ATD3: Automatic Type Design 3, Digital Typography Yesterday and Tomorrow Atelier national de recherche typographique ENSAD Nancy Nancy, France, February 19-21, 2025

Automatic Type Design is an occasional symposium focused on digital font technologies, from  design to production. In its third edition, it aims to examine digital type design and typography, their concepts, and challenges from both historical and forward-looking perspectives.

We seek to critically review how past technological advancements have shaped our current understanding of fonts and letterforms. Additionally, we aspire to glimpse into the future to anticipate upcoming developments. In particular, we hope to critically assess the applications of machine learning, exploring its potential and limitations.

The conference welcomes designers, technologists, historians, and researchers. It will feature invited keynote speakers as well as accepted presenters from an open call for papers (see below).

We recognize that type design and computer science are traditionally male-dominated fields and encourage authors of all gender identities to submit their proposals. We aim to have a diverse pool of speakers.

Submission Guidelines

• Extended abstract between 500 and 1000 words with bibliography included will be reviewed anonymously. Possible formats:

 

• presentations/papers (we plan for 20 min. slots with chaired panel discussions for a block of 3–5 presentations)
• workshops
• software demonstrations (no need to anonymize)
• collective student presentation

• Submission deadline: 30 November 2024

• Notification of acceptance: 15 December 2024

• Conference: 17–21 February 2025

• Proceedings submission: 14 April 2025

List of Topics

All proposals that engage critically with digital fonts or their production are most welcome. The following topics are examples only:

• digital font formats and their use in typography;
• legacy font editors (FRED, Ikarus, Metafont, LetterSpirit, Apple Font Editor) including testimonies of their designers or users;
• challenges and limitations of font formats and encoding standards;
• quality assessment, readability assessment;
• applications of machine learning to glyph design, spacing, and assessment of type design and typography.

Committees

Program Committee

• Thomas Huot-Marchand, ANRT (FR)

• Alice Savoie, ANRT - ECAL (CH)

• Anushah Hossain, Berkeley UC (USA)

• Davide Fornari, ECAL (CH)

• David Březina, Rosetta Research (CZ)

Organizing committee

Atelier national de recherche typographique (ANRT), École nationale supérieure d’art et de design de Nancy (ENSAD)

in partnership with ECAL / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)

Invited Speakers

• NORM (CH)
• Patrick Baudelaire (FR)
• Scott Kim (Stanford University, USA) 
• Anushah Hossain (Berkeley UC, USA)
• Ferdinand Ulrich (FH Salzburg, DE)
• David Březina(Rosetta Research, CZ)
• Alice Savoie (FR) and Beyond Bézier team (ECAL, CH)

Venue

The conference will be held physically at the ENSAD Nancy, ARTEM Campus, Nancy (France).

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to contact@anrt-nancy.fr