Conference

The central event of the Typographics festival is a con­fer­ence with speakers from around the world, focused on contemporary typography. It takes place Friday–Saturday, June 27-28, at The Cooper Union in New York City.

The main Typographics conference will feature an international line-up of designers, with presentations about type and its use in graphic design, web design, publication design, book design, packaging, branding, corporate identities, advertising, motion graphics, and more.

See ticket info

Speakers

Alan Bell

From the Printing Press to the LGBTQ Press

How a 10-year-old Black kid from the hood, fascinated by the technology of printing, discovered journalism and movie titles, eventually becoming the publisher, editor, and graphic designer of two groundbreaking LGBTQ publications—one on each coast: Gaysweek, the only weekly LGBTQ mainstream newspaper at the time of its founding in 1977, and BLK, the first national Black LGBTQ newsmagazine. How an early interest in printing evolved into a lifelong passion for letterforms, design, and spreading the news.

About Alan Bell
Alan Bell

With a diverse career path that includes printing, publishing, design, journalism, film production, film criticism, sociology and social work, Alan Bell currently specializes in graphic design for non-profit organizations that serve the health, educational and social needs of underserved communities. In addition to founding the ground-breaking LGBTQ publications, Gaysweek and BLK, his career includes film criticism for the Los Angeles Sentinel, and, occasionally, the Los Angeles Times. Since 2010, the Adobe Community Expert has led the non-profit Los Angeles InDesign User Group, promoting collaboration and education in graphic design. A UCLA graduate, he holds multiple degrees in sociology and business, and has studied film at both UCLA and NYU. And one more thing: he’s visited all 50 states.

facebook.com/alan.bell2
facebook.com/blkpub

Sadie Red Wing

Reinventing the Indigenous Graphic Design Canon: No Printing Press Needed

Graphic design is a common practice used by Indigenous communities in the United States, yet the history of its application is often overlooked in academic discussions of graphic design. Before the printing press arrived on the continent of North America, many Indigenous peoples employed graphic design techniques to document and preserve their history, all without mass production tools or the English language. This presentation will provide a historical analysis of the graphic design methods employed by Indigenous peoples in the United States to document, record, and archive vital information for future generations.

About Sadie Red Wing
Sadie Red Wing

Sadie Red Wing is an Indigenous graphic designer and student advocate from the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media Arts and Interactive Design from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and her Master of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University (NCSU). Her research on cultural revitalization through design tools and strategies created a new demand for tribal competence in graphic design research. Red Wing urges Native American graphic designers to express visual sovereignty in their design work and encourages academia to include an Indigenous perspective in design curriculum. Currently, Red Wing is an instructor at Arizona State University while obtaining her PhD in Graphic Design at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

sadieredwing.com
@sadieredwing

Leo Porto & Gabriela Carnabuci

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Leo Porto
Leo Porto

Leo is a Brazilian designer, Founder and Executive Creative Director at PORTO ROCHA, a New York-based strategy and design agency recently named Independent Agency of the Year by D&AD. Before founding PORTO ROCHA, he was Design Director at COLLINS and worked at renowned studios such as Pentagram, Mother, and Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. Leo’s work has been recognized by major design awards and publications, including Young Guns, The One Club, the Webby Awards, Print Magazine, and The Type Directors Club. Specializing in branding and design systems, he has created identities for some of the world’s largest brands, including Nike, Netflix, and Twitch.

portorocha.com
@leoportooo

About Gabriela Carnabuci
Gabriela Carnabuci

Gabriela is a New York-based designer and art director whose work combines creative and systematic thinking to craft visual identities with lasting impact for global brands. Her work spans brand identity, editorial design, experiential design, and packaging. Prior to joining PORTO ROCHA, she worked at Base Design, Studio Lin, and Synoptic Office. Her work has been recognized by The Type Directors Club, Creative Review, It’s Nice That, and Dieline. She is now an Associate Design Director at PORTO ROCHA, where she has worked on brand identities for a diverse range of clients including Netflix, Apple, Melissa, and Kunsthalle Basel.

