Amy Papaelias

Type Nerd, Writer, & Design Educator

Work / Presentations Archive:

:: 2021 ::
  • Led the workshops, “Micro Typography” and “Teaching Type on the Web” at Typographics, June 2021
    :: 2020 ::
  • Co-chair of the session, "Designing Scholarship: Communication Design and Academic Journal Publishing Practices" at the College Art Association's Annual Conference, 2020 (Chicago).
  • :: 2019 ::
  • Presented, “Radical Scholarship: The Visual Language of Emerging Disciplines in the United States” (co-authored with Jessica Barness) at the American Printing History Association's 2019 annual conference, hosted at the University of Maryland. Read a review of the session.
  • :: 2018 ::
  • Co-facilitated (with Jessica Barness) the conversation at Decipher: 2018 Design Educators Research Conference at University of Michigan, “Expanding the Discourse: Future Practices in Scholarly Publishing.” Read the article.
  • Spoke on the most wonderfully colorful stage at Emojicon 2018 about the history of emoji tech. Read some of my takeaways from the day here. 2018.
  • :: 2017 ::
  • Watch my talk, Web Typography is just typography, sort of at Type@Cooper West, San Francisco Public Library, or enjoy this long read on Alphabettes.org, Facing our Fears: Teaching Type on the Web, based on it. 2017.
  • Hosted the 3rd annual Alphabettes Variety Show at the TypeLab at Typographics 2018. Cake was eaten, tango was danced, interviews were had. Listen to the recording here. 2018.
  • Gotta go draw now, a profile of type designer and calligrapher Richard Lipton on TypeNetwork.
  • Hosted the 2nd annual Alphabettes Variety Show at the TypeLab at Typographics 2017. Fun was had, bingo was played, letters were drawn. Read about it and listen to the show.
  • “Delicate, Light, Strong, Bold: Gendered Language Descriptors in Typefaces and Letterforms,” Cultural Histories of Typography panel, College Art Association annual conference, New York.
  • :: 2016 ::
  • “In Your Face: Speculative Typography as Critical Design Practice” at the Type Directors Club (recorded). 2016.
  • On Alphabettes.org, I found the perfect pumpkin patch signs.
  • Some thoughts on great, new typefaces released in 2016 (so far) for this feature in Print magazine.
  • I expressed my love for Unicode, and our adoption of the 💌, on Alphabettes.org: For the Love of Unicode.
  • “The Real Assignment” at The New School, part of a series of talks around design education by the authors of Taking a Line for a Walk.
  • As part of the My 2¢ series on Alphabettes.org, I wrote about the ubiquitous Take a Penny, Leave a Penny trays.
  • Hosted the first ever Alphabettes Live Variety Show at the Type Lab at Typographics in NYC. Read more about it or tune in.
  • Create Upstate is an awesome design conference NY State. I served as one of the judges for the first Cropped, a live design competition. Fun and hilarity ensued.
  • “Making Places: Design Methods And Practices In Interdisciplinary Scholarship Labs” at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.5 at FIT.
  • “Typography for [Digital] Humanists”, a free workshop offered at NYCDH Week. Read a thoughtful review of the workshop or view my slides.
  • As part of the Alphabettes February Love Letters series, I wrote about a 1950s Moddess dispenser near and dear to my heart.
  • :: 2015 ::
  • “The New Wardens,” on a new generation of typographers carrying on the legacy of Beatrice Warde. Read the article online or order the printed magazine.
  • It only took 10 years: the TypeTalk Fonts project is now available on Github.
  • Dublin in December! I presented “Future Displays: Towards a history of digital type specimens on the web” at Face Forward International Typography Conference.
  • I'm so pleased to be a part of Alphabettes, a new blog for type, typography and lettering: Alphabettes.org
  • I co-hosted “From the Ground Up: Foundation Studies in Graphic Design Curriculum” at the Upstate Design Week Design Educators Dialogue with Dimitry Tetin. Read more about the education symposium.
  • I shared some typographic tips at the April 2015 Hudson Valley Tech Meetup in Kingston, NY. View the slides.
  • Mom, what’s a sexy lady? My article, “Sexism & Fonts” is published on Typographica. Read it.
  • :: 2014 ::
  • I enjoyed this conversation with Mitch Goldstein and Namdev Hardisty on the podcast Through Process. Episode 16 “We Are All Digital Humanists” features Jessica Barness and myself talking about the digital humanities, design scholarship, critical making and pedagogy. Listen to the podcast.
  • “Play as Process and Product: On Making Serendip-o-matic” was presented at DH2014 in Lausanne, Switerzland in July. Read the abstract.
  • In April 2014, I presented at Theorizing the Web, in Brooklyn, NY, “Let's Talk About: An ARG in Spatial Dialogue about Race and Identity on Campus” with Aaron Knochel.
  • I participated in the symposium Remixing Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, April 11-12, 2014 and presented “Design Thinking: Process into Practice in the Undergraduate Art Studio.”
  • The Graphic Artist Guild reviews You Are What You Kern, an HTML5 demo offering typographic tips for web-based resumes. See the demo here.
  • Need some more typographic commentary in your life? I'm now blogging at Typophile.
  • :: 2013 ::
  • Serendip-o-matic: Let Your Sources Surprise You. A playful, web-based discovery tool that connects your research to digital sources from around the world. 2013.
  • I presented the Placeable project case study as part of the panel “Design and the Digital Humanites” at the Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
  • In April 2013, I presented the paper, “Digital What?! Graphic Design and the Digital Humanities” at the AIGA Design Educators Conference, BLUNT: Explicit and Graphic Design Criticism Now at Old Dominion University.
  • Preaching the typographic gospel to the NY Capitol Region: “You Are What You Kern: Typographic Details in Resumes and Portfolios,” at the AIGA Upstate NY Student Portfolio Workshop. Missed it? That‛s ok, the web resume demo is live.
  • :: 2012 ::
  • TypeTalk web fonts are now available on WebINK!. Read more about the OpenType features here. A demo with OpenType support is in the works.
  • My essay, “Visual Cues: Expressive Orthography in Digital Conversations” is included in the book project (some of my students contributed work as well), KeepDelete. Buy the book.
  • Where are all the artists and designers?, notes from a session led at THATCampNE, 2012.
  • Read my interview with 2012 Above the Fold Web Design Competition Best-in-Show winner, Aura Seltzer.
  • Writing Archive:

