In Baskerville’s memory

Visit the 2008 Plus International Design Festival and you will be able to watch history in the making.

For more than 230 years John Baskerville has been at rest in an unmarked grave in the city, but this is about to change as Gabriel Hummerstone, sculptor of bespoke memorials will carve a commemorative plaque in memory of Birmingham’s typographic genius.

Baskerville had composed his own memorial:

Stranger –Beneath this Cone in unconsecrated ground
A friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to be inhum’d
May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind
From the idle fears of superstition
And the wicked arts of Priesthood.

and it is this text that Hummerstone will use as he carves the plaque using Baskerville’s letters on Welsh slate.

Come and watch as history is made.

For more information visit http://www.youplusus.net/.

Bookings for the Festival are open and can be made online at http://www.youplusus.net/.

One-day ticket £15.00 (£10.00 concessions)
Full-Festival ticket £40.00 (£25.00 concessions)

Plus+ Touring the city with the Walking Tours

Visit the 2008 Plus International Design Festival and join one of our walking tours exploring the typographic complexity of Birmingham’s urban environment – they are a great way to see this familiar city from a new perspective. Tours run throughout the Festival and are aimed at both practitioners and students of design, local historians and visitors. The walks look at a variety of typographic forms that can be found in the street and are conducted by an experienced and informative guide with both local knowledge and typographic understanding.

Our guide is Ben Waddington, a Birmingham-based historian with an especial interest in architecture, industrial history and typography. His guided tours for this year’s Plus festival will include the evergreen John Baskerville tour, which follows the story of the innovative C18th Birmingham printer. He will also conduct a Type Tour of the City Centre and beyond, which will explore the use of lettering on buildings, public art, mosaics, signs, plaques and ephemeral vestiges of the past.

Digbeth Type Tour: Exploring use of typography and handwritten letterforms in industrial Digbeth side streets. The area's history revealed through its use of type.

Baskerville's Birmingham: the history of Birmingham's most famous typographer, John Baskerville (1706 - 1775). Artifacts, locations and type specimens associated with Baskerville will be visited, around Birmingham City Centre.

Blue Plaques tour: The history of Birmingham and of the Blue Plaque itself: changing and improving designs, layouts, type use &c. The tour also covers plaques other than Blue; many forms of wall mounted commemorative texts around the City Centre.

City Type Tour: Birmingham history as shown through its typography. Civil, monumental and commercial use of typeforms will be explored in Birmingham City Centre.

For Walking Tours bookings please email Magda at info@youplusus.net.

Timetable

5/11/2008 WEDNESDAY
12:00 - 13:30 1. Digbeth Type Tour

Meeting Point: Festival Reception

6/11/2008 THURSDAY
12:00 - 13:30 2. Digbeth Type Tour

Meeting Point: Festival Reception
14:30 - 16:00 3. Baskerville's Type Tour

Meeting Point: Baskerville House, Broad Street, B1

7/11/2008 FRIDAY
12:00 - 13:30 4. Digbeth Type Tour

Meeting Point: Festival Reception
14:30 - 16:00 5. Blue Plaques Tour

Meeting Point: Baskerville House, Broad Street, B1

8/11/2008 SATURDAY
12:00 - 13:30 6. City Type Tour

Meeting Point: Baskerville House, Broad Street, B1

One-day ticket £15.00 (£10.00 concessions) Full-Festival ticket £40.00 (£25.00 concessions) Discounts available on groups of 10 or more.

For more information visit http://www.youplusus.net/.

Bookings for the Festival are now open and can be made online.

Exhibitors in Plus+

Visit the 2008 Plus International Design Festival and view the work of some of the most inspirational and innovative work from both established an up-and-coming agencies, designers and illustrators which this year include:

4Talent
Jane Anderson
Baskerville Project
Birmingham City University
Matt Cannon
Clusta
Coventry University
Designers Republic
Timothy Donaldson
Feed
Fluid
Fused
Girls Who Draw
Illuminate Lighting Ltd
Periscope
Karoline Rerrie
Joe Rogers
Smile
Stereographic
Andrew Spackman
Type
We Make Art
WOK Media
Wolverhampton University

For more information visit http://www.youplusus.net/.

Bookings for the Festival are now open and can be made online at http://www.youplusus.net/.

One-day ticket £15.00 (£10.00 concessions)
Full-Festival ticket £40.00 (£25.00 concessions)

Discounts available on groups of 10 or more.

Baskerville Project will be projected at Plus+

Continuing the cycles of presentation after Hello Digital, The Baskerville Project will be projected at Plus+.

The Baskerville Project celebrates John Baskerville, the man, the typeface and his future legacy. The work of Baskerville is synonymous to innovation, ambition, creativity and enterprise. John Baskerville is a local figure, who lived and worked out of Birmingham, inspiring the birth of the Lunar Society and contributing through financial and intellectual investment to the Industrial revolution. Baskerville the Animated Movie acknowledges the achievements of the past and aims to inspire the generations of the future.

Baskerville is a leading transitional/neo-classical serif typeface widely used in publishing and print today.