gabrielacarnabuci.com

Wael Morcos

Sacred Form, Secular Function

In contemporary design, Arabic script often carries layers of sacred meaning yet it must operate within a secular, commercial world. This talk explores the tensions and negotiations between the reverence of script as a cultural and spiritual artifact and the realities of graphic design as a service industry. Through a series of case studies, we will examine how objects become vehicles for larger narratives: stories of migration, the transmission of knowledge, and the evolution of truth across time and technology. At the intersection of faith, form, and function, Arabic typography becomes more than just communication, it becomes a map of shifting identities, collective memory, and cultural continuity.

About Wael Morcos
Wael Morcos

Wael Morcos is a graphic designer/type designer and partner at the NY based studio Morcos Key. Wael leads multi-lingual identity, editorial, environment and digital projects for art and culture institutions between the USA and the Middle East. Wael has been featured in Print Magazine’s 15 under 30, was named a Young Gun by the Art Directors Club and an Ascender by the Type Directors Club.

morcoskey.com
@waelmorcos

Yehwan Song

Typography and Gesture

The talk will explore how both typography—through letters, words, fonts, spacing, and visual structure—and gestures—through facial and bodily movements, interface cues, and screen animations—shape the flow of the viewer’s eye. Both are directional, intentional, and rhythmic, guiding perception and attention. By breaking, rerouting, or enhancing expected flows, we can play with visual rhythm to generate new narratives and meanings. These disruptions challenge how we read, see, and feel—opening unfamiliar paths through language, movement, and design.

About Yehwan Song
Yehwan Song

Yehwan Song is a Korean-born artist, graphic designer. She designs and develops experimental websites, installations and interactive graphics driven by content structure instead of static templates and web design conventions. Through her projects, she tries to flip the general understanding of web design and subvert common user-experience behaviors, which oversimplify users’ behavior. She pursues diversity above consistency and efficiency.

yhsong.com
@yehwan.yen.song

Elizabeth Goodspeed

Dead Letters

Mainstream visual culture has a habit of condensing entire eras into a single stylistic shorthand: neo-grotesques for the ’60s, bulbous serifs for the ’70s, or highlighter scripts for the ’80s. But history is more eclectic than the algorithm would have you believe. These aesthetic callbacks overlook the conditions that shape typographic work, then and now—the industries and formats it serves, the available tools and type libraries, and the individual preferences of working designers.

Elizabeth will explore how a more curious and critical engagement with archival typography can sharpen both taste and practice. Through vernacular ephemera, unexpected historic parallels, and a closer look at what we mean when we reference “the past,” she advocates for a design culture that delivers specificity over vibes and informed reference over retro cliché.

About Elizabeth Goodspeed
Elizabeth Goodspeed

Elizabeth Goodspeed is an independent designer and writer based in Providence, Rhode Island. In her studio work, she is a devoted generalist with a focus on historically-inspired brand identity and print projects. She has worked with clients like Herman Miller, Phaidon, HBO, and The Whitney Museum, as well as studios like Pentagram, Mythology, High Tide, RoAndCo, Interbrand, and Porto Rocha. Her writing and criticism explore the cyclical patterns of visual culture and the lasting influence of everyday, utilitarian graphic design on the broader creative landscape. She is the US Editor-at-Large for It’s Nice That, where she writes a monthly column on design and visual culture, and contributes regularly to Fast Company, PORT, The Architect’s Newspaper, and AIGA Eye on Design. Elizabeth also publishes Casual Archivist, a newsletter on design history, and teaches at RISD and Parsons.

elizabethgoodspeed.com
@goodspeed@typo.social
@goodspeed.bsky.social
@elizabeth_goodspeed

Elizabeth Karp‑Evans

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Elizabeth Karp‑Evans
Elizabeth Karp‑Evans

