The major worldwide association for people interested in fonts and typography.

Introduction to ATypI

The Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) is a worldwide non-profit organization dedicated to type and typography. It was founded in 1957 by Charles Peignot.

Members are type designers, graphic designers, typographers, publishers, font distributors, font technicians, and engineers who work for large software companies wishing to update the typographic community about upcoming technologies. The President since 1995 has been Mark Batty.

ATypI conferences

Annual conferences take place in cities around the world, where members enjoy meeting, attending lectures, seminars and workshops — and eating out. The venues have been and will be:

Mailing list

Since 2001, there has been an active members’ e-mail list, where weighty and trivial typographic matters are discussed.

Publications, competitions and awards

Occasional publications have been well received by members, most recently the book Language, Culture, Type, edited by John D. Berry (ATypI/Graphis 2002, ISBN 1932026010). Occasional awards are also given: the notable competition for recent type designs was bukva:raz!. The 100 winning entrants appeared in the aforementioned book. A regular award, known as the Prix Charles Peignot in honor of the ATypI founder, is given every four years to a designer under the age of 35 who has made an oustanding contribution to type design.

Evolution of ATypI

Over the years the association has adapted to the changing needs of the world’s typeface suppliers, now a markedly different group of people from when ATypI was founded.

At the time of the association’s founding in the 1950s, and continuing through to the 1980s, a range of distinctive and serviceable typefaces was part of the added value that a manufacturer of costly printing equipment would offer a client. Crucially, typefaces purchased for one piece of machinery would not function on any other. Furthermore, the types deteriorated over time, meaning a physical limit on the life of any font. This was the business model that ATypI sought to protect, while not discouraging scholarly debate within its circles.

Matthew Carter, ATypI member since 1963, takes a look at ATypI’s history: “In its early years ATypI was essentially a typefounders’ club, dominated by the German foundries, and run by a small Management Committee that met three or four times a year. The Presidents of ATypI have been, in order, Charles Peignot, John Dreyfus, Tage Bolander, Martin Fehle, Ernst-Erich Marhencke and Mark Batty. Designers had no voice until the formation of the Committee of Type Designers and Typographers in 1965. It was chaired by Hermann Zapf until 1971, by Adrian Frutiger until 1977, and by me until it petered out circa 1991. The meeting in 1967 at UNESCO in Paris was a breakthrough — ATypI’s first real conference with invited speakers, organized by John Dreyfus. Gastronomically, Beaune in 1982 was outstanding.”

In the 21st century, it seems quaint to think that a designer’s choice of typefaces might be technically limited by her choice of office printer, her choice of output bureau, or the publication she works with. Digital fonts that work on essentially any output device have been commonplace for over a decade. Therefore, the typographic aspects of printing are much more in the hands of type designers (the new manufacturers) and typographers (the new buyers) than ever before. It is towards these parties that ATypI has moved, still encouraging discussion about type history, new directions in type design, multilingual typography, font display technology on new devices and so on, while largely abandoning the “solved problems” of getting ink onto paper and selling printing machines. These are left to the specialized engineers and marketeers who, for their part, need know nothing of typography.

Related topics

		ATypI (you are here)
			ATypI Prague 2004 conference
			ATypI Vancouver 2003 conference

External links

 • ATypI
 • ATypI: Language, Culture, Type, edited by John D. Berry

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