As a passionate conference visitor you know the “problem”: so much input! So many speakers to follow, and many more to miss. You cannot attend every talk you’d would love to. You might not even be able to visit TYPO Berlin this year (OMG) … And if you do make it, you’ll probably want to revisit your favourite talks, reconsidering what was said, what the core issues were, how they’re relevant for your own situation… No problem! We’ve got you covered.
We care about our speakers and what they have to offer, and we want to ensure the best possible access for our audience: that’s why you can visit the conference, watch the videos and read about the speakers. We watch and think and write about their talks, for you—and with you—along with our audience.
The TYPO Berlin Editorial Team grows bigger and more professional each year. We are super proud of their commitment and how everyone contributes their talent, knowledge and personality. Want to know how the whole thing started? Read my background post from last year, summarizing the TYPO Berlin Editorial Team story, explaining the whole concept and, most of all, introducing the team members.
Many of them will be joining us again, which is great. Others are new to the team, bringing fresh views and specific qualifications with them, while some are returning after a break or after having been speakers themselves.
Daunting digital
You might remember Harry Keller from his legendary “Daunting Digital” talk, which he followed up last year with “Debugging Digital Myths – Digital Misconceptions”. Harry also runs his own company diesdas.digital with three friends and writes a cool weekly recap about their experiences as a startup. Follow @harryfk on Twitter for all the latest details.
Digital designer Lisa Schmidt also took a break; after working with Studio Good in Berlin for the last three years, she’s now tackling new challenges as a freelancer. It’s so good to have her on-board again! Lisa is someone who combines digital knowledge with conceptual skills and language talent, which makes her the perfect Editorial Team member—and a great person to share the TYPO experience with.
Kristina Schneider (recommended by Harry Keller) and Paul-Christian Thiele (who I met at Edenspiekermann when he was an intern) are also digital designers. Kristina holds degrees in communication science, art history and German philology. After working as design lead for a finance startup in San Francisco, she recently moved back to Berlin and now works as a freelancer. Paul-Christian has been a dedicated graphic and web designer since his school days. He loves typographic subtleties and is studying for his master’s degree in interface design in Potsdam. I was struck by the way he expresses himself, even in emails. I’m looking forward to their first TYPO posts!
The type design brigade
Benedikt Bramböck’s love of letters sparkled while studying Visual Communication in Austria and Switzerland. In Berlin he worked in exhibition and graphic design. He studied typeface design at the renowned (or is it notorious?) TypeMedia master’s program of Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (KABK) in The Hague in the Netherlands; since 2015 he has worked as a font engineer at Alphabet Type. Benedikt is also part of the team behind Berlin’s Typostammtisch, writing cool blog posts about their events—and super cool tweets as @arialcrime (that name says it all, doesn’t it?).
Of course, we also invited more type designers to the TYPO Editorial Team. I’m happy to introduce Tilmann Hielscher and Philipp Sunny Neumeyer. Together with Benedikt, they graduated from KABK The Hague as TypeMedia masters in 2015. You can see their graduate projects at the first Typostammtisch event this year, an exhibition showing the 2015 graduation projects from the Reading (UK), The Hague and Moscow master classes in type design. Tilmann, who also holds a visual communications diploma from Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, freelances as a graphic and type designer in Berlin, while Philipp is an employee at LucasFonts. We’re happy to have them on board!
Musicians and more multitalents
Stefan Pabst comes from the same field; he is studying typography and type design with Luc(as) de Groot at the University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) Potsdam. Stefan is super talented when it comes to naming: we will always remember him for both his typeface project Wurstvogel Grotesk (Sausage Bird Grotesque), which we hope will soon be published, and for being a member of a rather famous contemporary Austrian band with the idiosyncratic name “Ja, Panik”. He is their bassist. We look forward to seeing how Stefan’s manifold artistic talents come together as he writes for us.
