Here is the link to the webinar I attended.

https://www.monotype.com/resources/videos/type-trends-2021-and-beyond

The name of the webinar I attended was called Type Trends: 2021 and Beyond, and the webinar is looking in depth at topography trends that have emerged from two typography designers working at Monotype Studio. They are Phil and Charles. The speaker is Melissa Ventrilo and she also works at Monotype Studio. Phil Garnham is a type designer and director-designer with many years of experience in designing and engineering fonts for global brands. Charles Nix is a type director, designer, typographer, and educator. He designed numerous typefaces in the Monotype Library and helped in designing the font Helvetica.

Throughout the webinar, Charles and Phil are showing us different topography trends of 2021 done by different design agencies like Pentagram. The works they showed vary from topography design in magazine covers, food packaging, posters, websites, and ads. Charles and Phil take turns presenting each type of trend by discussing the reason it was trending. For example, Phil showed us 3 posters designed for the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival 2019. He describes the topography design of the posters that can show movements like speeding up or slowing down by playing with the different weights of a font. The 3 Barcelona Jazz Festival posters design was very similar to Paula Scher’s 90s works for the Public Theater. It was a trend coming back to 2021 where type design had the same characteristics as those 3 posters. The trend of those typefaces was Neue Plak Variable, Futura Now Variable, and Helvetica Now Variable. Those typefaces have a lot of font variations like thin, light, regular, bold, etc. Plus adding the technology that we have available today like the different adobe programs, designers can design type that appears to be shape-shifting and show movement even if it is a 2d design.

This webinar was fascinating and informative even though it was about 40 minutes long. Hearing and learning about new topography designs done and published in the real world is inspirational. It gives me a different perspective on topography ideas and inspiration. Also, keep me updated on current popular designs so I do not fall behind on new design trends. Some of the trends they are presenting I have ever heard of were virtual in reality. Today’s technology like smartphones and VR tech makes sense to be moving in that direction.