Sumner Stone Workshop at Kerning Conference

Sumner Stone is a typeface designer, notably designed ITC Stone while working for Adobe. He was one of the speakers and workshop directors at Kerning conference in Faenza, Italy. I attended his workshop and in two days at Biblioteca Comunale Manfrediana di Faenza we wrote, drew and digitized letterforms using various approaches, then we produced variations, refinements and trial settings. We explored how the qualities of hand made letters – gesture, balance, vitality, personality – may be preserved in making letters which are ultimately produced by a machine. We also looked at alphabets as systems and the strategies that may be employed in translating the scribal tradition in which letters are seen as patterns of strokes into the typographic tradition where letters are seen as conceptual configurations. The aim of thew workshop was to give attendees a basis on which to begin or expand their own personal tradition of letter making. You can watch the video of the whole conference here.