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.

eOffice Workshops List for Plus+

Visit the 2008 Plus International Design Festival and you will have more to do than simply look at the exhibits and listen to the lectures – you’ll be able to get you hands dirty with a range of workshops and feast your eyes as you watch other people work on a range of crafts and technologies that include, sponsor it by eOffice.

4Talent Writing sugeries

Coventry Univeristy Letterpress printing

Tim Donaldson Big letters

Alex Hughes Cartoons

Gabriel Hummerstone Stone carving

Barry McKay Bookbinding

Periscope On-line studio management system

Screen Media Lab Creative Suite

Linda Winnett Calligraphy

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

Have you book your ticket already if not you can do it 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.


See us also at the Field of Light part of the Hello Digital Festival 23-26 October 2008.

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.

Jonathan Barnbrook

For the typographers out there we have a treat in store for you with Jonathan Barnbrook speaking at the Plus Festival. Barnbrook is arguably most-recognised for his work on the cover artwork of David Bowie's 2002 album Heathen which featured the debut for his 'Priori' typeface. This is particularly appropriate as Barnbrook cites record cover artwork as an early design influence, and possibly the interest that drew him to graphic design. Other well known fonts designed by Barnbrook (and released through 'VirusFonts') include Bastard, Exocet, False Idol, Infidel, Moron, Newspeak, Olympukes, Sarcastic, Shock & Awe, and Tourette. Many have emotive and controversial titles reflecting the style and themes of Barnbrook's work. From 1997-2003 Barnbrook collaborated with Damien Hirst, most notably on the design, layout and typography of his book 'I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now', and on artwork associated with his restaurant Pharmacy.

MarieJoe Raidy Douaihy

Mariejoe Raidy Douaihy. Creative Director from the Raidy Printing Group in the Lebanon will be speaking at Plus this November. Mariejoe will be talking about the role of leadership in the printing industry. In the fast changing world of printing and technology, where typography, design and printing come into one, where the creative is combined with the technical and concepts mingle with reality constraints, the role of leadership and consultancy play are vital for a quality end product.

FontShop International joins Plus 08

FontShop International have just confirmed they will once again be supporting Plus. Many thanks to Ugla Marekowa and the rest of the team in Berlin for their continued support.