DJR Open Studio

← Fonts

One week ago, over twenty passionate and awesome font enthusiasts attended my Open Studio, braving great distances, mud and ice, and multiple flat tires in order to be here.

Stephen Nixon already posted a great thread summing up the event, and I just wanted to follow up so that there is some record of it here.

The weekend began with some sledding, followed by dinner and drinks at the Conway Inn.

Welcome sign
CJ hits the slopes
CJ hits the slopes
Photo by Stephen Nixon
Lily chases Josh
Lily chases Josh down the hill, as CJ walks back up

Some of us started Saturday with a hike through the woods.

Starting out the hike
Photo by Stephen Nixon
On the hike
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug

James documented some of the interesting things that we passed in the big field.

As we got closer to our destination, we started to see tapped trees with tubes and buckets.

On the hike
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug
On the hike
Group shot by Mary Catherine Pflug

We finally reached Boyden Brothers Maple, operated by Jeanne and Howard Boyden. They gave us an excellent tour and demonstrated how maple syrup is made, and then gave us samples of syrup, maple cream, and maple candies.

Boyden Bros Maple
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug

After a few hours of hanging out and enjoying each other’s company, and maybe even getting some work done, we sat down to see some presentations.

Micah at work
Photo by Stephen Nixon

Stephen Nixon kicked things off, presenting about Recursive, his Type & Media project.

Stephen Nixon
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug

Eben Sorkin introduced us to a new tool called EQX that can help designers review, document, and improve their typeface designs.

Eben Sorkin
Photo by Stephen Nixon

Next, Jenn Contois gave an eye-opening presentation on signage and ADA-compliant typography. We had a lot of questions.

Jenn Contois
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug

We then moved on to the business track, which was totally unintentional but also totally awesome. Mary Catherine Pflug crunched data from MyFonts in interesting ways to tell stories about how folks buy and sell fonts.

Mary Catherine Pflug

Matthew Rechs shared some invaluable tips about doing business as designers.

Matthew Rechs

And Joyce Ketterer closed out the talks with campfire horror stories about font licensing. 🔥

Joyce Ketterer
Photo by Mary Catherine Pflug

After the talks, we had some hearty vegetable soup and fresh-baked pies from Baker’s Country Store and chatted the night away.

What a great group we had. I’m looking forward to opening my studio again soon!

The group
Photo by Stephen Nixon