Call for Papers

Face Forward is an international peer-reviewed conference focused on typography that seeks to examine design and typographic practice, and to make explicit existing connections between craft, research, theory, history, criticism and pedagogy. This conference aims to provoke informed, rigorous and critical debate on aspects of typographic research and practice that relate to current discourse and contexts. It is the inaugural event in what will become an annual international conference. This year’s conference is 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 seeks to address.

The conference will provide a forum for research into typographic production, representation, dissemination and use. It encourages interdisciplinary enquiry; thus we welcome papers dealing with typography in all its forms, material and immaterial. We 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.

Suggested themes for papers include (but are not limited to): contemporary thinking about typography; the role and relationship of typography to cultural memory; the materiality of typography; type and language; endangered practice; post-digital typography.

In addition to the main tracks, the conference will also feature a dedicated student strand and we are interested in submissions from postgraduate and undergraduate students from all disciplines.

Presentations will be of 30 minutes duration. Proposals should include a title, an abstract of maximum 400 words and a biography of 150 words. All abstracts will be peer reviewed by an international panel and successful papers will be invited to submit to a subsequent peer-reviewed publication.

Submission is via Easychair. Please insert both abstract and bio into the “abstracts” field.

Deadline for abstracts: May 11, 2015.

Notification: June 20, 2015

December 11 & 12, 2015.

Dublin School of Creative Arts,
Dublin Institute of Technology,
Grangegorman, Dublin 7

Please email any queries to: faceforwarddublin@gmail.com

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