DJR Open Studio
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.
Photo by Stephen Nixon
When a “type event” starts out with an afternoon of sledding, you know it’s gonna be a good one❄️⛄️
— CJ Dunn (@cjtype) March 18, 2019
Thanks @djrrb and everyone for an awesome weekend #DJRFest pic.twitter.com/24QFJUYRZA
Some of us started Saturday with a hike through the woods.
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.
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.
We learned about the process of boiling down and purifying maple sap to produce syrup, and collectively left with gallons of Grade A Amber (the midseason, medium-dark variety). pic.twitter.com/FY4v0lQRMx
— Stephen Nixon (@ThunderNixon) March 17, 2019
There is a *lot* of steam that comes from reducing sap. pic.twitter.com/6sLNSVS6Dt
— Stephen Nixon (@ThunderNixon) March 18, 2019
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.
Stephen Nixon kicked things off, presenting about Recursive, his Type & Media project.
Eben Sorkin introduced us to a new tool called EQX that can help designers review, document, and improve their typeface designs.
Next, Jenn Contois gave an eye-opening presentation on signage and ADA-compliant typography. We had a lot of questions.
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.
Forget about leaning forward. @mcpflugie has them all up out of their seats, like they're all going to tip over and fall down. You do not want to follow this lady at the podium. pic.twitter.com/tzdPbDx0yZ
— Matthew Rechs (@MrEchs) March 18, 2019
Matthew Rechs shared some invaluable tips about doing business as designers.
And Joyce Ketterer closed out the talks with campfire horror stories about font licensing. 🔥
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!