Rik Watkinson is a multilingual designer and also a type design student studying with Lucas de Groot. He runs Büro Watkinson in Berlin together with his wife Jenny. Rik is most interested in how Latin and Arabic language systems go together in type design. He has already conducted extensive research with type designers working with Cyrillic typefaces. Felix von Pless and I met at ATypI São Paulo. During an impromptu lunch we spoke about the talks, and I liked how he reflected on what he saw. Felix studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, holds a diploma in communication design, and currently works as a freelance corporate designer. He will be joining us from Hamburg, together with Christine Wenning and Chris Campe, who runs her studio All Things Letters there. Both Christine and Chris were also part of last year’s team. In fact, Christine is one of my most enduring team members, and does a terrific job every year.
And talking about endurance: a very special mention goes out to Toshi! Toshiya Izumi has been with the team for five years in a row now. Thank you so much, Toshi, for your wonderful Japanese, English and German contributions, for your smile, which can cross any border, and for your great team spirit. Toshi caught Erik Spiekermann’s attention with a book he wrote comparing Japanese and Latin typography. He works as a graphic designer and icon specialist at Edenspiekermann.
Last but not least: superfine final editing!
I am very happy to have found two professional copyeditors to serve as final editors for the TYPO team. Christian Wöllecke will do most of the German texts. Christian is a Diplom-Betriebswirt (BA), holds a master’s degree in comparative literature and linguistics (FU Berlin) and works as a freelance lecturer. Take a chance on a pro before you click “publish”! You will be amazed at how much value a professional copyeditor or proofreader can add to your manuscripts.
We also found the perfect person for supervising our English posts: Kevin Brochet-Nguyen is a lifelong bibliophile with the thick glasses to prove it. Together with his wife, Kevin made a German word-of-the-day app and a game about umlauts few years back (minimalist and typographic-only, with icon fonts instead of images). Kevin has a B.A. in philosophy and worked as an editor at Gestalten in Berlin, where he continues to run his own text and translation agency when he’s not working on getting his “little indie literature-in-translation press off the ground”. Looking forward to working with you!
By the way—final editing may sound easy, but for us it means a lot more than ensuring correct spelling, punctuation marks, etc. Christian and Kevin will also be checking for correct text hierachy, pictures, captions, tags, and all the other details that make good blogposts great. Sine we want to publish our team’s posts asap after the talks, Christian and Kevin will be supported in final editing by Leonie Hesse and Anne Rethfeld for German, and by Gabby Lord and Maggie Tang for English. Anne, Leonie, Gabby and Maggie have been with the team before; I introduced them in my opening article for the 2015 conference. Leonie now works as an editor for the service design agency Fjord in Berlin.
Roles and responsibilities?
Yes, there are roles and responsibilities. We are a huge team now. We need to get more organized each year, so we meet for at least one intense workshop, where we teach everyone how to work in the CMS, discuss how we write, prepare our editorial plan, get to know each other (of course), and share this great experience as conference bloggers.
As Head of the Editorial Team, I am responsible for our work as a publisher. I coordinate with Monotype Germany (Jürgen Siebert, Sabine Gruppe and Franziska Parschau, with Sabine being my counterpart in communications here). I’m responsible for recruiting, briefing and coaching the team. I choose and instruct the Chief Editor and the other core staff. I provide the basics for writing on the TYPO Talks blog and prepare everyone for the conference. Chief Editor Jenna Gesse and Managing Editor Jannis Riethmüller, backed up by Christine Wenning and Jenny Zegenhagen, will carry the main responsibilities during the conference (while I will be working on stage as a facilitator). They did so last year and they did a hell of a great job. TYPO and team photographer Norman Posselt will be our Photo Editor again, backed up by Toshiya Izumo.
We’re well-prepared and we can’t wait to get started. Writing about TYPO Talks means more than just telling the world how cool the conference is (most of you know that already)—for us, it is also about providing the best possible access to what is presented there. We will be sharing all the news and knowledge that the inspiring, talented participants bring to the stage. Enjoy!