Elizabeth Karp-Evans was born in Salem, Oregon. She is a founding partner and director of the New York-based creative agency and publisher Pacific. Elizabeth is deeply passionate about envisioning, building, and improving brands and communication systems across print and digital that function outside the confines of European design theory. She has worked in the field of contemporary art for two decades and has designed brands, exhibitions and publications for institutions globally. She is the former Director of Media, Communications and Content at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Elizabeth holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School for Social Research.

pacificpacific.studio
@elizabethkarpevans

Robyn Kanner

Human First

Human First is a heartfelt reminder that design — like nearly every discipline — is, at its core, about people. We’re creating for real people, with real stakes, in this very real world. Robyn Kanner shares insights from her work on high-profile political campaigns, including the winning Biden-Harris 2020 campaign and Governor Josh Shapiro’s successful gubernatorial run. She also highlights Freedom To Be, a project for the ACLU that recently won a Webby Award for Film & Video in Public Service and Activism. And somehow all of this — the politics, the purpose, and the people — traces back to a few clutch missed free throws in the 1995 NBA finals.

About Robyn Kanner
Robyn Kanner

Robyn Kanner is a creative director with a passion for telling urgent human stories.

As the creative director for Biden-Harris ’20, she led branding for a handful of verticals, including social, ads, merch, video, planes, trains, buses, and stadiums. After President Biden’s victory, she continued this work for the Inauguration.

Robyn then launched her own studio, collaborating with clients like Spotify, Showtime, and Governor Josh Shapiro. She led the Democratic National Committee’s first major brand refresh since President Obama’s took office. Within 18 months, her studio joined forces with Studio Mosaic, allowing her to continue working with organizations such as the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center. She is a visiting professor at Cooper Union.

An avid film lover, Robyn contributes to The Verge through conversations with directors about the decisions they make behind the camera.

robynkanner.com
@robynkanner.bsky.social
@robynkanner

Talia Cotton

Controlling Chaos

Design is, by definition, an act of intentionality. As designers, we shape form to achieve a desired result. Yet today’s technologies increasingly introduce elements that resist traditional control. Random values, evolving data, and user interaction—to name a few—are no longer peripheral; they are central to the systems we design.

This raises a provocative question: If we’re sacrificing control, are we still designing? Are we still designers when the medium itself resists being designed?

In this talk, Talia Cotton explores the tension between control and chaos in contemporary creative practice. She shares the methodologies she employs to regain authorship, the frameworks she builds to direct unpredictability, and the moments she chooses to surrender control—on purpose. Audiences will leave with new strategies for designing within systems that shift, react, and evolve—and a renewed sense of what it means to create with intention in a medium that refuses to sit still.

About Talia Cotton
Talia Cotton

Talia Cotton is a designer, coder, educator, and leading specialist in the intersection of branding and technology. She is Principal & Creative Director at Cotton, an award-winning design and technology agency pioneering design through data and custom code. Prior to Cotton, Talia led the design and development of data-driven and algorithmic brand identities at Pentagram. Talia has received recognition from major design awards and publications, and was awarded the Young Guns Award, recognizing top creative professionals under 30. She has spoken in seventeen countries including OFFF Barcelona, D&AD China, and the Latin America Design Festival in Peru. Talia teaches coding and interaction design at Parsons School of Design and Harvard Graduate School of Design.

taliacotton.com
cotton.design
@taliasaccount

Jeffrey Gibson

A Little Bit Louder

Interdisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson will discuss the use of his letterform alphabet, which he created in 2017. He will also discuss his use of self-authored and reappropriated text in his paintings, beaded textile sculptures, and wall-based artworks. Andy Overton (Cooper Union Alum), who assists Jeffrey in his studio, will join and share how he translates Gibson’s texts into beaded compositions. 

