It was a little more than a month ago that I purchased my ticket to TYPO on a whim. Yep. Lots of money out the door for a design conference. But as my husband said (read: justified the purchase to me after experiencing a spell of buyer’s remorse) “We live in San Francisco. You need to take advantage of things like this.” And he’s right.

For those of you who may not be familiar with names like Neville Brody, Erik Spiekermann, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Michael Bierut, Jessica Hische, and many others, they are the Steve Jobs’ and George Lucas’ of my design world. I’m going to see these people talk. In person.

To make things more exciting, a couple of weeks ago, I answered a call for volunteers for the TYPO Press Team. So now, not only do I find myself attending TYPO, I’ll be blogging / tweeting throughout various sessions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts during the 2 days. And I get a free ticket for next year’s conference. Worth it? I think so.

If you’re sad to be missing the action, you can follow my tweets at @bfrancesi or catch me on the Font Shop blog.  I’ll be in design heaven.

This sounds super cliche, but it’s crazy how quickly time goes. Last weekend my husband and I celebrated our 6th anniversary. Six. On one hand, it seems like we’ve been together forever and on the other, it seems like it’s only been a year or two.

We ended up taking a rainy weekend getaway to Carmel (thanks to a great deal we found on Jetsetter.com) and spent Saturday holed up in our room by the fireplace drinking wine, eating cheese, and watching the rain. Luckily Sunday was a little better and we took the opportunity of having a car to drive a few more miles south to Big Sur where it was cold but gorgeous.

I’m always amazed at how much has happened since we’ve been together and hope our crazy life and willingness to jump at random opportunities continues.

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with taking my personal work from the digital realm to the physical. The irony of this strikes me because the work I’ve been exploring handwriting (human typography) and dealing with it as imagery rather than written representation.

Lonely Creepy Private Comfortable Train on magazine

It bothers me that someone can only look at my work – I want people to interact with, touch, and be able to look at my work from different perspectives. As a designer who has made a career out of creating things digitally, I understand what a complete cynic I sound like when I say that digital design feels empty when it isn’t paired with some sort of tangible design.

More on this another time. I’m heading back to my sketchpad and cutting board.

These word poems are part of my Human Typography Experiment. An effort to revitalize appreciation for the ordinary.