  • A review of Typefesse, a butt-shaped font, for Typographica‘s Our Favorite Typefaces of 2019 (published Dec. 2020).
  • “The Author is In”, part of the Bette(r) Days series, on Alphabettes.
  • Exhibition review of “Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection” on Alphabettes.org.
  • Published, “Express Yourself: How Typography Makes Us Human,” in Visions (#2), a very cool sci-fi magazine, 2019.
  • For Typographica’s Our Favorite Typefaces of 2018, I reviewed the mighty Empirica by Frere-Jones Type.
  • My essay on the Alphabettes headers is published in the book, Femme Type: Celebrating Women in the Type Industry (People of Print, 2019).
  • Interviewed designer Isabel Lea for Adobe Create Magazine on her variable font experiments bringing together language, culture, and technology.
  • For Typographica’s 2017 review annual, I selected Dover Text by Robin Mientjes, a typeface that's far more delicious than Marmite.
  • Co-authored a chapter with Aaron Knochel, published in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) on place-based learning and co-design practices.
  • A favorite memory of 2017: ATypI gave me a microphone and asked me to interview speakers and attendees. I asked everyone: who would you like to have dinner with?
  • Takeaways on Teaching Type, my recap of an excellent panel discussion hosted by Design Incubation and the TDC.
  • I wrote about Variable Fonts: The Film for the Alphabettes’ Fonts from the Future, reporting from the 22nd century.
  • Old Interviews:

  • The Write Stuff: Boost Your Brand by Blogging, How.
  • Pride, Work and Necessity of Side Projects, Design Feast.
  • Digital Stewardship, TypeThursday.
  • Women in Type: Alphabettes, FontShop.