About Jeffrey Gibson
Jeffrey Gibson

Jeffrey Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, and Korea, where he absorbed the transgressive soundtrack of the 1980s through limited access to MTV. Gibson graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and received a Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. While in Chicago he also worked as a research assistant on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) for the Field Museum, a formative experience that fostered an ongoing interest in questions of ownership and notions of cultural translation. Though trained as a painter, Gibson began incorporating materials and techniques that deliberately reference his heritage—such as raw hides and bead work—around 2010. A major turning point in his career, in 2012 he presented ‘one becomes the other,’ his first solo exhibition of sculpture and video, at Participant Inc. Sculpture, moving image, and sound have since become an integral aspect of his practice. He is known for his immersive, multi-sensory installations that invoke and interweave such disparate contexts as faith-based spaces of communion and night clubs.

jeffreygibson.net
@jeffrune

Nat Pyper

Alphabets Against Erasure

What do queer and trans histories have to say about the look of our language? Can the forms of the past give shape to future solidarity? Nat will share highlights from A Queer Year of Love Letters, a series of fonts that remembers the lives and work of countercultural queers of the past several decades. The series aims to make the act of remembering these histories accessible to other people, as easy as typing. Better yet: it aims to make the act of typing an act of remembering.

About Nat Pyper
Nat Pyper

Nat Pyper is an alphabet artist. Their practice of fonts, wearables, video, and performance extends from ongoing research on queer publishing histories. They’ve written for Are.na, Draw Down Books, GenderFail, Source Type, and the Walker Art Center, and their font project A Queer Year of Love Letters will be published as a book by Inventory Press and Library Stack in the summer of 2025.

natpyper.com
@natpyper

Arsh Raziuddin

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Arsh Raziuddin
Arsh Raziuddin

Arsh Raziuddin is a creative director, designer, and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Arsh is currently the VP of Global Creative at Christie’s and the creative director of Acacia, a literary magazine for the Muslim left. She has worked in house with The New York Times, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and with handfuls of publishing houses. Arsh led the redesign of Bon Appétit magazine in 2021 and was a key member of the team behind The Atlantic’s redesign in 2019. Arsh’s work has been seen in The New Yorker, A24, Bloomberg, LA Times, and more. Her work has earned recognition from the National Magazine Awards, Society of Publication Designers, The Art Directors Club, The New York Times, Monocle, Print Magazine, among others. Arsh believes in the transformative power of design to help shape an inclusive culture of systems, style, and communication.

arshraziuddin.com
@arshraziuddin

Matt Willey

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Matt Willey
Matt Willey

Matt Willey is a graphic designer. He joined Pentagram as a partner in 2020 after 5 years as the Art Director of The New York Times Magazine.

Willey has worked with several of the leading titles in independent publishing, including Port, Elephant, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and the UK Newspaper The Independent. In 2021, he redesigned The Big Issue, the largest street magazine in the world. He is currently the Creative Director and co-founder of the annual literary magazine INQUE.

Willey has developed branding systems and title sequences for a wide range of clients, including the design of the titles for the award-winning BBC series Killing Eve.

Willey sells his typefaces through the Buy Fonts Save Lives initiative with all proceeds going to Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support.

mattwilley.co.uk
@mrwilley

Jon Key

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Jon Key
Jon Key

Jon Key is an artist, designer, and writer originally from Seale, Alabama. After receiving his BFA from RISD, Jon began his design career at Grey Advertising in NYC before moving on to work with HBO, Nickelodeon, and The Public Theater. Now he is co-founder of the Brooklyn–based design studio Morcos Key with Wael Morcos. As an educator, Jon has taught at Cooper Union, Parsons, and currently teaches at SVA. Jon was selected for Forbes 30 under 30 Art and Style list for 2020 and was the Frank Staton Chair in Graphic Design at Cooper Union 2018-2019. His work has been featured in Jeffery Deitch Gallery NYC, the Armory Show, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. Jon holds an MA in Design Research, Writing and Criticism from SVA. His writing has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The Black Experience in Design and AIGA. His first book Black, Queer & Untold: A New Archive of Designers, Artists, & Trailblazers was released November 2024 with Levine Querido.

morcoskey.com
@jkey13

Johannes Breyer & Fabian Harb

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About Johannes Breyer
Johannes Breyer

