Come and learn what to do and how, what not to do and even how what not to do, plus all the rest with our little team of font fanatics. This year, we’ll be covering Khmer and Javanese with all the resources you need to get started on these scripts. Running Monday 7th to Thursday 10th October at the TCDC Chiang Mai, the workshop takes place the same week as the BITS conference, so participants can combine both in a single trip.

Objectives

• Understand the typographic conventions for Khmer and Javanese scripts.
• See what the letters look like and how they work together.
• Develop a concept for a type family and see where to start with each script.
• Sketch key characters to give your design a clear direction with feedback from local experts.
• Learn how to fit the different scripts together coherently.
• Go deeper into each script to build the glyph set. Identify common difficulties and how to get things right.
• No technical knowledge required: you can work on paper or digitally as you prefer.

Plus

Participants receive an extended trial licence for Glyphs app and can purchase their own full licence at a discount.

Prices

• Professional rate: 15000฿ (≈ €420 / £380 / $470).
• Early bird before 31 August 12000฿ (≈ €340 / £300 / $380).
• Student rate: 5000฿ (≈ €140 / £120 / $150) (please send student ID)
• 4 days 10am–5pm with 1-hour lunch break (accommodation, food and drinks not included)

Student sponsorship

One sponsored place is available to students from South and Southeast Asia. Sponsorship covers workshop fees and travel costs up to THB 8000. All students registering by 31 August will be entered into the draw, and the sponsored place will be chosen and notified shortly thereafter.

(Other companies or individuals wishing to sponsor student places are very welcome to email ben@fontpad.co.uk).

Booking

To register please email verena@glyphsapp.com with the subject ‘SE Asia Font Workshop’. Note all sessions are in English.

About the facilitators

 
Sovichet Tep started as a self-taught type designer in late 2010 while he was in high school. He has published various free Khmer typefaces on his blog and two on Google Fonts (Kdam Thmor, and Kantumruy). Currently, he runs Romnea Type, a retail font platform, and Anagata, a branding and type design consultancy based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Since 2017, Sovichet has been travelling in Cambodia and Thailand to talk about the history of Khmer script and principles of Khmer typeface design to national and international audiences. He is also interested in other Southeast Asian scripts and hopes to work on them in the near future.
 
Fadhl Haqq (Akufadhl) is a letterer and self-taught type designer who loves good food and B&W photos. He started designing typefaces in 2014 for his own small foundry called Alterna Type. After taking Arabic Language and Literature in Al-Azhar University, he started focusing on non-Latin scripts, with a focus on Indonesian writing systems. He is currently expanding his knowledge of other scripts and writing systems in Southeast Asian countries.
Fadhl on Instagram.
 
 
 
Aditya Bayu Perdana is an undergraduate student of architecture who likes to delve into typography in his spare time. His typographic work and interest are mostly about Indonesia’s non-Latin writing systems, including Javanese, Balinese, Lontara, Batak, Sundanese and various others. Each of these scripts has a fascinating history and application, but most have been supplanted by Latin in everyday use. It is his hope that his typographic works on Indonesian scripts would reignite interest in these fascinating scripts and renew them for the modern design world. Aditya’s most recent work is an updated version of Google’s Noto Sans Javanese.
Aditya on Behance | Instagram.

Supported by

 
Mark Frömberg (Mark2Mark) is a Berlin-based typeface designer, tool developer and sporadically an illustrator. He received his masters degree from TypeMedia at the KABK in Den Haag in 2014. His focus is on anything related to languages, writing systems and code. During the last few years he extended his non-Latin work into Southeast Asian scripts, which again triggers new ideas for creating even more useful tools for the type design community. Some of his plugins are firmly established in many designer’s GlyphsApp workflows. He presented his ways of problem solving at Robothon 2018, and together with Natalie Rauch and Ben Mitchell he occasionally teaches type design.
 
Ben Mitchell runs The Fontpad, a little company based in Brighton, UK, making fonts for Southeast Asia. His knowledge so far covers Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese (including minority use of the script), Cham, Tham and Vietnamese.
As well as managing type design projects and researching the Southeast Asian scripts, he runs workshops in Southeast Asia and speaks at conferences. He also mentors designers new to these scripts, and consults on existing or in-development fonts.
 
 
Miriam Surányi is a Type Designer and Producer working in Vienna for Schriftlabor and Glyphs. In several workshops she has shared her knowledge on type design. She graduated from the Viennese Design School Graphische with an emphasis on Typography and since then has been working in a Team with Lisa Schultz and Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer developing custom type, retail fonts and type production.
 
 
 
A trained photographer, Rainer Erich (‘Eric’) Scheichelbauer (b. 1977 in Vienna, Austria) holds both a philosophy and a Dutch studies degree. He creates typefaces, works as a digital punchcutter for other type designers, and gives type design workshops on a regular basis. Since he joined the Glyphs team in 2012, he has been writing articles, tutorials, and Python scripts, as well as the blog and the handbook. He lives and works in Vienna, where he runs his type studio Schriftlabor.
 
 
Cadson Demak is a transcription of Thai words, “very well selected”. This summarizes the company’s operating philosophy: to select the best possible solution to meet a client’s needs. The firm was a desire to help bridge the gap between domestic raw talent and international technical capability led to establishing the firm in 2002. The team, who share a love of typography and graphic design, envisioned the role of the company as a promoter of good type design, both in terms of aesthetic appeal and strict adherence to proper digital standards. In recent years, Cadson Demak has been instrumental in connecting Thailand’s typography and graphic design activities with those of the international community, in line with the need for a greater degree of collaboration for better communication globally. The firm is the principal organizer of BITS and Pieces, two Thailand-based regional forums on communication design.
 
The first center for design know-how and a hothouse of creative thinking in the country’s upper north. TCDC Chiang Mai is our first regional design resource center, offering the same full slate of services available to users in Bangkok. Continuing to expand opportunities for learning about design, TCDC reaches out to entrepreneurs, designers, students, people in Chiang Mai and the upper north and offering them the knowledge and tools to turn original, innovative ideas into real economic returns. Our approach is focused on wedding Thailand’s intellectual assets, its rich cultural heritage, and the latest technologies to create distinctive goods and services with strong potential for success in the local and international marketplace.