The Urban Typography workshop took place at Mediamatic over two days. Participants were encouraged to form groups for collaboration. Ideas, inspiration, and brainstorming were the focus of day one, while day two focused on putting ideas in practice on the machinery of the Fab Lab. A Fab Lab is a space where computer controlled machines allow one to build just about anything. The focus of the Urban Typography theme helped reign in the participants to create works using the Fab Lab that shout, scream and engage others using text in an urban environment.
The workshop started out with some engaging presentations by visual artist Mirthe Blusse, street artist and graphic designer ZEDZ, and architect Jack Bakker from Zwarts en Jansma Architects. Participants then were encouraged to brainstorm, share ideas, and form pairs and teams for their projects. Day two was strictly hands-on as the participants put their ideas into practice with the help of Bernardo. Some participants chose to focus on one larger project, while others used their time to pursue more than one computer-controlled medium. By far the biggest challenge was vectorizing all of the design files to work with the various driver software systems for the machines. If you attend a workshop, be sure to familiarize yourself with vectorization ahead of time and come prepared with your designs in a compatible vectorized format.
All in all the two-day workshop was a success for each participant. The Fab Lab made text pop seamlessly from dream into an urban environment-- whether in the form of an interesting object, or lettering on a sticker to place on a building, or words for a stop motion video.
