Anglia Ruskin University

• WOLP: Ekho Typeface

Jon Melton utilized his experience to oversee a small team of 3rd year undergraduates in the production of new designs including a website and print promotional products for the Cambridge and Yale University research group - World Oral Literature Project. WOLP seeks to archive and secure a global diversity of language and dialects that are at risk of being lost forever. A new typeface has been proposed for WOLP that seeks to be inherently visually audible and expressive of the spoken word. It's hoped that this will ultimately be adopted along with designs for a new web portal that field researchers can access via online mobile technology abroad.

• Typographic Research Initiative Symposium: Type and Materiality

In February 2012, the Typographic Research Group hosted the 5th symposium of the Typographic Research Initiative, a national series of symposia across several UK Universities, coordinated by Dr Caroline Archer, Research Fellow in typography at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. The programme comprised three presentations:Type and Materiality: notes from a PhD in progress, by Will Hill; Cambridge street name plates: a typographic reconstruction by Jon Harris and Eric Marland, and The Typographic work of Polly Gleason, by Nick Jeeves.

The symposium was attended by delegates from London, Birmingham and Cambridge including type historian and designer Simon Loxley, type historian, designer and printer Sebastian Carter, and the Mayoress of Cambridge Sheila Stuart, and also by third year students from the BA Graphic Design and postgraduate students from MA Publishing.

• Will Hill: Letter Exchange lecture

Will Hill was invited to speak at the Artworkers' Guild in London as part of the Letter Exchange lecture series on March 14. The lecture Type Design and the Letter Arts was attended by letter exchange members including internationally renowned type designer Eichi Kono, lettercutters Richard Kindersley and Teucer Wilson, students from Reading and Central St Martin's, and a wide range of designers, calligraphers and type afficionados.

• Jeremy Tankard: Fenland

Jeremy Tankard's new typeface Fenland was launched on 19 March 2012. A unique 14-font family, it explores innovative approaches to letter structure inspired by the fen landscape.

• Simon Loxley: Printer's Devil

Simon Loxley's book Printer's Devil, the life and work of Frederic Warde is scheduled for publication by US publishers David Godine

• Will Hill: International Exhibition: Types for the New Century

Will Hill is curating a travelling exhibition of contemporary typeface design by leading type designers from around the world, including recent faces by research unit member Jeremy Tankard and by Jon Melton of Cambridge School of Art.

The exhibition opens at the Stationers' Hall in London on 14 May and will later travel to a series of venues including Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, University of the West of England, University of Northumbria, University of Brighton, the Bauhaus, Wiemar and the Museum fur Druck-Kunst, Leipzig, with further locations planned for 2012-13

• Typecon New Orleans

In July Will Hill gave a conference paper at Typecon, the major US conference event for typography and typeface design, held this year in New Orleans. His paper Tactility and typographic space; type as material form is to be published in edited from by Linotype in the online journal Linoletter. The paper was warmly received by many luminaries of the type world. Will also gave a presentation at the Education forum event which precedes the main conference.

• Student collaborative project

Graphic Design students on the module 'Introduction to Type Media' will be taking part in a collaborative project designed by Will Hill and professor Nathalie Dumont of Concordia University Montreal. Both Will's and Professor Dumont's students will be working on the same bilingual French/English text, and comparing their experiences through a specially created social network page.

• Artworker's Guild Talk

WH has been invited to give a talk at the Artworkers' Guild in London as part of the Letter Exchange lecture series. Entitled Type design and the letter arts, the talk will take place on March 14 2012 and is open to the public.

• Will Hill's paper published

WH's paper Painted words: language and letterform in 20th century visual practice, originally delivered at the Typotage event at the Museum fur Druck-Kunst in Leipzig in May, has now been published in the current issue of the German design journal Slanted.