How did your relationship with the TDC first began. When did you start engaging with it as an organization?
I first became aware of TDC through their 2005 collaboration with SoTA on the TypeCon conference in NYC—Alphabet City. There’s a wonderful element in the type community where it’s incredibly collaborative, and these overlaps emerge fostering resonance and dialogue. From then on, TDC’s salons became part of the circuit of NYC-based design meet-ups that were constantly happening. In 2017 I was asked to judge the 20TDC competition, then to Chair the 24TDC competition, and from there to help restructure it, leading to my position as TDC’s Managing Director today.
You were appointed the TDC’s first-ever managing director. What does this position entail, and why did you accept the challenge?
I was brought on to guide TDC’s brand and future vision; to manage marketing and partnerships; and to oversee TDC’s typography and type design competitions, the Ascenders awards, and the Type Drives Culture conferences. There’s been a lot of restructuring, both with my position and with TDC becoming a part of the One Club for Creativity—so this is something we’ve been navigating together with the One Club management, staff, TDC’s longtime director Carol Wahler, and TDC’s Advisory Board. In the past year, TDC has pivoted toward being a lot more inclusive, international, and wide-reaching. And that’s a wonderful change to be a part of and get to lead.
What is your perspective on the current status of the industry, and the space allocated for women?
The type industry is in the process of expansion. It’s still very limited in terms of practitioners—and nascent compared to parallel industries such as design. There’s a lot of room for greater diversity on all fronts, with a special need for involvement from cultures, communities, and languages that haven’t had significant representation within digital type design.
TDC is actively doing its part to make meaningful contributions along all those lines. We’re conscientiously recruiting more diverse voices into the rooms where decision-making takes place (such as the TDC Advisory Board and competition juries). We’ve expanded our scholarship offerings, which currently consist of annual scholarships for women (Beatrice Warde), for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (Adé Hogue), and our newest scholarship/grant for North American Native / First Nation individuals (Ezhishin). We’ve also pivoted to frontlighting minority scripts, as well as visual lexicon and semiotic preferences from less-shown regions, for our recent and upcoming Type Drives Culture conferences.
And, circling the answer back to your original focus, we’ve been working on a series of exhibitions in partnership with You Creative Media which highlight today’s women type practitioners—the first of which just opened at Poster House in NYC, and is called Advertising Type: Women in Digital Design.
What are the benefits of winning a TDC medal?
The TDC Medal is our highest honor, and is a lifetime achievement award for extraordinary contributions to the world of typography and type design. Only 34 people have earned that honor over the course of the organization’s 76 years in existence, so it’s really hailed as a pinnacle of involvement and proven track record of accomplishments at the highest levels. Most recently, design critic and writer Jan Middendorp was named as the TDC Medal recipient, who will be awarded this May at ATypI: Paris.
What is the next wave of type and font industries?
The field is rapidly growing and expanding, with more practitioners entering the ring every day. There are more typefaces being released constantly, with more people are aware of the significance and importance of a quality font. That blossoming is creating a lot more variability, from subtle shifts as foundries redefine the classics, to a lot more higher-quality display options, leading to type serving a louder and more vibrant role within design.
The space is also expanding in regards to the offerings available for different scripts, something which has been under-developed in the digital realm. And this is a space that I’m looking to for the next wave of innovation and large industry shifts, as new ways of thinking reverberate back to influence western/Latin typography.
How has been the response to the recently launched TDC69 competition?
The response has been incredible—the competition this year has received more attention, in more regions, than any in TDC’s history. And it was wonderful to collaborate with designer and lettering artist Ryu Mieno, the first time TDC commissioned a non-western designer to lead the look and feel of the campaign. The announcement topped our social media records and the competition had entrants from a record-breaking 77 countries sending in their work. We’re now in the judging phase, and working on the book that’ll showcase all the winners together—past versions of which you can buy via TDC’s Instagram.
The TDC is all about supporting the type community and building new bridges. What are your thoughts on this?
That’s absolutely the goal—and I feel very privileged to be in a position where I can help this come to fruition. This past year, we’ve globalized and expanded our Advisory Board (the first time the club is guided by practitioners outside of New York), expanded our outreach and dialogue with different regions, introduced global price parity with half of the world receiving over 60% off our competitions, and brought on stage practitioners that haven’t been platformed within the type community in the past as part of our Type Drives Culture conference series. It feels incredibly rewarding to be part of all the changes and momentum taking place.
Did you have formal training, or did you learn on your own?
Both—I had formal training in classic art methodologies, critical art theory, and emergent media. It both translates, and doesn’t, to what I ended up doing after.
One of the things I resonated with in terms of the type design community when I entered was that very few of the practitioners at the time had formal training, as formal training in typography was far and few in between. So there was an entrepreneurial autodidact attitude in the industry, a nerdiness and a brazenness which made for a rich combination. And as this field still relatively new, there’s a lot of room to make an active contribution, making it a really rewarding realm to be in.
On a personal note, what have been the highlights of your career so far? Your key learnings?
I think those are two very different questions—a key learning has been just how much is still unknown, unrecorded, and under-explored in our industries. How much we’re all constantly, actively, shaping the world to come. Which perhaps leads to an answer to the first part of your question. I tend to be more forward-looking than backward-looking, so the career highlights I’m happiest about are those just on the horizon; it’s about everything that’s coming next.