Typomania

Typomania International Festival is a cultural and educational project dedicated to the type, typography, calligraphy, lettering, motion-design and interactive design. Held in Moscow since 2012, the festival aims to collect and connect as many type fans as possible to promote typography culture and to support the most daring experiments and projects.

The competition of typographical videos is one of the key events of the Typomania Festival. Typomania’s 2019 theme is “Before and after” and is all about the history of the type and its future.

There are six categories:

• Videos where the font is playing the key role
• Before and after (Typomania 2019 theme)
• Presentation of a typeface (Video demonstrating the abilities and specificity of type)
• Movie titles (commercial and student works)
• Text visualization (songs, poems or other texts)
• Typomania

Only videos containing type as the active component can participate in the contest. Videos must have been created during 2017-2019 years. Individual authors, as well as creative groups, may take part in the event. Every contestant can send an unlimited number of entries.



The typomania brief is one of interest to me due to its broad nature and current motivation to produce typefaces. Typography is a very tempting field to pursue due to its easy translation into the essay for brief 2. My current interest in generative type will be documented in a proper blog post at some point. This brief is slightly more complex than just creating a typeface as it needs to have a video presentation format, an area I and most of my contacts know very little about. The collaborator I have in mind for this brief is Charlie a friend from the foundation who is currently studying architecture but also has a passion for type and calligraphy. His traditional approach to type should compliment my interest in technological advancements and generative type well. In terms of what we might produce and which brief, I will need to have a discussion with him but I think presentation of a typeface sounds like the most achievable due to our limited knowledge of animation. However, there is also a lot of room for manoeuvre with the theme brief of 'before and after'. I'll do a blog update after I contact him soon.