Volunteering at Typographics NYC

2024 was a year of firsts, including a trip to New York’s Cooper Union to volunteer at Typographics, an annual design festival that focuses on new frontiers in type design, graphic design, web design, packaging, branding, book design, corporate identity, advertising, motion graphics and more. Cooper Union has a highly respected reputation for its extended and condensed typeface design programs, and launching their design festival in 2015 after identifying the potential to bring together international talent to share tech ideas and knowledge. I wanted to see what it was all about!

Attracted by the opportunity to travel to the Big Apple then on to Berlin Letters three weeks later, I reached out to Festival Director, Cara Di Edwardo, offering to bring my ambigram exhibition to the Cooper Union Foundation building or the new Cooper Union university across the street. Perhaps my Type Down Under creations could find a place on the walls?

Cara is so efficient, and wrote back straight away to advise that their 2024 exhibition was already organised, but asked if I would like to come as a volunteer instead. I jumped at the chance to help behind-the-scenes and be onsite for the innovative typography lectures. Excitement started to build. I reached out to one of my dearest lettering friends, Nikita Prokhorov, who I met at 2019’s Typism Conference on the Gold Coast Australia. Nikita lives close to Union Square and I felt incredibly lucky at the opportunity to stay at his Brooklyn apartment during the festival. I book an around-the-world flight from Brisbane to New York, Milan, Berlin, and Japan.

Arriving in New York during summer was a joy — warm, sunny, long days lay ahead, and Typographics NYC was about to begin. Hosted over ten days, the festival commenced on Monday 10 June 2024, featuring a conference, book fair, workshops, lectures, type lab, exhibition and tours. I collected my volunteer roster and badge, finding the first days left some time to attend activities, such as Type Lab where designers explained their concepts and new creations. Several businesses, like Modyfi, showcased their motion graphics software, and traditional letterpress and calligraphy projects were also on display.

Workshop

Black Foundry held a full-day Fontra workshop teaching how to use their web-based collaborative font-building platform. In teams of three, we crafted the beginnings of a character set. Watching each glyph come to life online was exciting, with each person crafting different components and, later, venturing into variable glyphs using multiple axes.

Goodie bag

My first day of volunteer work involved meeting and greeting speakers and attendees inside the main foyer at Cooper Union Foundation. Each person received a branded lanyard, pronoun badge by Darden Studios, and goodie bag filled with type specimens and stationery.

The conference

Typographics’ conference began in The Cooper Union Foundation’s historic auditorium. Keynote speakers from around the world graced the stage to show their career work. Design academics explained new research, and animators filled the screens with playful kinetic type. Listen and watch the 2024 live streams here.

Peter Cooper

The walls of the Cooper Union Foundation building feature memorials to founder, Peter Cooper (1791-1883). An inventor, philanthropist and politician who built the first American steam locomotive, he founded Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1859. In the 1876 presidential election, he stood as a candidate. Cooper’s memorial plaques were a feast for the eyes, and a remarkable tribute to an iconic innovator.

Book Fair

Held at Cooper Union’s streetside event space, the book fair was a hive of activity from start to finish. Well-known for selling rare and exclusive tomes, a variety of topics and price points were catered for, from $500 academic volumes to $60 modular letterpress kits and $5 postcards. Read more about the Book Fair and sponsors here.

Alice Koeth calligraphy exhibition

Nights in New York were spent socialising and sightseeing, apart from the exhibition launch for master calligrapher, Alice Koeth. Her retrospective exhibition was held across three large rooms at Cooper Union. Typographics’ organisers had secured a vast array of Alice’s work, including before-and-after sketches, books, video footage, envelopes, framed projects and illustrations. A founding member of NYC’s Society of Scribes, Alice (1927-2020) began her career creating ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, moving on to book design, illustration and teaching.I was in awe seeing the precision and variety of her designs. See more of Alice Koeth’s impressive scribal work here.

Tips for securing a volunteer role at a typography conference

Volunteers help with logistical aspects of a conference, including registrations, setting up signage, handing out welcome kits, managing equipment and a variety of behind-the-scenes activities. Here are a few tips that might help you secure a volunteer role:

• Visit the conference website to find how volunteers helped in the past. Seek out images of the conference to become familiar with its activities.

• Consider offering your services. Offer to teach a workshop, supply products, host an exhibition, pick up speakers from the airport, or pack the goodie bags. What can you do that would help a conference organiser, or elevate the experience of the attendees?

• Contact the organiser at least six months prior. Organising committees and rosters are planned well-in-advance. If your name is top of mind, you are more likely to become part of the team.

• After the conference ends, consider designing a personalised thank you to send the organiser.

Catching up for lunch with Typism friends, Nikita Prokhorov and Kevin Adam. Rico Fonseca artwork in Soho of 1960’s musicians.