Johannes Breyer is a Berlin-based graphic designer. He studied in Zurich and worked at design studio NORM before graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 2013, he co-founded Dinamo Typefaces with Fabian Harb.

johannesbreyer.com
abcdinamo.com
@johannesbreyerr

About Fabian Harb
Fabian Harb

Fabian Harb is a Swiss typeface and graphic designer. He studied in Basel, and worked in Amsterdam and Berlin. In 2013, he co-founded Dinamo Typefaces with Johannes Breyer.

fabianharb.ch
abcdinamo.com
@fabianharb

nicole killian

Talk info coming soon

The full description for this talk will be posted soon.

About nicole killian
nicole killian

nicole killian is an artist and design educator based in richmond virginia and sometimes florence italy. nicole runs a publishing initiative called nico fontana that focuses on the form of writing by primarily queer and trans artists. nicole is an associate professor and graduate director of the MFA program at the Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Graphic Design. Work has been exhibited at ICA VCU, Sediment in Richmond, CAVE in Detroit, Arcadia Missa in London, Present Works in Milwaukee, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, Embassy in Los Angeles, Sadie Halie Projects in Brooklyn, Nomade Gallery in Hangzhou, and Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art for Lorna Mills’s Ways of Something. nicole’s expanded approach to publishing considers objects as containers for language—language that gets activated when read, passed, held, and handled.

nylondip.com
@saucyunicorn

And more details soon …

Talk descriptions and other details will be posted here over the coming days. For updates and announce­ments, join the Typographics mailing list and follow Typographics on Mastodon and Instagram.

Register

Registration for the main Typographics 2025 confer­ence is now open, with significant early-bird discounts available before the full schedule is announced.

Conference regstration is separate from the Workshops & Tours, TypeLab, or Book Fair. You must register for those events separately.

Early Bird Conference Pricing

Early Bird discounts end May 15, 2025.

Early Bird Professional
$465*

Standard tickets for professional attendees.

Early Bird Educator
$390*

For college staff, instructors, adjuncts, professors, and public library librarians.

Early Bird Student
$235*

For full-time matriculated students currently enrolled in college. Please be prepared to show valid student ID card at check in.

Early Bird Small bundle
$425/ticket*

For 5–9 professional tickets. These tickets are non-refundable but may be transferred to another person if requested before May 30, 2025.

Early Bird Large bundle
$395/ticket*

For 10 or more professional tickets. These tickets are non-refundable but may be transferred to another person if requested before May 30, 2025.

* Prices shown here do not include Eventbrite processing fees, which are non-refundable.

Get early bird conference tickets ➡

Please note: Typographics participants are subject to our Code of Conduct & Policies. If you do not agree to these conditions, do not register or attend any Typographics events.

Stay Updated

More info about this year’s Typographics will be announced in the coming weeks.

Join the mailing list to get the latest news and announcements:

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Sponsors

We’re grateful to have the support of some of our favorite organi­zations. Without their generosity, Typo­graphics would not be possible.

Interested in sponsoring? Write to type@cooper.edu

Presenting Partners

The Cooper Union Type@Cooper The Herb Lubalin Study Center
NYS Council on the Arts

Typographics is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Silver Sponsors

Commercial Type Google Fonts Klim Type Foundry Morisawa Sharp Type Pentagram

Lead Sponsors

Frere-Jones Adobe Monotype Type Network Glyphs Dual Type Emigre Fonts TYPETR Universal Thirst HEX Projects Typotheque Maryland Institute College of Art

Brass Sponsors

Font of the Month Club XYZ Type Dinamo

Pixel Sponsors

The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Rosetta Darden Studio Society of Scribes Arrow Type Emtype Swell Type Zetafonts Foundry The Metropolitan Museum of Art CJ Type Famira Fonts Fontdue Order Type Foundry Typemasters Radix Media Nova Type Foundry Typeji Typetura CSTM Fonts Tipografies

Association & Media Partners

Fonts In Use

Interested in sponsoring? Write to type@cooper.edu