Researchers’ Night at Reading

The Department contributed speakers and events to the Univesity’s Researchers’ Night on the theme of Language, Text and Power.

Gerry Leonidas introduced visitors to the history of typography through an array of printed books and type specimens: he outlined how research in historical documents informs design decisions in contemporary environments. Using Greek as a case study, Gerry used original archival material to give examples of current design practice in areas as diverse as printed dictionaries, branded corporate material, and mobile device interfaces.

Paul Luna spoke at the Language, Text, and Power seminar on researching the past, designing the present. He looked at how analysing the layout of Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 can help formulate approaches to contemporary dictionaries, and about design decisions for a scholarly edition of the Book of Common Prayer. You can read the text of his presentation, with some of his illustrations, here.

Anke Ueberberg offered a hands-on experience for visitors, explaining the workings of Gutenberg’s press using a full size working replica, hand-made by Alan May, formerly a lecturer in the Department. Based on research recently published in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, Alan’s press supports the view that a Dürer drawing of an early printing press, long thought erroneous, may in fact be an accurate portrayal.

Letters to Iceland

World scripts exhibition at ATypI 2011

From a report about the ATypI Reykjavík conference

‘This year’s conference programme included talks on – at the very least – Arabic, Devanagari, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Meeti Mayek, Mongolian, and Tamil scripts. Aside from the annual TDC and TDC² exhibitions that have long been part of the ATypI conferences, this year saw the first World Scripts Exhibition from the collections of the Typography and Graphic Communication department of the University of Reading. Fiona Ross and Alice Savoie curated this fascinating glimpse into the resources available to students and researchers at Reading; many of the items included traveled outside of the archives for the first time in order to be part of this exhibition.’

Designing the weather


‘Research room’ picnic, University of Reading, 1906

On 30 September the Department will host an interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop of designers, meteorologists and psychologists who will work together to re-think the design of weather forecasts. ‘Watching the weather’ is often more than a passing concern: it can be important when we’re planning events, choosing when to make a journey, setting our home heating etc. And it’s likely to become more important as the probability of of extreme weather conditions increases with climate change. In the workshop we’ll consider the best ways to present the increasingly complex information that meteorologists can generate to the general public.

The day is part of the programme of events within the Department’s AHRC-funded research network, LUCID.