40 nations. They preserve the culture, tradition, and history of type and typography. They also run conferences, publish journals, newsletters, and other publications, among other services.

Visible Language is concerned with research and ideas that help define the unique role and properties of written language. A premise of the journal is that reading and writing form an autonomous system of language expression, which must be defined and developed in its own terms. This, along with research and ideas, help define the presentation of information within the digital arena. Visible Language began in 1967 and continued until 2002, totaling 36 volumes. Aside from the publication about the August 1983 ATypI conference, past articles include An Annotated Design Research Bibliography (Volume 36), New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies (Volume 30), and Visual Cues in Word Recognition and Reading, Part 1 & 2 (Volume 15). The journal is currently edited by Sharon Poggenpohl of the Illinois Institute of Technology

The Fifth ATypI Working Seminar- The Computer and the Hand in Type Design: The Aesthetics and Technology of Digital Letterforms was held during the week of July 31 and August 7,1983 at Stanford University. This event was an International Working Seminar on electronic and tradition methods of letter design sponsored by the Committee for Educations and Research in Letterform of ATypI. The event was organized by Charles Bigelow, who was the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Professor of Graphic Arts in the School of Print Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The program included workshops, seminars, and illustrated lectures. John Dreyfus presented the keynote address, as Honorary President of ATypI. Other speakers included type designers Matthew Carter, Bram deDoes, Andre Guertler, Christian Mengelt, Gerard Unger, and Hermann Zapf; typographers Charles Bigelow and Jack Stauffacher; lettering artists John Benson and David Kindersley; type punch-cutter Henk Drost; designer Veronika Elsner; and computer scientists Patrick Baudelaire, Donald Knuth and Neil Wiseman.

The workshop was meant to acquaint educators and designers with new computerized methods of type production, as well as review traditional lettering crafts, such as punch-cutting and stone-cutting, to provide practical experience with computer-aided design systems, and bring designers and engineers together for future cooperation and creation in type design.Demonstrations of the IKARUS, METAFONT, ALTO, CAMEX and other systems were available for use during the seminar. Though the seminar was given in English, interpreters were available in German and French to achieve a truly global initiative.