Notes

My ATypI 2017 talk: How NOT to draw accents

This past week, I was happy to give this lecture at the ATypI conference in Montreal. Some resources and notes are below.

Here are links to the resources I mentioned in the talk:

• The Insects Project
• The Diacritics project
• On Diacritics
• Language as Design Criteria, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Vietnamese Typography
• Polish Diacritics: How To?
• Thorn and Eth: how to get them right
• Context of Diacritics
• Fancy Diacritics on Flickr

I should also correct myself by saying that even though that “Münstermann” sign shares the u/n identification issue found it Kurrentschrift, it is not actually done in that style. Sorry about that!

Also, multiple people approached me after my talk and mentioned that in some languages/regions, one might see accents simplified due to the lack of availability of type supporting those accents. And of course, some simplifications that I showed will make sense in some languages but not in others.

Finally, huge thanks to ATypI for this opportunity, and to the folks that helped provide images and insights, including: Rui Abreu, Marina Chaccur, Florian Hardwig, Indra Kupferschmid, Albert-Jan Pool, Nick Sherman, Grzegorz Rolek, and Donny Troung.