lovely type freaks

One of the other speakers called them ‘type freaks’ (Jonathan Morgan at Four Corners Books), not me. But today I gave a talk with my publisher, David Fickling, at the St Bride Library Conference, and I knew straight away I was really, really out of my depth with all these people who know and and can knowledgeably deride every single font I have installed on my computer. So following David’s introduction, I didn’t talk about fonts at all, I just talked about making stuff, and they seemed happy enough about that (I say, hopefully.)

Then I got to listen to a talk by Jonny Hannah, one of my favourite illustrators and letter makers, and had a beer with him afterward. Except I got kind of shy and ended up talking more to his friend and fellow Southampton University course leader Peter Jarvis (on the left). Jonny’s in the middle and the one on the right is Random House designer Becky Chilcott, who did loads of organising work for the conference.

I managed to pay a quick visit to the St Bride Library with DFC publicist Louise Stothard, and we were amazed at the collection of books they had. Really lovely, expensive books on design, typography, illustration, bookbinding, printmaking… I could have spent years in there! They only have a small amount of books on display, but there are about 50,000 books in the collection within the building, and the librarian was friendly and happy to help us find things. It’s free, and anyone can just walk in off the street to see the books during opening hours. All of a sudden, I have a very good reason to spend large amounts of time hanging out around Fleet Street! What an amazing place.

Here’s a doodle I made of one of the speakers, Will Hill, from the Cambridge School of Art. People said things like this.

(When people say ‘Baskerville’, my first thought is still hound, not font.)