On stage at Cooper Union
In April, we told the complete story of our African type family “Kigelia” in a one-hour presentation in the Rose Auditorium of Cooper Union in New York City. It was a thorough look at the unique process that we came to develop during the course of the project and the unexpected paths it led us down. The audience was an interesting mix of designers, linguists, students, publicists and scholars.
The video of our presentation can be viewed on our media page.
The icon for our Google Doc add-on
In an effort to aid online content creation in the Adlam script, we’ve published a transliteration add-on for Google Docs that converts Latin-script Pular texts into Adlam. Developed by Neil Patel, this add-on will help increase online content in Adlam for the 50-million people of the Pular language community.
The add-on is free and can be accessed here: goo.gl/HCNtLn
JamraPatel’s microsite for the Kigelia typeface family
We’re delighted to announce that Microsoft is the first licensee of our Kigelia typeface family. Throughout the years, Microsoft has led the industry in adding support to non-Latin writing systems and the reach of their software tools will provide millions with access to the African scripts in Kigelia. Their efforts will also include adding input methods and OS integration to allow the language communities in Africa to have an effective tool for digital communication and content creation. We’re very excited about our typeface family going to work in Africa.
We’re looking forward to welcoming more licensees on board, so that the language communities of Africa can benefit broadly from Kigelia’s functionality and richness of typographic variety. More information can be found here: https://www.kigelia-font.com
On September 15th, we told the story of developing our African type family “Kigelia” in a 30-minute presentation at the annual conference of the Association Typographique Internationale. It was exciting to speak to a large audience in a beautiful theater in the heart of Antwerp and we received excellent reviews in the hours, and days, following the talk.
The video of our presentation can be viewed on our media page.
To commemorate the completion of version 1.0 of our African typeface family, we asked some friends to make a nice microsite for it. You can see it here:
The family is in testing and we’ll be announcing exciting news about it soon.
Neil gave a presentation during the Face/Interface conference at Stanford University on December 2nd. His talk on “The Challenges of Integrating Newly Invented Scripts in Computing” dealt with some of the technical issues we’re facing when working with newly invented African scripts. Face/Interface was a dense and very informative conference in which a carefully selected group of speakers shared their insights into the technical aspects of type creation and implementation.
On November 7th, Mark visited the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY and gave a presentation about JamraPatel’s work in the design of typefaces in different scripts. This was a part of RIT’s annual Design Conversations / Vignelli Legacy lecture series. The presentation showed the development of Phoreus Cherokee and also the design process for our African type system, currently in progress. On the following day, Mark spoke to ca. 60 typography students in RIT’s graphic design program about the design of typefaces. The trip also included visits to the Vignelli archives and the Cary Graphic Arts Collection.
Photo by Filip Blažek
On August 26th, we presented our work on typefaces for African languages at TypeCon 2017 in Boston. The twenty-minute presentation covered our experiences in researching the scripts we’re including in a large pan-African type system, as well as connecting with experts and authorities in the language communities the typefaces will serve. TypeCon is the premier North American annual conference for type design, typography and the type industry.
We’ve just launched our most ambitious app to date. CalConversion is the first multiple-script calculator/unit converter designed specifically for Africa: calculations and conversions can be made with Latin, Arabic, N’ko or Adlam numerals.
This app can convert sums between all African currencies, U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars, Euros, Indian Rupee and Chinese Yuan. Currency rates are updated every 3 hours providing there is an active internet connection. The app also performs conversions for units of distance, area, volume and weight. The four script interfaces are easily accessed by swiping horizontally.
We’ve just launched our latest app: an Adlam calculator for the Fulani people of Africa. Adlam is the newest script in our African typeface system; it was created by Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry of Guinea in the 1980s for the Pulaar language throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. We contacted Abdoulaye and Ibrahima, and they’re kindly advising us on apps as well as the definitive forms of the Adlam alphabet.
Version 1.0 of the calculator is here: https://goo.gl/dqi6MJ