Abstract

Face Forward was an international peer-reviewed conference focused on typography that sought to examine design and typographic practice, and to make explicit existing connections between craft, research, theory, history, criticism and pedagogy. The conference aimed to provoke informed, rigorous and critical debate on aspects of typographic research and practice that relate to current discourse and contexts. It was the inaugural event in what will become an annual international conference. This conference was supported by ID2015 Year of Irish Design and the Dublin Institute of Technology.

In the field of visual communication and typographic practice, a great deal of epistemological uncertainty still exists. As a consequence, concrete theoretical or methodological positions around which the discipline could cohere have yet to emerge—a situation this conference sought to address.

The conference provided a forum for research into typographic production, representation, dissemination and use. It encouraged interdisciplinary enquiry; welcoming papers dealing with typography in all its forms, material and immaterial. They encourage submissions that consider typography in as broad a sense as possible, that celebrate the vitality and range of typography and which seek to expand definitions of both typographic object and practice.