Now We Are Talking Festival
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Jan-Paul Koudstaal Date
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Articles, EventsShort-url
Last friday Bart-Jan and I went to Scheveningen for the Now We Are Talking Festival, presented by Typeradio. The weather was wonderful, a first this summer. The free(!) event was held at the Free Architecture Surf Terrain (F.A.S.T.) at Scheveningen beach in The Hague.
The turn-out was huge, over 500 designers showed up for a day of Type, Design, Sun, Surf, Music & Film. It started with a one-on-one interview between special guest Gerard Unger and Wim Crouwel, two of Holland’s iconic graphic/typographic designers. The interview ended with mr. Crouwel writing a message for the audience:
“Keep your radar turning to register all that is happening, but find your own direction”.
Corel Cup 3.0
Next up was the the only official Dutch design soccer competition, The Corel Cup 3.0! Its motto is: It isn’t about winning, it’s about style! We decided to join the competition and after some exhilarating games the dust settled and it was clear: we won the Corel Cup! (lacking style, mind you!)
Typeshorts
After a little cooling down we saw Yves Peters‘ talk “Trajan In Movie Posters”. I’ve been reading Yves’ blog for some years now in which he reviews movie-poster-typography and it was fun to hear him talk about the rise and fall of Trajan as the go-to Hollywood-font. Dave Crossland gave the next (short) talk about open-source fonts. After him Typefreaks invited everybody to take part in a fun quiz about typography.
Eclectic musical-programme
On the main stage we saw performances by Blinde vlek, Electric Mustafa and John Dear Mowing Club.
Other talks
OK Parking told a sad story about giraffes and invited the crowd to a dance like a zombie to the tune of Thriller.Strange Attractors performed with Yves Peters (drums) and Peter Verheul (guitar). The told an amusing story about the legendary type-designer (and Jazz-drummer) Ed Benguiat. They all wore fake moustaches, eyebrows and wore NY Yankees caps. Good stuff!
In conclusion, design and type-wise the festival didn’t meet our expectations, but we had a great time. Hopefully the festival will return next year!
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