TypoBerlin Day One.
Jan Middendorp blogs for Eye – direct from the ‘pregnant oyster’
This year marks the twelfth time this splendid building has been home to TypoBerlin, a conference about graphic design and related matters organised by FontShop Germany. What was originally an event about new developments in type design has become distinctly multi-disciplinary, with each year’s theme (Music, Image, Change, etc.) hinting at the directions in which boundaries may be crossed. The theme of this year’s event (the fourteenth) was Space. Next year’s will be Lust. With more than 1200 visitors from sixteen countries, TypoBerlin has become Europe’s largest annual design conference. (According to Stefan Sagmeister, it’s also the world’s best.)
One of the challenges of curating a themed conference is to come up with just the right keynote speaker. The ideal is to find an outsider with a story that is powerful enough to make designer jaws drop. And so, the Typo team decided to look beyond design-related notions of space, and travel to outer space.
What sounded splendid on paper – Esther Dyson, an internet and angel investment opinion leader, telling tales about her recent cosmonaut training as ‘backup’ for a rich client, one of the world’s first space tourists – became something of a disappointment, as Mrs Dyson browsed her Flickr album of Siberian snapshots while insisting on telling us the names of every astronaut or technician that crossed her path at Russia’s Star City space centre.
She is obviously a fascinating person as well as a businesswoman with a heart. However she seemed too nervous about being thrown to the typographers, a species that must have been new to her, to exert her communicative powers to full effect. (Is there such as thing as a design conference coach? Could be a great niche occupation.)
After the opening speech, TypoBerlin became a four-track event, with three smaller spaces besides the 1000-plus seat main hall, so everyone’s experience of the conference is a different one.
We missed a workshop (fully booked) by Dutch type designers Erik van Blokland and Paul van der Laan, who practised calligraphy with the world’s largest pointed pen. We saw another Dutch master of letters, Gerard Unger, deliver a lecture on lettering projects in public spaces with his characteristic sense of understatement.
And we were pleasantly surprised by the Anschläge, a Berlin design collective that excels in subtly subversive activism. Their work proves that, yes, graphic designers can help make the world a better place if they roll up their sleeves and try making a difference instead of just making things look nice to please the client.
But the high point of Day One was a highly entertaining lecture by Joshua Davis (above), a pioneer in the realm of computer-generated ‘Dynamic Abstraction’. Davis, who works for clients as well as presenting autonomous art in galleries and public spaces, sets himself a theme for each year and, having been invited to TypoBerlin last autumn, decided on ‘space’ for 2009. Not only did he show one breathtakingly beautiful 3D-image after another, he also presented his stuff with boyish enthusiasm, a great sense of humour, perfect timing and showmanship.
Having spent part of the morning at the computer screen, your correspondent now has to hurry back to the pregnant oyster, where Day Two has already started.
Jan Middendorp on TypoBerlin Day Two and TypoBerlin Day Three
TypoBerlin video blog.
TypoBerlin 2009 on Flickr.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:22 am | by Maja
oh, dear correspondent, thank you! you are not just the EYE you are ear, nose and the elbows in Berlin this year instead of me. be brave, bold and daring
i am impatiently waiting for your next report 
May 24th, 2009 at 12:00 pm | by Eye blog » TypoBerlin Day Two. Another Jan Middendorp Eye report – Ale, Angel, Adam, John and Chip
[...] Middendorp on TypoBerlin Day One TypoBerlin video blog. TypoBerlin 2009 on Flickr. No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this [...]
May 25th, 2009 at 10:34 am | by HD Schellnack
Blogging feels almost slow this year compared to all that Twittering, but the way you do it, I think that slow means reflected and with thought. Great seeing you shortly at the Typo, really! I’m awful at networking/small-talking and not that good with people sometimes, and especially powered down after that Typo Panel, but I really really enjoyed seeing you very much.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:01 am | by jessica jenkins
admittedly this is pretty tangential, but still, this is about design evaluation.
i had the pleasure last week of accompanying my father on a boat trip along the berlin spree. having already enjoyed two days of a coach trip in the city he was better informed than i. when i mentioned the television tower he enthused, “yes, the toothpick”. as we passed the chancellory he said “that’s the washing machine”, and sure enough, as the haus der kulturen der welt came in to view, our boat trip guide beat him to it and explained how berliners refer to it as the “pregnant oyster”. in the same vein i have read that we like to refer to womacka’s mural on the house of teachers as the belly belt and the fountain on alexanderplatz as the whore’s brooch.
now perhaps im out of touch, but in 18 years residency in this city i have never once heard any of these edifices refered to in these terms, not even by the grittiest of berliners. i am not sure if the pregnant oyster or the building should be the more piqued, but i suspect that these supposed berlinerisms are largely the work of tour guides looking for local colour.
comments most welcome.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:44 pm | by erik
these berlinerisms are usually the invention of journalists at the popular newsrags like BZ or BILD. They have been building the image of Berliners as witty natives who survived both the Nazis and the Cold War by being, well, witty. While Berliners speak quickly and are as rude as the average New Yorker, they normally couldn’t care enough about all the new public buildings to give them clever names. But the press keeps on portraying them as anti-authoritarian and witty because that is good for the image of the city. With three and a half million inhabitants, Berlin may be the biggest German city, but during the past 10 years, one million people have moved there. The population has remained at this level for decades, so obviously enough Berliners die or move away to make the city almost free of natives by now. So where would all that wit come from?
May 28th, 2009 at 8:38 pm | by jessica jenkins
very witty reply. thanks.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:45 pm | by Eye writer
I first heard the nickname “pregnant oyster” from an English friend who visits regularly, and apparently finds it quite amusing. So I thought, why not amuse a few more Englishmen? Meanwhile, the occupants of the building do capitalize on the name. The restaurant is called Auster - yes, oyster.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm | by Eye blog » TypoBerlin Day Three. Jan Middendorp goes into Space and returns to (Sol) Sender
[...] Middendorp on TypoBerlin Day Two and TypoBerlin Day One TypoBerlin video blog. TypoBerlin 2009 on Flickr. No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this [...]
May 24th, 2010 at 4:54 pm | by Eye blog » At the mercy of the Twitter critics. Robin Richmond is left wondering what defines value at TYPO Berlin
[...] time TYPO contributor Jan Middendorp, raised a healthy debate about the value of the event (see Day 1, Day 2 & Day 3). As this year’s conference is a sell-out, with roughly 50 per cent of [...]