The Art of the Alphabet in Northern Italy

About

The Italian landscape is full of exotic characters. Some are 2000-year-old classics, others are 20th century newbies. Some hide in plain view and others require a dedicated search.

Now in its second year, TipoItalia’24 will guide you on a typographic excavation and digital revival of hand-painted signs from the streets of Venice, inscriptions from the Renaissance and Tipoteca’s collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco wood and metal typefaces. Join us for this two two-week residency from June 9-22, 2024. We’ll explore old alphabets, print them via letterpress, and revive them to achieve computer-ready fonts. Type historians, printers and designers Bill Moran, Riccardo Olocco, Rory Sparks and Dan Rhatigan will be your guides on this alphabetic excursion as you unearth and refresh the best of Italian lettering and typography.

TipoItalia’24 encourages learners to see the alphabet in its myriad forms and trace their evolution to the type collection held by Tipoteca. This program fosters a “typographic archaeology” that can then be translated into digital type allowing the participant to bring Italian typography to their desktop computer.

Read Steven Heller’s review of the trip: https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-the-faces-of-italian-type/

Experience

We welcome educators, designers, and type lovers of all levels to experience the rich typographic legacy in the Veneto and the museum.

Experience with letterpress and Glyphs software is helpful but not required.

Schedule

June 9—June 22, 2024

Taught by Bill Moran and
Riccardo Olocco

This session includes 12 workshop days and a maximum of 12 participants.

teachers

Bill Moran

Bill Moran is a third-generation letterpress printer, graphic designer and Artistic Director emeritus of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. He is a professor of typography and letterpress printing at the University of Minnesota, USA. Moran’s artworks, known as LetterBugs, have been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe and are included in the permament collections of the Newberry Library, the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, and Tipoteca Italiana.

Riccardo Olocco

Riccardo Olocco is an Italian type designer and researcher, and president of the Italian typefoundry CAST, Cooperativa Anonima Servizi Tipografici. He graduated from the University of Reading. Since 2015 he returns annually to contribute workshops on the design of type revivals. His interest in history is central to his design work, and underpins his approach to contemporary design with lessons from historical models. With Michele Patanè, Olocco is the author of Designing type revivals (LazyDog, 2022): with this book they aim to share ideas, procedures and practices distilled from that experience.

Rory Sparks

Rory Sparks is an independent letterpress printer and bookbinder who specializes in collaborative, limited-edition artist books. She is interested in investigating what shifts when we think about the book as a hybrid space, and publishing as a process of community building. Sparks earned her MFA in interdisciplinary art through the Confluence program, now at University of New Mexico. Nationally, Sparks has taught at various craft centers such as Penland School of Crafts and Minnesota Center for Book Arts. In the Pacific Northwest, she has taught at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and PNCA. She has also co-founded several communal spaces including Produce, Working Library, and Em Space.

Dan Rhatigan

Dan Rhatigan is a typographer with over three decades of eclectic experience as a typesetter, graphic designer, typeface designer, zine publisher, and educator. He has a BFA in Graphic Design from Boston University, and an MA in Typeface Design from The University of Reading. After years of designing custom type and leading design teams at Monotype and Adobe, he now publishes his type through his own small foundry, Bijou Type, and helps other type designers publish their work as part of The Type Founders.

Pricing

Scholarships

June 9–22, 2024 |
taught by Bill Moran, Riccardo Olocco,
Rory Sparks and Dan Rhatigan
This residency hosts a maximum
of 12 participants.

Pricing + due dates:
• Registrations by March 15, 2024 - Euro 1,990.00
• Registrations by May 1, 2024 - Euro 2,190.00
• Registrations after May 1, 2024 - Euro 2,390.00

Final balance must be paid by April 25 2024. In case of cancellation, the fee is fully refundable until May 10 2024. After May 10, half the fee will be refunded. No refunds will be made after June 1, 2024.

Additional details

Lodging

Participants will arrange their own lodging. Here are 3 options you can explore: Villa Bolzonello (a 30 minute walk from Tipoteca).
Al Bagolaro (20 minute walk). And Terre di Bea (40 minute walk). You may rent an ebike in Cornuda or we’ll provide a shuttle van during the residency.

The fee covers the cost of the workshop and transportation for daytrips. Participants
pay airfare, lodging and ground transportation to Cornuda where Tipoteca is located.

Meals

On the days when we’re at Tipoteca you may enjoy lunch or dinner at le Corderie for a flat fee of 15€ including wine pairings. This restaurant showcases the freshest meats, fish and vegetables of the region. The city of Cornuda also features other dining options and coffee shops within easy walking distance of the museum.